When adding new Microsoft Advertising keywords through the platform, you may encounter the following error message:

What Causes This Issue? 

This error occurs when the new keyword added is similar to an existing keyword. Microsoft Advertising will then consider the two as the same keyword when they have the same match type.

How To Fix The Issue 

There is no real 'fix' for this issue; however, you have a couple of options that could be helpful, including:

1. Edit the keywords in your bulk sheet, then re-upload.
2. Give the keyword an alternate match type in your bulk sheet, then re-upload. 

In either case, it's a good idea to delete the keyword that generated the error in the first place, as it will contain a sync error.

Tip: If you are receiving this error due to a keyword with an apostrophe, you can try removing the apostrophe. For example, instead of a keyword like Dave's Cars, you could try Daves Cars – without the apostrophe.

Useful Information About The Issue 

The detection of 'duplicate' keywords is managed by Microsoft Advertising's normalization policy. In its guidelines, Microsoft Advertising lists a number of different characters that will be ignored in keywords. Therefore, if you have two keywords – one with a special character and one without – a duplicate will be detected.

Here are the characters listed in Microsoft Advertising's normalization policy:

• Quotation mark (")
• Ampersand (&)
• Hyphen (-)
• Asterisk (*)
• Percentage sign (%)
• Parentheses (())
• Brackets ([])
• Curly brackets ({})
• Period (.)
• Comma (,)
• Question mark (?)
• Forward slash (/)
• Back slash (\)
• Colon (:)
• Semicolon (;)
• Exclamation point (!)
• Apostrophe (')
• Angle brackets (<>)
• Plus sign (+)
• Number sign (#)