My Adwords account skyrocketed out of nowhere the past few days - it reported 220 clicks on one day alone (my budget is $5/day) which is huge compared to the 5 - 10 clicks we were used to seeing - however my analytics for that day says I got 150 visits that day - only 28 of those were from Google Adwords....am I being hacked? I changed my password and am franticly trying to get it figured out. The budget for my client isn't huge but I feel that somehow there is a disconnect. Thoughts?
I have experienced discrepancies from advertising too but as of yet not through Google Adword. Various factors can cause shortfall, badly placed tracking code on your site, users that browse with Firefox using an extension that can block unauthorized Javascript plus Google Analytics is not 100%. I decreased my short fall by generating custom tracking codes for that particular campaign, there was still a shortfall but it wasn't so big. This can be done in Adword.
Adwords and Analytics don't measure the same thing. Clicks in Adwords is just that, people who clicked your ad. One click does NOT equate to one visitor as reported in Analytics. If someone comes back to your site, by whatever means, it will count as one visitor, even if they visit 100 times. If they happen to click your ads more than once, your clicks and visits through Adwords will not match. If they click within a certain time period, it will be counted as invalid and you will get a refund. There is a report for that. Your Adwords stats however still show the multiple clicks.