AdWords Help

There are a number of reasons why AdWords and Analytics may report different numbers in terms of clicks and referrals:

• Do you think 'clicks' means the same thing as 'visits'?
  Google AdWords tracks clicks, while Google Analytics tracks visits. If a user clicks on your ad twice within thirty minutes without closing his or her browser, this will be registered by Analytics as one visit to your site, even if the user left your site and then returned shortly after. For example, if a user clicks on your ad once, clicks the ‘back’ button, and then clicks your ad again, AdWords will register two clicks while Analytics will register one visit.
  
  Here is a list of common terms that our users confuse with different meanings.


• AdWords filters invalid clicks from your report, while Analytics shows the complete set of traffic data
  AdWords automatically filters certain clicks from your reports, while Analytics will report on the resulting visits to your website. The clicks we filter from your AdWords reports are the occasional instances of someone clicking repeatedly on your ad in order to increase your costs or to increase your clickthrough rate. AdWords considers these clicks to be invalid and will automatically filter them out of your AdWords reports. You are not charged for these potentially invalid clicks.


• Did you turn off auto-tagging for your URLs in your AdWords account?
  If auto-tagging is turned off and the Destination URLs do not contain manually tagged campaign tracking variables, the visit will not be marked as Google CPC (clicks that came through from AdWords ads), but instead may be attributed to Google Organic (clicks from natural search results on Google.com). Please ensure that your AdWords account either has auto-tagging turned on or has campaign tracking variables appended to the end of every destination URL.
  
  To enable auto-tagging again, please follow these instructions:
  
  
  1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com
  2. Click the My account tab and select Account preferences
  3. In the Tracking section, click Edit
  4. Select the Destination URL Auto-tagging checkbox
  5. Click Save changes


• Is the landing page for your ads being tracked?
  If the landing page for your ads is not being tracked, your campaign information will not be passed to Analytics. Please ensure that you are tracking all landing pages for your AdWords ads.


• The visitor may set their browser preferences in a way that Google Analytics can't collect data
  Visitors entering through AdWords may have JavaScript, cookies, or images turned off. If this is the case, Google Analytics won't be able to report these visitors, but they will be reported through AdWords. In order for Google Analytics to record a visit, the visitor must have JavaScript, images, and cookies enabled for your website.


• Is your landing page able to load the code properly?
  Clicks reported on Google AdWords but not on Google Analytics may be the result of obstruction between the Google AdWords click event and the ability to load the tracking code on the landing page. If this is the case, ensure that your web hosting servers are functioning properly, the page is loading for all possible users and IPs, and the tracking code is installed correctly on your web pages.
  
  To check and see that you've installed the Analytics code properly, please read this article.


• Does your landing page redirect to a different page?
  Redirects in landing pages can often obstruct the Google Analytics code from launching and properly identifying the visit as coming from a paid search campaign. For example, if your ad leads to http://www.mydomain.com/index.html, but you've created a 301, 302, or JavaScript redirect from that URL to http://www.mydomain.com/page2.html, the campaign information that was originally appended to the landing page will be lost upon redirection.
  
  To learn how to track redirecting pages, please read this article.