Google Ads apologises as automatic migration causes confusion

Google Ads has apologized for causing confusion with a recent account update.

Advertisers were caught off guard when the platform started automatically migrating configurations from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4.

While these changes had been planned following the sunset of UA and notifications were issued, some were taken by surprise as the turndown of UA has taken considerably longer than many expected.

Why we care. Advertisers have been experiencing issues with their accounts following the automatic updates, which may impact their ability to create reports and monitor campaign performance. Those encountering problems have been advised to contact Support or the Google Ads Product Liaison officer on X (formerly known as Twitter).

What is happening? Google is automatically migrating configurations – such as “goals”, “audiences”, etc – from your UA property that have not been marked as complete to your GA4 property. This also includes conversion swapping and audience pairing in linked Google Ads accounts for opted-in properties.

Who is impacted? The update will impact anyone who has not opted out of automatically created GA4 properties.

What if you didn’t opt out in time? If you didn’t opt out in time and don’t want your automatically configured GA4 property, then simply follow these steps:

1. Click on ‘Admin’ in your account.
2. Select your Universal Analytics property.
3. In the “Property” column, click GA4 Setup Assistant.
4. Click on “Disconnect” next to your “Connected property”.
5. Go to your GA4 property and delete it.

You can check for any changes made to your GA4 property by going to the “Change History” section. Automatic migration changes will be marked as “System (Migration)” in the “Changed by” column.

Next steps. GA4 properties made automatically only have basic features. To make the most of your new property, you might need to add extra features that suit your business and measurement requirements.

You can also check and adjust key metrics in your UA property to match those in your new GA4 property as closely as possible.

If you’re an advertiser, you can compare data from UA and Google GA4 in Google Ads in a similar way.

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What has Google said? Google Ads Product Liason Ginny Marvin said:

• “Some advertisers have noticed our system making changes to GA4 conv actions in their Google Ads accounts. This is the conversion swapping piece of the Setup Assistant migration process with the turndown of Universal Analytics.”
• “Ahead of the migration, advertisers that had UA properties linked with their Google Ads accounts were notified of this & the option to opt out of the Setup Assistant configuring certain corresponding conversions and/or audiences in GA4 & applying them in Ads accounts.”
• “With the turndown process taking some time, we understand that some advertisers may be caught off guard with these changes being made now and apologize for the confusion. The updates are aimed at mapping UA conv to GA4 conv settings for bidding & avoid duplicate measurement.”

Deep dive. Read Google’s ‘Automatically Created Google Analytics 4 Properties’ update in full for more information.