PPC sessions being counted as organic in GA
-
I am coming across a very frustrating phenomenon in one of my PPC campaign reporting.
In short: I believe that GA is counting some of my PPC sessions as organic (not provided). Has anybody come across this before?
I believe they are being counted as organic because of the following:
-
the website is brand new and does not rank for anything but their branded terms
-
the few keywords showing up in GA are the terms we target our PPC towards
-
the amount of sessions of Paid Search (in channels) and AdWords sessions don't match up (The number of actual PPC clicks is substantially higher than the Paid Search sessions)
-
PPC clicks and sessions don't even match up in the AdWords part of GA
-
GWT shows 0% CTR for any non branded terms
Tell me I am crazy, but I really don't think I am. I just don't have the hard evidence to back it up. Any help is greatly appreciated.
-
-
There are several reasons why AdWords & GA data won't match up, and this is one of them, but don't ever expect them to be the same.
I know we keep harping that things need to be linked appropriately and I'm glad you've gotten it handled, Anna, but it's the most common reason for any real mis-attribution. And by most common I mean nearly everyone gets it wrong Glad you're on the right track here.
There is also an attribution modeling between GA & AdWords. AdWords is a first touch attribution interface while generally GA is last touch. Though your site is relatively new, if you have any return visitors at all from brand then they will appear as Organic and not PPC.
Knowing that GWT says you don't have any non-brand traffic and you are sure you don't rank for anything, where is the traffic going? What are the landing pages you are using for PPC? Are they different than the pages organic traffic is getting traffic on? (side note: please tell me that you aren't sending PPC traffic to the home page )
-
Hi Anna,
I have read your query & all of replies very carefully & now I m replying you point by point.
"In short: I believe that GA is counting some of my PPC sessions as organic (not provided). Has anybody come across this before? "
My comment - Not provided keyword is a keyword without keyword referral data.
****There are two types of keywords referral data: organic keywords referral data and paid keywords referral data. ******
The organic keywords referral data tells you which search term was used by a person to visit your website after he/she clicked on an organic search engine listing on Google.
The paid keywords referral data tells you which search term was used by a person to visit your website after he/she clicked on a paid search engine listing on Google. These paid search engine listing are the PPC ads you see on Google.
But since Google doesn’t hide the paid keyword referral data, your web analytics tools like Google Analytics will continue to report the keywords which generated traffic, sales and conversions on your website through Adwords reports.
So IMO your assumption is wrong"I believe they are being counted as organic because of the following:- the website is brand new and does not rank for anything but their branded terms
- the few keywords showing up in GA are the terms we target our PPC towards"
My Comment - I believe you are doing guess work. This is not possible."- the amount of sessions of Paid Search (in channels) and AdWords sessions don't match up (The number of actual PPC clicks is substantially higher than the Paid Search sessions)"My comments - Please visit below URL you will know hwy there is discrepancy in session datahttps://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1257084?hl=enNow here is some methods to resolve the issue.I presume auto tagging or manual tagging you are using either one. I hope you are not using both. 1>Install tag assistant to check whether tracking is correct or not2>Hit & trail methodRemove auto tagging or manual tagging whichever you are using for some time after that search any keyword and click on your adWords Ad .After landing on your webpage append this (?utm_source=Anna&utm_medium=paid at the end of url and click enter . Please repeat this search for 3-4 times and you can check after 24 hour whether this data going in organic or paid.*I am running Adwords & Bing campaign since last six years I haven't face this scenario ever.sorry for the long answer it was just to explain you.I hope it helps you.Thanks
-
The only way to know for sure is, after having linked your GA to Adwords, is to look at server logs and look for the following (in bold)
www.yourdomain.com/somepage?gclid=XXXXXXXXXXXX
This is how Adwords passes the session on to GA. If you click on your own ads you should see this show up when you finally arrive at your site (if not check configs).
the amount of sessions of Paid Search (in channels) and AdWords sessions don't match up (The number of actual PPC clicks is substantially higher than the Paid Search sessions)
This is normal. Because GA relies on JS code there will always be missed sessions. Some people have JS turned off, while others have plugins that block GA from loading and sending data back. Server logs are the only real way to know true traffic.
-
If its not alot of traffic your best to just ignore it
-
Thanks Hutch, I had checked everything mentioned there. But I'm still convinced that a large amount of sessions are being classed as Organic.
I don't believe that the volume of sessions could be on branded keywords. But yet again I don't have any hard data to back that up. Just a hunch.
-
Also, your Google traffic and your Adwords will never line up perfectly due to the difference of how each is tracked.
Google has gone into the differences here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034383?hl=en
-
I have looked at both David, but the ones I mention above are just organic.
-
Are you looking at over all keywords or just organic?
-
Yes GA and AdWords are linked. Not using bing.
-
Is your adwords account linked? Are you tagging bing ppc urls?
-
Did you link your GA and Adwords accounts or are you just tagging? Organic (not provided) is how GA shows all search traffic from users who connect to Google securely (signed into a Google account) so this could be branded traffic but there is no way of knowing in GA.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to track in Google Analytics 2 different subdomains (one for website, the other for PPC landing pages)
Hello Mozers! I have a website with organic visits/goals on www.site.com and a few AdWords Campaign landing pages on lp.site.com whose goals are tracked with both adwords conversion monitoring AND analytics (not imported from analytics into Adword). The landing pages of the campaign have nothing to do with the web site (different cms, they don't link each other, totally isolated) and viceversa. Given that, what would it be the best practice to configure Google Analytics to track the website (www.site.com) AND a PPC campagin (lp.site.com)? I have been told to set up different views of the same property, but do I really need that? Please let me know what are you thinking. Thank you very much. DoMiSoL Rossini
Paid Search Marketing | | DoMiSoL0 -
PPC seems to have had a seriously negative impact on organic rankings?!?
We've been targeting a keyword on behalf of a client for the last few months. The page had good content and had been steadily climbing the rankings. It reached a position of #12 and then suddenly dropped off. Within 2 weeks it was out of the top 50 and is now around the 10th or 11th page (useless). This drop off matched exactly with the cleint switching on a low level PPC campaign, driving traffic from this specific keyword. The stats on this have shown a really high bounce rate (so we'll need to ask some other questions about content) - but could this be the reason that organic stats have taken a hammering? If Google associated people landing n that page from that keyword (even though its paid) as not finding relevant content, I'm assuming this could have a negative impact on the organic rank? Any Thoughts Welcome....!!!
Paid Search Marketing | | Purestone0 -
Will a javascript rewrite of city names on a home page from PPC traffic affect SEO negatively?
We have a client that was originally based out of Orlando and the entire website is SEO'ed for Orlando. In the long term we will start SEO'ing for Tampa. But In the short term, we want to drive traffic from Tampa to the website but we want that traffic to know the business specializes in Tampa service (he has local teams there). We are already using a ?_vsrefdom=changemynumber to change the phone number dynamically to a tampa area code for tracking purposes. We want to dynamically change all iterations of 'Orlando' with 'Tampa' using the same javascript. Does this cause any SEO problems or trip any alarms with Google?
Paid Search Marketing | | Highforge0 -
Youtube ad video ppc
anyone has any experience with youtube for adwords and how its converting, etc? tips on how to really narrow it down to keyword level and making sure impressions are based on your preferences? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | PaulDylan0 -
Google PPC Quality Score (adventures in)
We have one keyword that brings our site the most visitors. This keyword is the brand name we carry. We have several years of tracking it in Adwords. For some extended time, this keyword [exact match] has averaged 19 cents per click, 2.7 average position, 4.5% click through, and a quality score of 7/10. We wanted more clicks. We could think of what was needed to increase the quality score. Sure, we could change the meta tag title and the adwords title to be the same as the single word keyword, but this would be less informative. We decided to keep these titles as phrases which include the brand name. First change we made: we increased the bid. After all, it was profitable for the two ads above us, right? We increased our bid from .50 to $1.50. Effect? Average position increased to 2.3 from 2.7. Click through increased from 4.5% to 4.9%. Cost per click went from .19 to .51. The incremental cost for each sale was......well really really high.....this didn't work. (oh, we rank #2 organically. Our organic CTR dropped from 3.2% to 2.9% with this change as well) Reversed back to where we were and decided to focus on the quality score. We realized that the keyword was part of an add group with about 20 other keywords. This word was important.....lets put it in it's own ad group. We then made an "exact" copy of the ad and started up a new ad group. Paused the old keyword. We very quickly realized that the quality score on this "same" keyword was now 4/10. That was odd....lets give it a few days......quality score drops to 3/10 and no longer qualifies for first page. What was different we wondered? AH! We capitalized the first letter of the word. Changing this took the quality score up to 6/10 instantly. hmmm, we thought capitalization didn't matter? Seems it did. We now wait to see where the quality score goes. Saga to continue....
Paid Search Marketing | | EugeneF0 -
Launching a PPC Campaign during the Holidays
Hi Mozzers- I have a client who is interested in running a PPC campaign. We are all setup to go...Here's my dilemma. The client provides moving services - household and commercial. I'm torn whether or not to launch the campaign during the holidays. Pros: We're not paying for impressions so it won't cost us any more $$. Cons: It probably won't show the best outcome over December - clicks/conversion. Thoughts? Pull the trigger and launch or wait until January? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | lhc67
LHC0 -
Facebook PPC. Using Google URL Builder - Now What?
Hey There! So I've been trying some FB PPC ads. I recently learned I needed to use Google's URL builder to add the appropriate tracking fields into the URL (source, campaign, etc). The FB ad link now uses a custom URL with all the correct parameters. Now what do I do in analytics? Do I create a filter? A goal? Getting a little dizzy going in circles with google analytic help, and I'm hoping someone here can direct me. Thanks! -Dan
Paid Search Marketing | | evolvingSEO0 -
SEO for PPC landing pages
After completing several months of on-page SEO for my site (one keyphrase per URL) and getting an "A" from SEOmoz on each page, now I'm venturing into PPC AdWords for the first time. From what I've read you pretty much want one landing page per keyword/ad. So if I want to target 100 PPC keywords I need 100 landing pages. And each landing page needs to be SEO'd as if you were doing it for organic search purposes so that your ad has a chance at a high Quality Score (8 to 10). I realize that an ad's QS is 2/3rds driven by its CTR but in the beginning when the ad is new the initial QS assigned seems to be driven more by landing page relevancy and some historical attributes of the AdWords account in which the ad or Campaign is located. My question is: What, if anything, do you do different on a page designed to be a PPC landing page as compared to a regular page you would SEO for organic search benefits? Also, should you do any of the off-page things (external links with relevant anchor text) for PPC landing pages? I'm envisioning landing pages that only exist to receive PPC ad clicks and that will not be linked to from my site directly. Each landing page talks a bit about the keyword the user was searching on and then directs them to the most relevant page(s) within my site. Maybe that's flawed? Thanks for any tips...
Paid Search Marketing | | scanlin0