If your conversion with cart data diagnostic status shows discrepancies or errors, you can refer to the alerts shown in the conversions with cart data diagnostics tool to fix them.
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Types of alerts
Alerts provide more detailed information about specific issues with your conversions with cart data setup. Alerts are classified into 3 categories based on severity:
- Red issues: Critical errors that require immediate attention
- Yellow issues: Errors that require your attention
- Blue opportunities: Areas where you can make improvements to your conversions with cart data setup
Troubleshoot issues with conversions with cart data setup
Here’s how you can troubleshoot and fix various issues with your conversions with cart data setup:
Cart data reporting stopped
This error means that some Floodlight conversion actions that used to send cart data are no longer sending any cart data parameters. This indicates that cart data parameters were fully removed for the given Floodlight conversion action.
To fix this, you can:
- Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly. To do this, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as your website or different versions of your app, to check if the parameters are passed correctly.
- After you’ve confirmed that a Floodlight conversion action is not passing any cart data parameters, implement them in your checkout flows.
Recent conversions don’t have cart data
This error means that some of your conversion events aren’t passing any cart data parameters, not even the items[] array parameter.
To fix this, you can:
- Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly. To do this, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as your website or different versions of your app, to check if the parameters are passed correctly.
- After you’ve confirmed that conversion events aren’t passing cart data parameters, implement them in your checkout flows.
Recent conversions had empty carts
This error means that your conversion events are passing the items[] parameter, but the items array is empty, not containing any item ID, price, or quantity parameters.
To fix this, you can:
- Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly, specifically that the items array parameter is not empty. To do this, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as your website or different versions of your app, to check if the items array includes the expected values (item_id, price, quantity) for every sold product.
- If your conversions are not passing those parameters, implement them in your checkout flows.
Recent conversions have cart data with formatting issues
This error means that you’ve set up cart data parameters, but some parameters are missing, or they have an incorrect format.
To fix this, you can:
- Verify that the cart data parameters are implemented correctly. Parameter issues include:
- Item ID missing: Ensure you’re sending an Item ID parameter for every product you sold.
- Item price incorrectly formatted or missing: Ensure you’re sending a single unit price for every item. Make sure the price is a valid number, for example, 12.50.
- Item quantity incorrectly formatted or missing: Ensure that the item quantity is valid for each product sold in the transaction, for example, 1.
- Discount incorrectly formatted: Ensure the discount value you’re sending is a positive number. The positive number will be subtracted from the cart’s revenue. Negative numbers, percentage values, or coupon codes will not be processed.
- After you’ve fixed the parameter issues, complete multiple test orders, ideally through different checkout flows, such as your website or different versions of your app, to verify that the parameter issues are resolved.
Recent conversions have sold item IDs that can't be matched to Merchant Center
This error means that the value being passed in the items.item_id or items.id parameter can’t be found in your Google Merchant Center. This could be because the items.item_id or items.id parameter being passed is incorrect, or because the sold product is not part of your Google Merchant Center, or your Search Ads 360 account is not linked to your Google Merchant Center account.
To fix this, you can:
- Download the list of item IDs flagged in the alert. These are the most recent item IDs that weren’t found in your Google Merchant Center account linked to the Search Ads 360 account.
- Check whether these specific item IDs are listed in your Google Merchant Center.
- Typically, the items exist in your Google Merchant Center, but the value being passed in the transaction with items.item_id or items.id parameter is different from the id attribute in your Google Merchant Center.
- If this is the case, change the value that’s being passed in the transaction as items.item_id or items.id to match the value in Google Merchant Center.
- Don’t change the id attribute value in Google Merchant Center to match what’s being passed in the transaction. The value passed in Google Merchant Center is used to track the product's performance history in Google Merchant Center and Search Ads 360. If you change the ID, you'll overwrite your product and its history.
- If these item IDs have not been added to your Google Merchant Center, consider adding these products to your Merchant Center.
- Recommendation: As a best practice, try to include every item sold on your website in your Google Merchant Center, even if you’re not actively targeting these items in your ad campaigns. Use the excluded_destination attribute to exclude items in your data source from showing for Shopping ads or free listings.
- If these item IDs exist in a Google Merchant Center account that’s currently not linked to your Search Ads 360 account, link them.
- Typically, the items exist in your Google Merchant Center, but the value being passed in the transaction with items.item_id or items.id parameter is different from the id attribute in your Google Merchant Center.
Cost of goods sold is not available for all products sold in recent conversions
This error means that some conversions reported products which may not have or reflect their cost of goods sold in your Google Merchant Center.
To fix this, you can:
- Download the products flagged in the alert. These are the most recent products that were found to not have their cost of goods sold in your Google Merchant Center.
- Review your Google Merchant Center account for the products flagged and check if the cost of goods sold attribute is correctly set for these items.