One of the most critical and complicated aspects of using an API is error handling. To help address this, we’ve included detailed information about each type of error in the reference documentation and posted articles discussing general error handling best practices. While these resources are great at helping to determine what the an error is, we’ve heard from you on the forum that they often don’t provide enough context as to why the error occurred and what you can do to prevent it in the future.

With this in mind, we’ve put together a new troubleshooting guide for the most common errors in the AdWords API. Each error includes a brief summary of what went wrong, some common causes, a recommended tip for handling the error when it occurs, and steps you can take to prevent the error from occurring.

We hope that this guide will be your first stop when you get an error you haven’t encountered before. We’ll continue to update it based on community feedback and the errors you run into most often. If after reviewing these resources you still have questions, please post them to the forum.

Best,
- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team