When bulk uploading a sitelinks file, rows may fail with the following error message:
This will most likely be found with a Google 'create sitelinks' file which contains duplicate sitelinks. A duplicate sitelink contains identical link text as another sitelink, even if it's linked to a different campaign or ad group.
The issue is that a Google sitelink belongs to the feed in that account, rather than belonging to the campaign itself. Creating two identical sitelinks in the feed will mean that Google is unable to determine which version of the sitelink should be linked to each campaign.
Google Ads Editor prevents two sitelinks with duplicate Link Text from being uploaded, but the platform is able to treat sitelinks with identical Link Text differently -- as long as they are not exact duplicates. This has resulted in in a couple of possible workarounds which you can use to avoid problems.
If there are no duplicates in your upload file, be sure that you post any Held or To be sent jobs in the Activity Log to the publisher (by clicking Post Now in the Activity Log). If there are still duplicates found, there are two workarounds you can choose from, as follows:
If the same sitelink is being used for multiple Campaigns, rather than creating duplicates, create one version and share it with the other campaigns:
Note:
If you do not want the sitelink to be shared, you can ensure that each row in the bulk file is different (ignoring the Campaign column, as explained above), so that there are no duplicates.
For example, if your bulk file currently only contains the mandatory columns: Account, Campaign, Link Text and Destination URL, you can:
Note that there is no change to what's created using the above, it simply means that that you have specified the default rather than the platform adding it. Each bulk row is not identical, so each sitelink can be distinguished from the others.
Alternately, you can amend the URL so that it is different, but still sends visitors to the same landing page. To do this:
http://www.example.com/Offers , you would amend it to: http://www.example.com/Offers?cmp=googleCampaign123Note: URLs should not contain any spaces and it is best to remove any other special characters that were in the campaign name from the URL. You should check that the amended URL still sends visitors to the correct landing page before uploading.
Here is a sample of a bulksheet with previously duplicated sitelinks that are now different enough to not trigger the error message:
|
Account |
Campaign |
Link Text |
Destination URL |
Device Preference |
Start Date |
|
|
Campaign 1 |
Dupe text |
|
|
|
|
|
Campaign 2 |
Dupe text |
All |
|
|
|
|
Campaign 3 |
Dupe text |
|
2013-11-13 |
|
|
|
Campaign 4 |
Dupe text |
All |
2013-11-13 |
|
|
|
Campaign 5 |
Dupe text |
|
|
|
|
|
Campaign 6 |
Dupe text |
|
|
|
|
|
Campaign 7 |
Dupe text |
|
|