AdWords Data Different From Analytics Data?

If you've ever wondered why the figures in your adwords account dont match those in your Google analytics account. Here's Why...

AdWords Data
AdWords provides information relating only to your PPC account. Traffic generated from other sources are not reported upon by AdWords. AdWords reporting is not real time but click data (such as clicks, impressions etc) are typically updated within 3 hours. Conversion tracking is typically updated within 24 hours.

The key stats that can be gained from AdWords include clicks, impressions, average CPC, Click through Rate, costs, conversions and quality score.

The only data that AdWords collects relate to the ads as they appear on Google and Conversions as they appear on your site.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) tracks all traffic sources to your site and not just PPC Traffic. Although GA is published by Google it can be used completely independently of the adwords system.

Analytics appears to update less frequently than AdWords and conversion data typically tends to take 24 hours to be updated.

Analytics Limitations
Whilst Google Analytics is now a very comprehensive application it does have its limitations. These limitations are common to most if not all “Page Tag” based analytics applications.

Some of the more common reasons for Analytics inaccuracy include:

JavaScript Errors
Javascript coding issues and errors can effectively stop a web page from fully loading and therefore stop effective page tracking.

Firewalls
Corporate and aggressive firewalls can prevent page tracking solutions from accurately collecting data.

Cookies
Users and firewalls can reject or delete cookies thus causing inaccurate tracking.

Computer sharing
Much of analytics data is based on cookies. Where users share computers, this can result in inaccurate data.

E-Commerce Gateways
e-Commerce gateways are notoriously difficult to track. Passing data from one domain to another is a complex process and makes tracking very difficult.

Dynamic Page Generation
Many sites use the same page to handle different functions and this can cause tracking difficulties.


How They Differ
Because AdWords is a commercial application where users are being incurring significant costs, it’s accuracy in terms of tracking clicks has to be flawless. In our experience AdWords data is extremely reliable. Because GA has to track traffic from many different sources and is far more reliant on the site owners ensuring tracking codes are implemented correctly, its data tends to be less accurate.

Additionally, Google AdWords filters certain types of clicks from the data. Clicks that it deems to be fraudulent are not shown in the AdWords stats.