Troubleshoot customer list issues

Use this guide to help you troubleshoot low match rates and common errors that might come up in your Customer Match integration.

Validate match rate

Ensure that your upload job has completed before attempting to validate your match rate.

Your match rate might be lower than expected for a number of reasons, including:

  • The data was not hashed before it was uploaded.

  • The data was not correctly formatted before it was hashed.

  • You are comparing against match rates in a different system.

  • You are trying to add multiple user identifiers to a single UserIdentifier object. Instead, add multiple UserIdentifiers to a single UserData object as shown in this code example.

It's possible for an advertiser to reach anywhere from 1% to 99% of their list, based on how active their users are on Google Search, Gmail, or YouTube. For a more detailed guide on troubleshooting low match rates, visit the Help Center.

Differences between match rate and list size

Note that list size and match rate reflect different values. Match rate counts all users with a Google account even if they are not actually able to be reached with the Customer Match list. List size counts active users that matched a Google account and are able to be reached by Ads personalization.

Debug common errors

Error
USER_PERMISSION_DENIED You might run into permissions errors if you attempt to modify a list that was created by another account. You can only edit a list that your own account created.
EXTERNAL_UPDATE_ID_ALREADY_EXISTS This error can occur if you attempt to create multiple jobs with the same external_id.
CONFLICTING_OPERATION This error can occur if remove operations are mixed with create operations in a single job.
TOO_MANY_USER_IDENTIFIERS The create operations in a single job contain more than 100,000 user_identifiers in total. Split the request into multiple requests that don't exceed that limit.
CONCURRENT_MODIFICATION This error can occur if you try to operate on the same list at the same time.
RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED This error can occur if you try to send too many requests. You can mitigate this by batching your operations as per the recommended usage flow. You can also refer to the best practices guide for API limits and quotas.

Additional troubleshooting support

If you're still having issues, reach out to us through the Customer Match troubleshooter.