Is the conversion tracker 100% accurate?

[rb4580]

I'm really confused on this. I open my Sponsored Search acct and count the clicks which is about 90, but then on the number of clicks Yahoo says I get 500 clicks. How can I get a true look at my conversions? I know that the EXACT phrase doesn't have to be typed in for my ads to show so when this happens is it not counted as a conversion?

[bostonseo]

No. It's accurate at all.

[eWhisper]

Overture is considered a 3rd party tracker, which means it sets a 3rd party cookie.

There are many pieces of privacy software (and user cookie deletion) which will throw these stats off.

The percentage that it throws off your stats really depends on the industry your in. You'll see a higher percentage of cookie deletion from webmasters than from 'joe average'.

[bostonseo]

Sorry meant to say it's NOT accurate at all. In fact it typically always inflated conversion/sales numbers. Surprise Surprise :)

[Hiccup]

Normally it's about 1.5 times the real conversion in my accounts. I cannot believe we put up with this. (guess greed is a bad thing...)

[lrbs]

Conversion tracking is a big question for us too. For e.g. on google if 5 conversions were reported by them, its quite possible that in next 15-20 days we may see about additional 1-2 conversions for the same when we re-run the reports. As for overture, this never happens. The best way to deal with this (I guess) is develop an in-house conversion tracking software or buy it from outside.

[redzone]

Another point of contention is "duration" of cookie... Most analytics/bid management systems that provide conversion/ROAS tracking, have 1 year cookies, while the free tools may be as short as 90 days.

Overture's conversion tool, was a 3rd party tool from Keylime. It had major bugs, and was completely retooled over a six month period, before YSM ever released it. We have seen conversion skew as high as 30%....

We establish that +/- 10% is the acceptable range, due to cookie deletion and anomolies in the web space.