Google Adwords Clicks v.s. Google Analytics Visits

[JurgenEstanislao]

Hi Guys,

This question has been asked several times before but after doing some research, I haven't really found the right solution and/or explanation.

I'm currently seeing a 30-50% discrepancy in Adwords Clicks and Analytics Visits, where there are more clicks than visits in most situations.

E.g. 74,127 clicks v.s. 46,845 visits (34 add-to-carts, 67 initiated orders, and a revenue of $12,000).

Can anybody in the forum help explain this?

Thank you,

Jurgen

P.S.

I've also looked at all the tracking codes and everything seems to be alright, I've checked if any internal redirects are stripping off parameters but to no avail. Lastly, I'm not sure if this is a behavioral issue here in SEA--will first click (Adwords) and last click attribution (Analytics) be the only explanation?

P.S.S.

I'm seeing the same discrepancies with Facebook ads and Analytics.

[lavellester]

Interesting problem.  Its possible that a user will click your ad multiple times, I'm sure you have already considered this.

What's the level of discrepancies with FB?

[EricaMcGillivray]

Are those visits or unique visits? Where are you getting the visits metric from?

[JurgenEstanislao]

The discrepancies are the same with Facebook surprisingly.

[JurgenEstanislao]

These are just coming from the visits metric from GA.

[Justin_Vanning]

Hey Jurgen, AdWords reports the number of times your ad has been clicked. Analytics visits are not clicks, but unique visitors. If the same person clicks on your ad 11 times within a certain somewhat short period of time, AdWords will show 11 clicks and Analytics will show 1 visit. If you inspect your server logs, you should find a record of the 11 clicks along with the ip address, date and time of the click.

I'm not sure if this results in the large discrepancy you are seeing but it could be responsible for some of it. Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

Justin

[JurgenEstanislao]

Hi Justin,

I appreciate your comments. I understand that this is the case--how Adwords and Analytics logs in data. We're still investigating.

Jurgen

[7decode]

This question is kind of old, but I have been researching because I had the same problem. Turns out GA doens't track visitors with javascript and cookies disabled. This could also account for a part of the non registered visits by GA.

I suggest you check the server logs. You'll probably find the data match there

More resources here:

http://cse-sea.blogspot.com/2009/09/troubleshooting-discrepancies-between.html

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/analytics/cotsK2GNh_w

Hope this helps someone else with the same problem.