After an agency manager or advertiser manager creates a search engine account, any Search Ads 360 user with edit permissions can synchronize (sync) the account. Syncing imports the campaigns that have already been created in the engine.
You'll need to sync each engine account that you create. Syncing is also used if you make changes directly on the engine and need those changes to be reflected in Search Ads 360.
Prepare for your first sync
- Check the current status of the campaigns, ad groups, and other items in your engine account. Search Ads 360 will only import active or paused items.
- Remove any unwanted campaigns, ad groups, or other items in the engine account.
- Make sure the time zone and currency settings are correct. After the first sync, any time zone or currency changes you make in the engine will be ignored by Search Ads 360.
- In Microsoft Advertising, Yahoo! Japan, and other types of engine accounts other than Google Ads, ensure that each keyword has a landing page URL. Landing page URLs for individual keywords are optional for Google Ads accounts, but required in all other types of engine accounts.
Prepare URL templates
In engine accounts that support shared templates, you don't need to remove tracking templates in the engine before you sync with Search Ads 360, nor do you need to manually copy tracking templates into Search Ads 360. Existing engine templates will be retained and mapped into Search Ads 360 URL templates automatically.
After the first sync
After your first sync, any changes you make to your URL templates in Search Ads 360 will be automatically copied into the corresponding tracking template in the engine. If instead you make changes to the tracking template in the engine, the changes will be copied to the corresponding Search Ads 360 URL template when you sync the account with Search Ads 360.
Best practice: schedule a sync
To make sure you don't forget to sync changes into Search Ads 360, follow this best practice:
- Run your first sync and fix all trafficking errors, as described below.
- After you've cleaned up trafficking errors and can manually sync without additional errors, schedule a sync to run automatically on a regular basis, such as nightly.
Sync an account
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Navigate to the engine account you want to sync.
Steps for navigating to an engine account-
In the left navigation panel, click All accounts.
What if the left navigation pane isn't visible? -
Click the navigation bar to display navigation options.
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In the "Agency" list, click on the agency that contains the advertiser. You can search for an agency by name or scroll through the list.
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In the "Advertiser" list, click on the advertiser that contains the engine account.
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In the "Account" list, click on the engine account.
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Click Apply or press the Enter key.
Search Ads 360 displays the engine account page.
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Click the Campaigns, Ad groups, Keywords, or Ads tab.
Depending on the type of engine account, you can start the sync from some of the other tabs as well. The specific tab that you navigate to doesn't matter: sync applies to the entire engine account regardless of which Search Ads 360 tab you start the sync from. -
In the toolbar above the reporting table, click the sync from engine icon
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Don't see the sync from engine icon
The sync properties appear.
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If you want Search Ads 360 to remove any existing trafficking errors for the campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords in this engine account, select the check box next to Fix all trafficking errors.
If you leave the check box deselected, you'll still be able to fix the errors after the sync, perhaps through upload. -
Click Start sync.
When the Sync status disappears, the sync is complete. - Click the Last sync details button to see:
- When the sync occurred.
- Number of objects (campaigns, groups, ads, and keywords) on the engine at the time of the sync.
- Number of objects that were changed in Search Ads 360.
- Number of errors during the sync.
- A link to download additional sync details, which includes:
- The name of the campaign, ad group, ad, or keyword that was modified.
- How the object was modified: added, updated, removed, or trafficked.
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:
- Generates a clickserver URL for each item.
- 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.
Additional custom parameters created in parallel tracking accounts
When you run the first sync for a Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising account, Search Ads 360 creates custom parameters for Search Ads 360 macros and traffics the custom parameters to the engine. Search Ads 360 macros are not available in Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising accounts. Instead, use the custom parameters Search Ads 360 created.
The new custom parameters may place your account under review.
Please keep the following in mind
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You can sync active and paused accounts. (Although you are limited to manual syncs for paused accounts.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Depending on the engine, sync attempts to import data from the past 60 days, 1 year, or 2 years.
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Closing the browser window won't affect the sync.
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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.
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You can't select specific parts of the engine account to sync.
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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.
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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.
In addition:
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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.