AdWords Glitches? Google Says Shopping Campaigns Access Issues Have Been Fixed

Paid search management is demanding enough without platform connectivity issues. Over the past weeks, several AdWords users have taken to Twitter to complain about ongoing issues with what’s come to be known as the “red bar of death”.

The red banner looks like this:

Last week, there was a widespread issue that affected user’s ability to access Shopping Campaigns in AdWords.

@Hoffman8 I can’t access @adwords PLA Ad Groups in Firefox and they are slow to load in Chrome. :( #ppcchat

— James Svoboda (@Realicity) November 13, 2014

Reached for comment this weekend, a Google spokesperson said, “We are aware of an issue that was intermittently affecting some Shopping campaigns, but it has since been resolved.”

Complaints Of More Persistent Issues

The Shopping Campaigns problem came amidst growing frustration among some users who say they’ve been having ongoing connectivity issues for weeks and haven’t received adequate response from Google.

It’s not clear how widespread these problems are, but Google is addressing the complaints on an individual basis and has not acknowledged any specific issue affecting a large number of users as it did with Shopping Campaigns. Meanwhile, some are continuing to see the red bar today.

After repeatedly voicing their frustrations on Twitter via the PPCChat hashtag about connectivity issues, two users blogged about their experiences on Friday.

Melissa Mackay, Search Supervisor at creative agency, Gyro, received a response on Twitter from the AdWords social support team after several tweets and one that asked, “Why the silence on this issue?”

The team sent her a private link to fill out an error report through Twitter. As Mackay wrote on her blog, Google said because these reports are handled on an individual basis, the link couldn’t be shared with others. When she asked if there was a link she could pass along to others having similar issues, Google sent her to the generic to the AdWords support page.

Frustrations & Financial Consequences

Julie Bacchini, Founder and President of digital agency, Neptune Moon LLC, says she, too, said she has experienced “seemingly constant malfunctioning of the AdWords interface” that can have real financial ramifications for her clients. She wrote on her blog:

“When I can’t adjust a bid to make sure my mobile heavy client remains in the 1st or 2nd position, they are losing exposure and therefore losing business. There is nothing theoretical about that.”

Complaints about Google customer support are nothing new, of course. And a responsive social team can only carry a matter so far. But users that are experiencing ongoing system failures say they feel like these issues aren’t being addressed with enough urgency:

“They clearly seem to feel like ‘Thanks for letting us know and rest assured we’re working on it’ is an acceptable status for days or weeks on end. It is not,” writes Bacchini.

Because she can’t always access her AdWords accounts, “Changes are not saved. Bids are not modified. Negative keywords are not added. Keywords are not added, paused or unpaused. Research into account performance is not able to happen. The list goes on,” she adds.

To be clear, it’s not clear how many are having these persistent issues. But having even a handful of users not be able to successfully access and manage their clients’ accounts — particularly during the holiday season — is a problem that gets compounded when those users don’t feel that their concerns are being addressed aggressively.