Confused about Adwords

I'm just trying to do a very small-scale promotion, and Google Adwords tells me that over a given period I've had 2,143 clicks. As I understand it, each click should represent a visitor to my website. However, Google Analytics tells me that over the same period my website has had only 854 visitors.

Moreover, the breakdown by location tells me that 397 of those visits have been from China, 32 from Saudi Arabia and 28 from India. Only 16 have been from the United States, 2 from the United Kingdom, 2 from Canada and 1 from Australia. Since the promotion is for a book written in English, it seems very unlikely that any of the hits from China are genuine, and the very small number of hits I'm getting from English-speaking countries makes me feel that the Adwords promotion just isn't delivering for me, especially since I know that some of the hits from countries like the USA and the UK are from people I've sent the URL to via e-mail over this period.

I'm not a marketing expert or a technological wizard, and maybe I'm misinterpreting all over the place, but I really can't make any sense of these figures. I've put the promotion on pause while I try to figure it out, and I'd be very grateful if anyone could give me a bit of guidance.

Thanks,

John

 

You can select the country where to show your ads , so no China visitors etc. Google Analytics depend on many factor. If you will get fraud clicks , your money refund to your account. You can track clicks via goo.gl or kaa.im .

 

Thanks, humtuma. I have now selected certain locations and excluded others. That should help!

However, I still don't understand the big discrepancy between the number of clicks Google Adwords claims there have been on my ad (2,143) and the number of visits Google Analytics says there have been to the website (854). Since not everyone comes to the website via Adwords surely there should be more visitors to the site than clicks on the ad, rather than the other way round?

One more thing; who decides if there have been fraudulent clicks and how do they get identified?

 

There system identifies the fraud clicks and refund your money. As i already said google analytics depend on many factor. For ex- If you are going to advertise in adf.ly or similar website. You will see google analytics will not work properly.

 

Simply put - your analytics and adwords show you 2 different stats. Clicks on ads from the same people would only count as 1 person on your analytics.
If you're seeing Overall visits VS. Unique visits, what's the discrepancy there?
The system automatically discounts some fraudulent clicks. However, your opening of the ad to appear everywhere, leads me to think that you fell victim to some fraud that Google can't auto discount.

Did you open a Search or a Display campaign, or a combo?
If Combo, don't do it. Split your advertising into 2 campaigns, Search and Display, and really read up on both of those. Google's Knowledge base has sufficient info for you to make a distinction.

 

> If you're seeing Overall visits VS. Unique visits, what's the discrepancy there?

I see what you mean, but (assuming that is what I'm seeing) that would mean 2,143 overall clicks registered on Adwords, versus 854 unique clicks registered by Analytics. So - assuming all clicks come from Google Ads (and I know at least *some* don't) - then the average person clicking on my ads clicks not once but between two and three times. Why would they do that?

> Did you open a Search or a Display campaign, or a combo?

It's "Search and Display Networks", which I assume means what you call a combo.

> If Combo, don't do it. Split your advertising into 2 campaigns, Search and Display, and really read up on both of those. Google's Knowledge base has sufficient info for you to make a distinction.

OK, I guess I can try that! Thanks!

 

Just check in the Analytics Visits VS. Unique Visitors, you'll see this option right under the "Overview".

Display network is vastly different from the Search results. You want to analyze them both separately, bid separately.

Essentialy, don't trust Google to do anything helpful to automatically optimize your campaign.

Also, unless you're paying 1¢ a click, you might want to start off on a lower limit for a daily budget.

 

OK, according to Analytics, I've had 727 unique visitors, as against 842 visits overall. I can't see how that squares with 2,143 clicks on Adwords...

 

It doesn't, but at least that's a reasonable discrepancy.
What you should do, is connect your AdWords to your Analytics account, as well.

 

OK; it's hard for me to understand what's "reasonable", though. In my naivety, I assumed that 2,143 clicks on the ads would correspond to 2,143 visits to my website. I still can't quite see why it doesn't!

Anyway, I'll do as you say and connect Adwords to Analytics. I've already limited Adwords to English-speaking audiences, and specifically excluded China and Saudi Arabia. Let's see how things go!

Many thanks, Tom (and humtuma)!

 

Np.

The principle is controlling the campaign, knowing his limits. AdWords is really good at opening your campaigns to anything it can without being overt. Be wary of that, on Display campaign don't run "keywords" based campaigns, try to find placements (i.e. websites) that you can run your ads at. Then add keywords, so not only are you targeting only specific websites, you're also ONLY showing your ads to people interested in those particular keywords.

How to find websites for your keywords? Google it Find the top 10 websites that also have AdSense on them, or Google Display Network ads.

 

O.. Man, sometimes im surfering the same thing, Google charge told me 100clicks of one keywords, but send me only 60visitors...
in that case,i pause ads and 23 hrs late start it again.

 

Hey Jyamamo,

First you should make sure all your campaign settings match your goals.
Make sure you only advertise to the countries you wish to advertise to.

Perhaps what you are experiencing is click fraud.
Most of the times Google will catch the fraud before you do and refund your money for those clicks, but in a case like yours I would contact them and ask for a review.

Let them have a look at your Adwords and Analytics and they might find what's the problem.

 

As I worked on the AdWords Support Team for a couple of years I thought I would offer my thoughts on your descrepancies between AdWords clicks and your Analytics visits. First there will always be descrepancies due to the nature of "clicks" vs. the nature of "visits". To track visits the visitor must have their cookies enabled as well as Java. That being said, the size of the descrepancy you are seeing could be an indication of a problem. I would first test the ads themselves to make sure your page is loading when they are clicked. Second, I would make sure the landing page has Analytics code on it and it is properly placed. If the code is too low on your page there is a chance it is not executing before the visitor from AdWords leaves your site. Another common problem I have seen is people placing Analytics code on a site that already has Analytics code on it. So make sure the code is only there once. While fraudulant clicks do happen, they are not as common as you might think. If you look in your AdWords account, your dimensions tab will show you the geographic locations of people who have clicked on your ads. If you have clicks from a large number of different locations, chances are the clicks are valid. Google has filters in place to prevent fraud and while they are not full proof they are very good.

 

Yes DMC That may be Reasons. but i want to know how to measure Fraud clicks..?

 

The first thing you should check to see "fraud" clicks is your "invalid" clicks. Go to all online campaigns, then click on the campaigns tab, then under columns look for the performance metrics. From there add the column for invalid clicks. This will show you the number of clicks that Google has filtered out of each individual campaign. Make sure you set the date range for the time period you are interested in. If you are seeing a large number of invalid clicks listed that would be a good cause for Google to investigate further. If you are only seeing a small number, you will probably have to access your web logs from your hosting company to compare that data with your AdWords data and your Analytics.

 

Hello,
By checking analytics you can ban the ip where from getting clicks again and again. You may escape from the fraud clicks.

 

At the time Adword is very famous. because with help of adword you can add in your website and with the help of google adword you can search trending keywords are user search.so adword are very helpfull in our website.

 

found same problem !!!

 

DMC is right. Even though you are not satisfied please check with landing pages in your adwords ads and analytics code in LP. I would suggest to use UTM tracking for your adwords account.