Okay, from the title you might say 'no kidding', but read on. . . I'm using HBX (websidestory) to track my Adwords campaign, which was just brought in house from a vendor as of yesterday. New campaign, new words, nothing carrying over from the old campaign. My daily reports show Adwords thinks a keyphrase was clicked 79 times. My analytics package, which tracks the Adwords campaigns by tagging those who enter on my unique landing pages as 'respondents' to my campaign, shows that I had only 48 enter my site. Google tells me that it could be people clicking on the ad multiple times, but I don't buy it as my analytics shows me visits instead of uniques. Any ideas on what to do here? Thanks
They will never match exactly and there's really nothing you can do to "fix" that. I've used a number of high end analytics packages (omniture, core metrics, etc) and they never match AdWords (or any PPC engine) exactly. People can block your tracking abilities, multiple clicks on ads, leave before the page (and HBX tags) load, difference in reporting times, etc, etc. I typically just establish the "baseline" difference and build that into my plans.
Thanks for the response, good to know it's a common problem at least. Would you be willing to share your baseline percentage? For example, my analytics is showing only 61% of what Adwords is reporting. Though I suppose the % could be different based on the niche, my major concern is that G is nailing me and the company for extra money. . .
The baseline varies from project to project...best bet is for you to gather 7 - 10 days worth of data and arrive at your own. Keep a close eye on your reports and if you feel the discrpency is too large send detailed info to the AdWords team. I've done this from time to time and have received refunds & credits.
No problem, sorry I couldn't give an answer that actually fixes anything Maybe someone who has extensive experience with HBX will chime in as well. Have you asked HBX if they have any suggestions?
Yeah, I discussed the whole rang of PPC with them during a sales call; basically the option I have is to dump another 10K into a service they offer that allows me to manage multiple PPC campaigns with different companies. I only use Adwords (budgetary constraints), and frankly the user behavior information I get from HBX regarding my campaigns is great even without their additional service. I can't really justify from an ROI perspective dropping more money on analytics at this time. Just an FYI, I rep'd you after your posts. Thanks again.