On 9 September Google switched off the old access to its ads interface. If a tool reports your orders to Google Ads, check now whether they still arrive.

What Google switched off on 9 September

Every tool that talks to your ad account used to need a developer token. Google switched that key off on 9 September 2026. The Google Ads API documentation names the date and the replacement: access now hangs on the Google Cloud project a tool signs in from. The three levels Test, Basic and Standard still exist, they are just attached somewhere else.

Google did the migration itself. Whoever sent data through the interface in the 90 days before 9 September had their project receive the old level automatically. The code keeps running unchanged, the old key is simply ignored. For new Basic or Standard applications Google now requires brand verification of the project.

The sentence about the 90 days is the important one. A tool that uploads orders only once a quarter or that paused over the summer had no usage in that window. Then Google transferred nothing and since 9 September the tool signs in from a project that has no access.

The second cut was already in June

For shops and service businesses a second date matters more. Since June 2026 the Google Ads API no longer accepts orders uploaded from a shop system or CRM from new connections, nor leads with customer data for matching. Google describes this in the help article on the changes to enhanced conversions: the route for such uploads is the Data Manager API. Connections that were not active between January and June 2026 receive no grandfathering.

In the same step Google merged enhanced conversions for web and for leads into a single setting. Whoever had already accepted the customer data terms had nothing to do. Whoever never accepted them has not had the setting since.

What that means for you: uploading your orders is no longer a function an agency sets up once and that then runs. It hangs on a Google Cloud project, an access level, an accepted agreement and since June on a different interface than a year ago.

Why you do not notice

Tools that upload orders run in the background. When the upload fails, the tool writes an error into a log nobody reads. The ad account shows no warning. It just shows fewer orders.

And not even immediately. Google Ads assigns an uploaded order to the day of the click, not the day of the upload. We described this after the Shopify cut: the gap smears across the days before the failure and looks like a gently falling trend. For leads from a CRM, which often turn into a deal weeks after the click, the effect is even slower. The impression then is that the campaign brings fewer deals. In fact nobody is reporting the deals any more.

Check in ten minutes whether it hit you

You do not need access to the tool for this. You need your ad account and the orders from your shop or CRM.

1. The list of conversion actions under Goals and then Conversions. Every action has a source. Everything listed there as import or upload comes through the interface. If such an action shows the status “No recent conversions”, nothing has arrived for seven days.
2. Orders per day from the shop or CRM since 1 August, next to the column “Conversions by conversion time” for the imported action. Before 9 September and before June the share should be stable. If it tips on either date, it hit you.
3. The Data Manager under Tools. It lists the connected data sources and when something last arrived. If your agency’s tool does not appear there, it uploads through the old route or not at all.

Then one question to the agency or the tool’s provider, in exactly this form: which Google Cloud project does the tool sign in from, who owns that project and does the upload run through the Data Manager API? Whoever cannot answer those three things in one sentence does not know whether it still runs.

What to do now

If the upload still arrives: then Google transferred the access and you have time. Use it for the question of who owns the project. As with Tag Manager, the access belongs in your Google account, not in an agency’s. Otherwise, when the agency changes, the access to your orders changes with it. And make sure the tool sends something regularly. Google transferred the level based on usage, Google can restrict it again after non-usage.

If the upload has been missing since June or since 9 September: then the tool has to move to the Data Manager API. That is not a setting, that is a migration. Three things belong in it from the start: the order number as identifier, so Google does not count twice when the same order is also reported from the browser. The amount with currency, so Google Ads optimises on revenue and not on count. And the answer of your cookie banner, because the Data Manager API requires with every order the statement whether the customer agreed to the use of their data for advertising.

The orders that were not reported since the failure do not arrive after the fact. Google Ads accepts uploads only for clicks that are not too far back and your tool usually no longer has the click identifier for the old orders. More important is what happens from now on: every day without a report is a day on which Google distributes your budget by numbers that do not exist.

What you can do now

• Go through the conversion actions with source import or upload and check the status. It takes two minutes.
• Put the orders from the shop or CRM since 1 August next to the column “Conversions by conversion time” and watch the two dates.
• Ask the agency the three questions: which project, who owns it, which interface.
• If you do not know which tool uploads at all and whether it still arrives: the tracking check takes apart every route by which an order or lead reaches the ad account, from the browser to the upload. Within two working days you get a report that says what is missing and what it costs to fix.