Troubleshoot Google Ads | ClickFortify Help Center

The most common Google-Ads-side problems after onboarding and how to fix each one.

If your Google Ads side of the setup isn't behaving — empty dashboards, "Sync required" badges, missing accounts, sync errors — start with the symptom that matches yours below.

"I don't see my ad account in the list"

The Google login you used in onboarding doesn't have access to the ad account.

In Google Ads, confirm the account exists and that you have admin or standard access. If you don't, an existing admin needs to grant it.

If access is in place, go to Space Settings → PPC Accounts and click Add account. The wizard re-runs the connection flow and includes the newly-accessible account.

If the account still doesn't appear, sign out of all Google accounts in your browser, sign back in with the one that owns the ad account, and retry.

"I connected the wrong ad account"

Easy fix: connect the right one and remove the wrong one.

Space Settings → PPC Accounts → Add account. Run the OAuth flow again and pick the correct account.

Find the wrong account in the list, click Configure, and remove it from the modal (or contact support if removal is blocked by an active subscription).

"Sync required" badge

ClickFortify couldn't write the tracking template into your Google Ads account during onboarding — usually because the connection has limited permissions, or because the account already has a tracking template that wasn't auto-overridable.

Click the Sync required badge (or Configure) on the account.

In the configuration modal, follow the prompts to sync. If you have an existing tracking template, see Tracking template override for how to merge ClickFortify's parameters with what's already there.

Account status shows "Inactive" or an error state

The per-account toggle is off, or the OAuth token has expired and Google revoked ClickFortify's access.

Try the toggle first. Switch the row-level toggle in PPC Accounts off and back on.

If that doesn't help, re-authorize. Click Configure → look for the re-authorize action → complete the Google sign-in popup. The status should return to Active within a few seconds.

Still failing? The ad account may be suspended on Google's side. Open Google Ads directly — if you see a suspension banner there, ClickFortify can't connect until it's resolved with Google.

"The dashboard shows zero clicks despite real ad traffic"

Three usual causes:

Tracking pixel not installed or not firing. Check this first — see Auto-detection and troubleshooting.
Wrong ad account connected. Customer ID in PPC Accounts doesn't match the account that's actually running the ads.
Tracking template never synced. A Sync required badge would be showing in PPC Accounts.

Fix the matching issue from the section above, give it ~15 minutes for Google's data to flow, then refresh the dashboard.

"Audience-based exclusion isn't working"

Audience-based exclusion requires both the Set custom audience toggle (chosen during onboarding step 3) and a working Google Ads connection. If audiences aren't being populated:

Confirm Set custom audience was enabled on the account in Space Settings → PPC Accounts → Configure.
Audience sync runs on a schedule, not in real time — expect a delay of an hour or more before new flagged users show up in your audience asset.
Check the audience asset directly in Google Ads under Audience Manager to confirm it exists. If it doesn't, the audience was never created and you should re-run the configuration.

When to contact support

If a connection problem persists after re-authorizing and an hour of waiting, send a support email from the Help menu in the dashboard. Include the customer ID of the affected account — that's enough for support to pull the connection logs and tell you exactly where sync is failing.

What happens next

Back to First Week overview