Google analytics vs Adwords conversions - google-analytics

I wonder if you can help.
We have an ecommerce site. We integrate with both PayPal and WorldPay for our payments, and have added both secure.worldpay.com and paypal.com into the list of referral exclusions in Analytics. We have also added Adwords conversion tracking to the receipt page of our checkout process.
The problem we are experiencing is that the conversions being shown in adwords, is not the same as what Analytics is telling us. If I take this Monday for example. We had 14 orders. Adwords tells us it converted 13 of those orders, yet Analytics attributes 7 to CPC and 7 to organic.
We find ourselves in this really awkward position where we dont know which Google product to trust! Do we spend more on adwords believing that it converts almost all of our orders, or do we spend less considering it only accounts for 50% of the conversions!
We have one final weird issue, whereby every so often the ecommerce data will not be sent to Analytics. Is there anyway of getting ecommerce tracking data back from the call to check if there was an error?
Many thanks in advance
dotdev

Google Adwords and Google Analytics measure conversions in different ways.
Google Adwords tracks clicks on ads, and when coupled to Google Analytics attributes conversions in a 30-day window to the ad (default setting). Read as: if someone makes a purchase within 30 days after clicking on an ad, it's because they have seen the ad.
Google Analytics mostly attributes conversions using last-click attribution, which means that the medium/source of the last click is given to the conversion.
If a user clicks on an ad for great headphones and ends up on a product detail page of headphones on website X. Then decides to leave website X to compare the headphones with offerings of other vendors: website Y and Z. Finally the user decides to return to the first website X by typing in "headphones website x" in a popular search engine (not clicking any ads).
Google Adwords will contribute the conversion to it's doing ("See that user clicked my ad and bought headphones within 30 days"). However Google Analytics will attribute that conversion to the organic channel ("That user that bought those headphones, the last time I saw him he came from a search engine, that's organic").
Another difference between Google Adwords and Google Analytics is that Adwords dates it's conversion on the time of the click on the ad, Google Analytics dates it's conversion on the date it takes place. So if the ad is clicked on Wednesday and the conversion takes place on friday, Adwords will date the conversion on wednesday and Google Analytics will date the conversion on Thursday.
See this article: Why do conversions reported by AdWords, Google Analytics, Digital Analytics, and Floodlight not match? https://support.google.com/ds/answer/2791195?hl=en

Related

Google analytics MCF reports

need help in explanation of reports in UA or maybe our analytics is broken , for example Top conversion paths in MCF reports.
The model of our customer journey is this : first important conversion is sign up then the second main important is transaction. In most cases (75%) transactions are made within first day after user sign ups.
We have our goals established such as Ecommerce transactions and sign ups on the website. So in top conversions path reports when I choose transactions as selected goal I see mostly top paths that contain only Direct traffic but not paths including just like Paid search or Paid search -> Direct. As there is huge amount of users who come from the paid traffic, they sign up and then make purchase.
The question - why are they attributed so much to Direct traffic, and why paid traffic are not counted in the conversion paths reports like here on screenshot. Just example of user behaviour:
User from paid traffic sign ups and goes away, and then makes first purchase in 6 hours entering the site from direct.
So what conversion path follows this example - paid search->direct? Assuming standard non-direct attribution model of UA and touchpoint of sign up from paid search should not it be only paid search?
Appreciate any help to understand this problem.
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MISMATCH GA4 / GOOGLE ADS

During the phase of tracking we recognised a mismatch related to some data between GA4 and Google ADS. To be more clear the problem is related to the number of conversions recorded in GA4 and Google ADS because for the same event we have two different values and it's clearly wrong. Can someone help me to fix this ?
Google Ads only reports on conversions it was involved in, and it reports them on the date the user clicked on the ad and not the date the conversion happened.
Google Analytics attributes conversions on a last-click basis. So even if Google Ads was involved in a conversion, it might attribute it to a different source that was involved later.

GA measurement protocol tracks event but not enhanced ecommerce purchase

I am currently successfully tracking purchases from website using enhanced ecommerce (via GTM).
I have Goals configured that correctly track these in real time. E.g. event goal for Category = Enhanced Ecommerce and Action = transaction.
However, when I try to track purchases using the measurement-protocol I get the event for the enhanced ecommerce, but I can find nothing in conversion (under the goals or otherwise) about the purchase. I am using the hit-builder.
I have configured various goals and tried many different variations. In my last attempt I created a goal which should match if the label is equal to "serverevent".
Then I sent this:
v=1&t=event&tid=MY_TID&cid=5ca7c46d-a46a-4e0b-a395-b4d1bb228fee&ti=T123415789&ta=test&tr=150&pa=purchase&pr1id=P123459&pr1nm=GiftCard_150&pr1ca=test&cu=EUR&iq=1&ec=Ecommerce&ea=Activation&ni=1&pr1qt=1&el=serverevent
In GA I can see the event coming in with event category "Ecommerce", action "Activation" and label "serverevent", but I see nothing in conversions and the goal still has 0 hits.
I have used POSTMAN to post to https://www.google-analytics.com/debug/collect, and I get back "valid" and "Found 1 hit in the request."
I don't know what else I can try. To be clear I am trying to track server side purchases because these are sales by third parties through our API.
The google analytics standard reports take time to process Google stats it can take between 24 -48 hours for the data to complete processing.
You can see if your hits are being recorded by checking the real time api. As for the standard reports your going to have to wait between 24 - 48 hours to see if the results have completed processing.

Google AdWords Conversions not matching database entries

I've just set up a tool on a client site that users can use to request a quote from our client. To do this the user lands on a form page, fills in their details, submits and then lands on a thank-you page. Pretty basic.
I set this process up as a goal in Google Analytics, using the destination type goal: "begins with /thank-you" and shared that goal as a conversion in Google AdWords.
I decided to run a few Google AdWords ads to promote the tool. I also wanted to double-check the conversion data that AdWords gives you so I set the destination URL in Adwords to www.example.com/form-page?adsrc=adwords1 (2, 3, 4 etc. for each ad) and I configured the DB so that there was a column that tracked which URL the user was on when filling in the form (this would be the column I counted to get the number of conversions that came from AdWords so I could compare)
Further to this, I made sure that the initial URL parameters that the user landed on were stored in the session so that if the user browsed to other pages and came back to fill in the form later, it would still attribute the conversion to AdWords.
I tested this thoroughly on a staging and production environment and everything was working correctly.
I ran the campaign for a week and when I checked, the conversion results in the Data Base vs the ones coming from AdWords are wildly different. The DB tells me I've had 5 conversions while AdWords gives me 21.
Is there anything in the way Google uses its gclid that may be causing this issue? Or is there a problem with the way I've set up the measurement structure?
This can be caused by few things, but I think this is the GA/AdWords issue, more than your DB/session set-up.
Gclid shouldn't influence your goal, since it is used only for AdWords/Analytics interactions, Goals should not be affected in your set-up.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2938246?hl=en
Probable cause: If your goal set-up only contains "begins with /thank-you", isn't it possible, that you are counting all the sessions which reach thanks-you page? Not just AdWords?
Solution: if you need to count conversions in AdWords (for performance improvements), use AdWords conversion code at the same page, this counts only those users, who clicks an ad and reach your thank-you page in x (default 30) days. Be sure to count only unique conversions (users by cookie).
Differences between GA/AdWords conversion count:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2679221?hl=en
Google attributes conversions to the last marketing channel, where direct visits do not count as a marketing channel (if you look at their attribution flow visualization you see that the penultimate step is to check for existing campaign information for the user). So GA might overcount Adwords visits (or other campaigns) and conversely shows fewer conversions for direct visits.
On contrast your database probably records the last traffic channel without an elaborate attribution model, so it will show less campaign traffic.
Also IIRC the adwords interface records the conversion for the time of the ad click, not the actual goal conversion, so the timeframes for the conversions differ.

Cost data from Adwords to Analytics in multicurrency is not correct

I have come across quite a peculiar issue. In one of my Google Analytics accounts, I have it linked together with two different Adwords account. All good so far.
The issue is that one of the Adwords accounts is in dollars (which cannot be changed), and the other one in my local currency. Looking at my Google Analytics reports, I am currently seeing the Adwords cost as my local currency for both, which is totally wrong.
Let me give an example:
$1 is, let's say, roughly worth 10 in my local currency.
So, given that I spend $150 in my Adwords account, it would show up as 150SEK in my GA-reports (SEK being my local currency). It should in fact be 1500 since the Adwords spend is in dollars, and there is no conversion done between the two systems with a mismatching currency.
Does anyone know how I can see the correct spend inside my Google Analytics account, seeing as the two Adwords accounts are using different currencies; SEK and dollars?
As far as I know, it imports the value only and will show the currency selected in Analytics. The 150 comes from AdWords, SEK is the currency in Analytics, so it'd show 150SEK.
Not many references in other help forums (I was trying to find some discussion that would help confirm my guess :) but I found this little snippet which mentions that the currency and timezone must match.
GA supports multi-currency however it is only for e-commerce metrics. You could upload data using the Cost Data Upload but "This feature is intended for non-Google paid campaigns. To import Google AdWords data, link your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts." All in all you cannot have cost data for two currencies in one view, however you could link the one account to a separate view (with the correct currency setting)

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