the PPC Book » Google Analytics

Google Analytics vs. Adwords data

Jeff Hudson — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:39:34 +0000

I get this question often so I’m writing an answer that I can just point people to. Here are some possible reasons that your Google Analytics and Google Adwords reporting clicks have a major discrepancy:

Google Analytics reports visits, Google Adwords reports clicks:
These are 2 very different metrics. For example, a user clicks your adwords ad, visits your page, then goes back to their google search results page, doesn’t see anything else they like, and then clicks your ad again. Voila – 2 clicks, 1 visit (session).
A user bookmarks your Adwords referral link:
Again, same scenario, multiple clicks on the URL, but 1 visitor.
Incomplete page load:
Your site could be slow, or the Adwords visitor changes their mind, and before your analytics code renders, the user hits ‘back’ or ‘stop’.

Google also addresses discrepancies between Adwords and other 3rd party tracking solutions:

We’ve found that most discrepancies between web logs or third-party tracking software and AdWords reports occur due to the fact that third-party tracking methods are unable to detect all the clicks that your ads receive. There are several reasons for this:

* Google Network statistics: Google displays ads on a growing network of search and content sites and products. Typically, web tracking software is not able to recognize clicks from Google Network sites as being affiliated with Google. These clicks are generally labeled only with the third-party site name. If your ads are currently, or have ever been, distributed to Google Network sites such as About.com, AOL, Netscape, etc., we recommend using referrer headers and tracking URLs to monitor where your website visits originate.

* Browser limitations: There are limitations to your third-party tracking software’s ability to track website visits with referrer headers. Most recent Internet browsers automatically pass along a referrer header when a user clicks your ad and is brought to your site. This referrer header indicates what site the user came from. For example, if a user sees your ad on a Google search result page, clicks it, and is brought to your site, the referrer header would most likely read ‘http://www.google.com/…’ However, some older versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape do not support this functionality and will not send this information. Also, some proxies and corporate firewalls strip out the referrer headers.

* JavaScript not enabled: If your third-party tracking software uses cookies to record referrer headers, ad clicks that occur in a browser without JavaScript enabled will not be tracked. Your AdWords account, on the other hand, will record clicks that occur in browsers with or without JavaScript enabled.

* Repeat visits: Users may click your ad several times in a relatively short period when, for instance, comparison shopping or conducting research. Your third-party tracking software may not count these repeat visits to your site. As long as the click patterns do not fit a profile of abuse or invalid activity, however, they will be counted in your AdWords account statistics.

* Shared IP address: Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) assign the same IP address to multiple computers. Your AdWords account statistics will reflect multiple clicks that occur from the same IP address, while your third-party tracking software may not.

Google analytics will also differ from other 3rd party tracking solutions.

At the end of the day, all your tracking mechanisms will tell you a different story. My advice is to use a combination of relatively trustworthy solutions and have redundancies in place. Adwords tracking, Google analytics, and then something to act as an antidote to all that Google data – maybe awstats or a paid solution like indextools. Lastly, there are your trusty log files which can be tedious to review but relatively reliable.

Start with PPC and Analytics, and be Patient

Jeff Hudson — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:26:29 +0000

It seems like a simple concept, but you don’t see it discussed much on the SEO forums and blogs all that often. I venture to guess it’s because if people are given a choice – pay now or pay later, most people will choose the latter. Matt McGee at SEL wrote what seemed to be yet another Top 20 list, but while reading I saw 2 excellent points that caught my eye.

1 – Have analytics in place at the start:

It always surprises me how many clients I speak with who don’t have analytics installed or don’t utilize what they have. Look at it this way – the NBA draft is tonight, do you think that the team executives would show up at the draft without any stats about the prospective players? Something tells me they do just a little bit of statistical and game tape analysis before they decide who to draft.

2 – Open up a PPC account

Anyone who asks me about starting SEO, I tell them the same thing. Find out now what your site should be optimized for. Start a paid search campaign. Don’t spend weeks, months, and resources optimizing for something you have no idea whether it will convert. In fact, let’s kill 2 birds with one stone, Google Adwords offers Google Analytics to anyone with an account. They’re both ‘free’. Sign up and take advantage, please!

I absolutely 100% guarantee there is no one in the world who can tell you what your best converting keyword will be before you actually start getting search engine traffic. Be patient, spend a month running a small campaign in paid search, you will learn a lot about your site and your product/service in that time.

Google’s Ace in the Hole

Jeff Hudson — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:37:33 +0000

Google’s new Placement Performance reports are being heralded as a big step towards transparency, and for the most part I agree. What I can’t understand is why they are hiding all the data from the Adsense for Domains program. If you run a placement performance test, you will see in the “URL” column as well as the “DOMAIN” column, the label: Domain ads.

Google says,

“In general, we’ve found that ads on parked domain sites perform as well as or better than ads on content and search sites.”

AHEM..Excuse me while I get up and walk this off…

Actually, as I examine data across many of the campaigns I manage, I think I know why they’re hiding it. Because, in my case, it converts approximately 25% as well. Of course, this is only the campaigns I manage. I would love some feedback from the rest of you. Please run reports where you can and let us know what you find.

Google Analytics Upgrade – Beta

Jeff Hudson — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:08:32 +0000

Here’s a screenshot of the new google analytics look and feel. Right now you have a choice to either view in beta, or view the original:

No detailed analysis of this change just yet. I’m just playing around with it now.

First impressions:

The user interface looks as though it’s designed for someone reading from 30 feet away.

The site usage dashboard information is very useful as it makes the most important stats easily accessible.

Here’s an example of my favorite page so far:

Top Entrance Keywords Per Page << how nice is that?

Hurry, check it out!

Tracking Goals with Google Analytics

Jeff Hudson — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 14:43:09 +0000

Much to my liking Google appears to have ‘opened up’ the Google Analytics registrations for Adwords users. Because I didn’t jump on the bandwagon early, I was shut out of the first wave of free accounts. Now I’ve been able to actually dive in and play around with this really nice analytics package. Say what you will, but this is hands down the best free solution out there, and definitely rivals most of the paid solutions. (beware clicktracks investors;)

In addition to implementing this on my sites, I also have a client who needed an analytics solution badly. I got them set up with a Google Analytics account, had them implement conversion tracking from the adwords account, viola, we’re all set.

This client had recently heeded my advice to create 4 different PPC landing pages themed around their major ad groups. In addition to our compulsary conversion tracking, Google analytics gives you the ability to set up ‘goal tracking’, which is essentially conversion tracking, but with the additional capability, through the analytics program, of tracking organic traffic, or email traffic, or any other source as it relates to the goals you set up.
So, in digging around the somewhat complex google analytics navigation, I got frustrated and google’d for a tutorial, or just some sort of clue how to set this up. Here’s what I found:

To implement goal tracking, follow these steps:

To set up your goals, Enter Goal Information:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and click Analytics Settings.
2. Find the profile for which you will be creating goals, and click Edit.
3. Select one of the 4 goal slots available for that profile and click Edit.
4. Enter the Goal URL. Reaching this page marks a successful conversion. For example, a registration confirmation page, a checkout complete page, or a thank you page.
5. Enter the Goal name as it should appear in your Google Analytics account.
6. Turn the goal On or Off. This selection decides whether Google Analytics should track this conversion goal at this time. Generally, you will want to set the Active Goal selection to On.

For further details on setting up funnel tracking, I suggest you go straight to the source and visit the google analytics support site.

If you get through that and you’re feeling really chirpy, you can take things to the next level and start your A/B split testing. These guys lay things out about as well as you’ll find.