Fix your website visitor data segments, tags, and ads

Before you begin

The Overview page will surface important account status information to help you understand and resolve issues with campaigns that use your data for audience targeting. These may include issues with your ad groups, and audience sources. You’ll find 3 types of alerts:

1. Critical health and/or performance issues that require a resolution for your ads to continue serving.
2. Issues that require attention to reach the full potential of your ads and maintain a healthy campaign.
3. A health status informing you that your campaigns that use your data for audience targeting, ad groups, and audience sources are working as expected.

No visitors on the list

You may not have added the Google tag correctly.

• You edited the tag snippet in some way when you copied and pasted from Google Ads to your site. For example, if you paste the code into an email before implementing a copy of it on your site, the spacing of the code often changes.
• You didn't paste the tag snippet above the "/head" tag of your site code.

The rule you created is incorrect or doesn't match your site URL. For example, you create your data segment using "URL contains television" but the URL of the televisions section of your site includes the term "televisions" (in plural). So the list doesn't match your URL.

Also, read About your data segments for details on list size requirements.

A website visitor or app user data segment isn't growing in size

A website visitor or app user data segment may not be growing because of a tag snippet modification. If you've exchanged tag snippets by email, for example, keep in mind that email programs modify the formatting of tag snippets. We suggest sending tag snippets as file attachments and using a program that doesn't change the formatting, like a plain text editor (for example, Notepad for PC or TextEdit for Mac).

It's also possible that you didn't add the tag snippet correctly on your website. If that's the case, you can find more information on how to tag your website using Google Ads.

If your list remains steady, with very few cookies, here are some recommendations:

• Check that the traffic for the pages with your Google tag snippets is high enough. If the traffic is low, maybe your lists are too specific. Consider removing targeting restrictions (for example, country and language) or tagging site pages that have higher traffic volume.
• Make sure the membership duration of your data segment is long enough. If you set a short duration, the segment might not accumulate enough cookies. You can edit the membership duration of the list at any time.

Ad isn't showing

Here are some possible reasons that your ad isn't showing and some troubleshooting tips:

• Google Ads only shows ads to your data segments that have more than 100 users.
  • In the previous AdWords experience, you can check your list size by clicking the Shared library link in the left navigation bar, and then the Audiences link.
  • In the new Google Ads experience, you can follow these steps to check the size of your data segment:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Shared library drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Audience manager.

• For newly created segments and custom combinations, it may take up to 24 hours for a campaign to report impressions.
• If it's been longer than 24 hours:
  • Check that your budget is still active.
  • Check your ad status. Make sure your ads aren't classified as sexual content.