Discrepancy beween Google Analytics and Adword Data

Question

We are facing an issue with data discrepancy between what is reported by adwords and analytics console of google. Wanted to check if someone else has faced a similar issue and what could be potential reasons.

a. Google adwords shows us 1000 interactions / clicks on our ads and they are charging for that.

b. However if we go to google adword, we see in our acquisition tab only 600 sessions have come from adword/google cpc

What could be the reason for the 40 pct difference between analytics and adwords ? Some folks say that ppl might drop off after clicking and before the page load and hence the discrepancy. However that could be around 10-15% according to google. What could be other potential reasons for this discrepancy ?

Please Help

Answer 1

Clicks and Sessions are two different metrics with two different behaviour. For example, if the user clicks twice the ads by error and closes one the pages before Google Analytics launch the hit, you will get two clicks and one session. Cases like this are a lot.

Related the gap, the discrepancy will vary page by page (domain by domain), because it includes a lot of factors.

The best solution is link your AdWords to Google Analytics and see the average GAP, compare your gobal gap versus a single campaign.

If you want more information https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034383?hl=en

Answer 2

Redirects on your final URL's can cause this. Make sure you do not have any 301, 302 redirects on your final URL pages. When you redirect a user the analytics tag doesn't have a chance to fire and capture the gclid, thus Adwords will report the click but Analytics won't report the session. When the user lands on the redirected page the anlaytics tag fires but the gclid parameter is already stripped and thus the click is not attriburted to Adwords.

If you have multiple views in Analytics make sure you have the correct view linked to Adwords.

The "display features" issue Eike mentioned above might be something to consider although I've never heard of it.