Prepare to migrate your business data

Best practices before migration to custom dimensions in the new Search Ads 360

As part of your upgrade to the new Search Ads 360 experience, your business data will automatically copy and sync to a similar feature called custom dimensions.

This guide is designed to help you prepare for your upgrade to the new Search Ads 360 and includes recommended best practices to facilitate the automated migration of your business data to custom dimensions in the new Search Ads 360. Unresolved errors in the migration of business data will also prevent the migration of templates that reference the business data. The recommendations are intended to help prevent possible errors and are optional. The migrations will happen whether or not you complete the following actions.  

Limitations

Before you begin, be aware of the following:

  • In some cases, it might not be possible to automatically copy and sync business data between the previous and new Search Ads 360. Some settings and content may need to be manually re-created, or they won't be supported in the new Search Ads 360.
  • These actions represent sample scenarios. Other errors may occur even after completing the recommended actions.

Recommended actions to optimize automatic migration of business data

1. Remove columns from business data tables that reference other business data tables

Remove columns from business data tables that reference other business data tables, as custom dimensions in the new Search Ads 360 don’t support linking multiple tables. Instead, directly associate the desired values from the referenced tables to your campaign entities.

2. Remove business event columns

Business events won't be available in the new Search Ads 360. Remove business event columns from business data tables. As an alternative, consider seasonality events.

3. Review column and column name limits

Make sure your business data columns are ready for migration:

  • Shorten the length of column names to fit within 100 characters, which is the maximum allowed in the new Search Ads 360.
  • Remove columns from business data tables that have more than 100 columns, which is the maximum allowed for custom dimension tables in the new Search Ads 360.  
  • Update business data column names to avoid duplicates. 

4. Review rules and templates with dependencies

If you use automated rules, ad builder templates, and feed-driven business data templates with dependencies on business data, you should review them. References to any business data that can't be migrated will also prevent the migration of those rules and templates.

5. Transition account-level associations to the campaign level

Although the previous Search Ads 360 allows you to apply business data to engine accounts, these account-level associations won't be migrated to the new Search Ads 360. Instead, directly associate business data values to the campaigns that they're part of.

6. Explore custom dimension features in the new Search Ads 360

Learn about custom dimensions in the new Search Ads 360, and check the Experience hub in the new Search Ads 360 for future updates.

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