MSN Adcenter

A lot of times our clients ask us: Why Google Adwords Numbers are not the same with Google Analytics? actually there are a few reasons on why this is happening. Although Google Adwords and Google Analytics are both run by Google and share a very similar interfaces most of the times the figures are not the same.

Tracking URLs  are not set up correctly or the account is not linked with the correct Adwords account. Make sure that you Adwords account is linked with Google Adwords. If you are tracking Yahoo or MSN make sure that all URLs are tagged correctly.

Slow page loads times. The best place for the Google Analytics tag to be on is near the </Body> tag.  If you landing pages are slow to load there is a chance that the user will navigate away.

Clicks vs Visits. Remember that Google Adwords reports measure clicks and Google Analytics visitors.

Invalid clicks. Google Adwords monitors invalid/fraudulent clicks and adjusts their stats immediately. Google Analytics doesn’t get access to this data and as a result they keep reporting.

Keyword matching. Users visit your site by clicking different match types.

Google Adwords delay. In Google Adwords you can see the data updated almost hourly or in some case less than that where Google Analytics imports Adwords data once a day.

The above are the most common issues that we have identified causing the issue with Google Analytics PPC data.

Some interesting links from the past week.

1) Hitwise UK reports that Times Online see an decrease in traffic following the launch of the new website and paywall. Major competitors (Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Daily Mail and BBC News) gain market share.

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2010/06/times_paywall_initial_data_and.html

2) Google Acquires ITA travel software.

http://www.tnooz.com/2010/07/01/news/google-ita-software-deal-the-travel-ecosystem-as-google-now-sees-it/

3) How we see Facebook?  Another eye-tracking test to see what Irish people pay attention to when using Facebook.

http://mulley.ie/research/MulleyFacebookStudy.pdf

4) More questions and answers ab0ut the search alliance.

http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2010/07/01/more-questions-and-answers-about-the-search-alliance/

5) Google News’s Makeover

http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/extra-extra-google-news-redesigned-to.html