Are you running an SEM campaign and enhancing the SEO of your online shop? Then you probably linked your Analytics and Google accounts to get the best out of your campaign. If you still haven’t, you better do it now, since having the two accounts linked, make possible the interaction between the ads and the behavior of the users. More on this in a future post though, because today we want to focus on the difference between the data provided by these two powerful tools (provided that they are already connected).
First of all, the conversion metrics in Google Analytics and Google Adwords are calculated differently, since they are two different tools that measure in two different ways, and we have to analyze the data independently.
Conversion or not?
If I click your ad and eventually buy a product in your online store, Adwords will count it as a conversion. If instead I click your ad but do not buy, and only after a couple of days I go back to your shop through organic search and then finalize the purchase, Adwords will still consider it a conversion. On the other hand, in Analytics it will be recorded as organic search.
Objectives and conversions: The objectives in a Google Analytics campaign are recorded one time each visit. On the other hand in Adwords, if a user clicks the ad, accesses multiple times and eventually reaches the objective, it will be considered as a conversion generated from multiple clicks.
Day and Time
Similarly, Analytics records the conversion the exact moment the customer clink on “buy”, whereas in Adwords, the conversion is registered the moment the user clicks on the ad. If I decide to buy a product at 11:45 pm, yet I only finalize the purchase at 12:05 AM, there will be a one day difference recorded in the data.
Reports
Analytics is well known for delivering data very fast, whereas on Adwords you may have to wait 48 hours before being able to access the real results.
Who is the winner?
Both Adwords and Analytics are wonderful tools for your campaing and your business in general. Each of them delivers useful information and has different ways to record the data. Being able to master the functions of both tools let us obtain more info on different levels, and can help us create a better and more successful strategy for our campaign.
