About syncing search engine accounts in Search Ads 360

Beginning June 29, 2020, customers who have previously turned on scheduled sync or who choose to turn on scheduled sync will no longer be able to turn off scheduled sync. Likewise, customers who have previously activated the conversion API will no longer be able to deactivate it.

Beginning February 1, 2021, Search Ads 360 will automatically turn on scheduled sync and activate the conversion API for all customers who haven't already turned on scheduled sync or who haven't already activated the conversion API.

Starting March 2022, Yahoo! Gemini engine accounts within Search Ads 360 will be migrated to engine track accounts. Learn more.

When you sync (synchronize) a supported search engine account, any changes made in the engine account are imported into Search Ads 360. This includes new or updated items and settings for supported features.

For example, if you create a new campaign in Google Ads, the campaign isn't shown in Search Ads 360 until you sync the account.

You can sync accounts manually or you can set up a daily sync schedule to automatically sync accounts at a specific time.

Why sync accounts in Search Ads 360

Syncing accounts:

• Ensures consistency between Search Ads 360 and the engine. Syncing makes sure the settings in Search Ads 360 and the engine match. This is particularly important because the engines do the actual serving of your ads. Regularly syncing means that you'll be using the most up-to-date settings in Search Ads 360.
• Pulls in all supported objects and their attributes from the engine account, and creates them in Search Ads 360.

• In engines that support shared templates, Search Ads 360 generates and traffics a custom parameter for each new keyword and other trackable item. The custom parameter uniquely identifies the item so Search Ads 360 can attribute conversions and other activity to the item. If this is the first sync for an engine account, Search Ads 360 also traffics a custom parameter for each existing keyword and trackable item in the account. Note that even if a clickserver URL has already been trafficked to a tracking template in your account, Search Ads 360 does not start tracking activity until the custom parameters have been trafficked to the account.

  For engines that don't support shared templates, Search Ads 360 does the following after the sync completes:

  1. Generates a clickserver URL for each item.
  2. Retraffics the items and clickserver URLs back out to the engine. When you view the items in the engine you'll see the Search Ads 360 clickserver URL instead of the landing page URL you defined. Recall that Search Ads 360 keeps a copy of the original landing page URL in its Landing page column.

  This applies to any item that defines its own landing page URL except ads. Search Ads 360 does not generate clickserver URLs for ads.

• Clears old trafficking errors. If you run a sync and fix all trafficking errors, campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords that have never trafficked successfully to the engine account will be removed from Search Ads 360. This will clear all older trafficking errors and then sync all items from the account.

  Before running a sync that fixes all trafficking errors, be sure to review the following list to learn more about the items that will be removed.

   

  Fix all trafficking errors:

  • Overwrites existing items that were updated incorrectly in Search Ads 360 (and never trafficked) with a fresh copy from the engine. Any changes you made to the item in Search Ads 360 will be lost.

    For example, if you enter an invalid landing page URL for an existing keyword and Search Ads 360 is unable to traffic the update to the engine, you can return the keyword to the landing page URL in the engine account by selecting this option.

  • Removes new items created in Search Ads 360 but never trafficked because of trafficking errors. (Since the new Search Ads 360 items don't exist in the engine account, the only way to fix the trafficking error is to remove them from Search Ads 360.)

    For example, if you create a new keyword in Search Ads 360, but the keyword's landing page URL is invalid and never trafficked to the engine, you can remove the keyword from Search Ads 360 by selecting this option.

  If you sync an account and choose not to fix trafficking errors, the sync will copy and update items from the engine, and ignore items with trafficking errors.

Sync supported engine accounts

The sync operation is available for all supported engine accounts. Sync will ignore  "Other" types of engine accounts. For example, if you select 10 accounts to sync and two of those accounts are “Other” engine accounts, the eight supported engine accounts will be synced.

Sync active and paused accounts

You can manually sync both active and paused accounts. However, you can only run scheduled syncs on active accounts. Once you have paused your account, you must manually sync the account before you can resume activity.

Unlike syncing active accounts where you can optionally fix trafficking errors, syncing a paused account automatically fixes trafficking errors, removing any changes that hadn't yet trafficked. Be sure to resume paused accounts after syncing them. 

Best practice: Schedule syncs

To make sure you don't forget to sync changes into Search Ads 360, schedule syncs to run automatically each day. Note that once a sync is scheduled, the account will sync at the first available scheduled time.

Before scheduling syncs, you might want to first manually sync the engine account and fix all trafficking errors. The first manual sync will take a few hours to complete. Then, you can check the account for trafficking errors.

 

Sync notes: How sync works

• You can sync active and paused accounts. (Although you are limited to manual syncs for paused accounts.)

• Manually sync or schedule syncs for multiple accounts. Even if you schedule the syncs to occur at the same time, the accounts aren't synced simultaneously. The accounts are synced one at a time until the sync operation completes for each individual account.

• Sync won't start until all pending operations have been trafficked or received an error. For example, if you just modified a campaign, Search Ads 360 will need to traffic the change to the engine or send an error before the sync can begin.

• Sync will skip:
  • Items that Search Ads 360 doesn't support (such as image ads).
  • Settings that Search Ads 360 doesn't understand (such as ad scheduling in Google Ads).
  • Removed campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, and other items, including products that have been removed from shopping campaign feeds.

• Syncing a large account can last anywhere from several minutes to several hours, depending on the amount of data that was changed in the external account.

• Sync imports some types of data more quickly than others. It may take several hours before metrics reported in Search Ads 360 accurately reflect the metrics reported in the engine.

• Depending on the engine, sync attempts to import data from the past 60 days, 1 year, or 2 years.

• Closing the browser window won't affect the sync.

• If you sync an account that has some ad copy under editorial review, Search Ads 360 will import the updated ad copy that hasn't yet been approved.

• You can't select specific parts of the engine account to sync.

• Microsoft Advertising only. Sync removes the exact copies of an ad from Search Ads 360 if each copy is linked to the same ad in the Microsoft Advertising account.

• If you sign into an engine and enter a URL in a tracking template, when you sync in the change Search Ads 360 automatically changes the URL to start with HTTPS. This change is to ensure compatibility with parallel tracking.

  Note that Search Ads 360 only updates the first URL in your tracking template to specify HTTPS. If your tracking template contains multiple tracking URLs, make sure they all specify HTTPS. Parallel tracking requires all tracking URLs to specify HTTPS.

  After the sync completes, Search Ads 360 adds its clickserver URL to the beginning of the tracking URL and traffics the updated tracking URL out to the engine.

 

Additionally:

• If you create keywords directly in the engine without specifying landing page URLs, during sync Search Ads 360 does the following depending on the type of engine account:

  • Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, and Yahoo! Japan: Nothing. Landing page URLs for keywords are optional in these engine accounts.
  • Baidu: If you didn't specify a landing page URL for mobile devices, Search Ads 360 uses the keyword's non-mobile URL. If you didn't specify a non-mobile URL for the keyword,  Search Ads 360 copies a random landing page URL from an active ad in the ad group and adds it to the keyword.
  • Yahoo Gemini: Search Ads 360 copies a random landing page URL from an active ad in the ad group and adds it to the keywords.

  If you want specific landing pages for your keywords, specify the landing page URLs before running a sync.
   

• If you create multiple final URLs for a keyword in Google Ads, during sync, Search Ads 360 updates the keyword's landing page URL with the first final URL you defined. After sync, your Search Ads 360 landing page URL will match the first Google Ads final URL. The keyword's other final URLs will be visible in Google Ads, but not in Search Ads 360. You can manage the other final URLs only in Google Ads. Learn more about multiple final URLs for a Google Ads keyword.

Next steps

• Manually sync an account.  
• Schedule syncs.