Google Ads and Google Analytics are two powerful tools used by marketers to track the performance of their campaigns. While both offer a wealth of data, there can be discrepancies between the two platforms when it comes to conversion rate. In this blog post, we’ll explain why this is and how you can use both platforms to get an accurate picture of your campaign performance.
First, let’s define what we mean by “conversion rate”. Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on your website (e.g., purchase a product or sign up for a newsletter). It’s an important metric that helps you measure the success of your marketing efforts.
Now let’s look at why there may be discrepancies between Google Ads and Google Analytics when it comes to conversion rate. The main reason is that each platform uses different methods for tracking conversions.
Google Ads tracks conversions using “conversion pixels”, which are small pieces of code that are placed on webpages where you want to track conversions (e.g., thank-you pages). When someone visits one of these pages, the pixel fires and sends data back to Google Ads about the conversion event (e.g., purchase amount). This method allows for more accurate tracking since it captures all events in real-time as they happen on your website rather than relying on other methods such as cookies or redirects which may not always work properly or accurately capture all events.
On the other hand, Google Analytics tracks conversions using cookies which store information about user behavior across multiple visits and sessions before finally converting into a sale or lead generation form submission etc.. This method works well but can sometimes lead to inaccurate results due to cookie expiration or users deleting their cookies after visiting your site which would result in no recorded conversion event even though one occurred in reality. Additionally, if someone visits your site from multiple devices (e.g., desktop computer and mobile phone) then each device will have its own cookie resulting in multiple conversion events being tracked instead of just one per user visit.
To sum up: while both platforms provide valuable insights into campaign performance, there can be discrepancies between them due to differences in how they track conversions — Google Ads uses pixels while Google Analytics uses cookies — so it’s important to understand these differences so you can make sure you’re getting an accurate picture of campaign performance across both platforms.