Is it possible for google to be wrong?

Number of clicks higher than actual visits on my site

[JoaoJose]

Hi everybody.

I joined adwords 3 weeks ago and I've been satisfied with the results. But it's the third time now that adwords registers a number of clicks higher than the number of visits my website had (according to awstats)

How is this possible?

Thks

[edit_g]

How is this possible?

This is pretty common - Google (and other PPC engines) always (in my experience) show a different number of clicks than the number of clicks shown by a client's stats program. There's a good few reasons for this - how cookies are handled, how long a session is, dynamic IP's etc.

As a rule of thumb, I usually let it slide as long as I'm reporting more clicks than adwords and the difference isn't dramatic. I have yet to see Google (or Overture, Espotting, Mirago) report the same amount of clicks as a stats program.

[Later2]

Me too, but I often see GAC slightly higher than my site stats. Not so much higher that I feel compelled to do something about it, but sufficiently higher to think I'm being ripped off a few bucks a day.

[JoaoJose]

Well thanks for your replys. In my case the diference is quite big, about 30% more clicks on adwords than visits to my website. I've already sent an email to adwords support. Let's wait and see...

[eWhisper]

How are you tracking referrers? Are you using any kind of?ref=GAW to your URLs or similiar?

If you're just looking at people coming from Google, remember that AOL/AJ also sends you AdWords traffic.

Do you have content syndication turned on? If so, that traffic will be coming from websites - not search engines.

[JoaoJose]

No I'm not tracking I'm just looking at the report I have from adwords. The point is: I paid for 280 visits and I only had 216 (trusting my stats).

It's not the first time this happens but this time it's a huge (%) diference.

Thanks for your reply.

[edit_g]

What happens if a searcher clicks on your ad, clicks back, clicks on another ad, clicks back again, and clicks on yours again? Google may be treating this as two clicks - your stats software may well be treating this as one if it is within a set time period.

[JoaoJose]

Well that's a problem...Google states that adwords is protected from repetitive clicking...at some extent anyway...

Cheers

[wheel]

Perhaps your tracking software is using the 'referrer' field to determine where the traffic is coming from. Some browsers don't report this - which means your logs won't show that visitor as coming from Google.

There are other browsers that let you tailor all sorts of stuff that gets put into your logs. I get a kick out of the folks that visit my site who report their computer and OS as things like "TRS-80" and "CP/M" :).

[edit_g]

Google may be treating this as two clicks

I should clarify: I don't know if Google does this or not; this is just one of many possible reasons behind the differences you've experienced.

[JoaoJose]

I've already emailed them....I'll put on their answer afterwards.

Thanks

[cgrantski]

You saw 216 visits and were supposed to have 280? That's 216 visits from Google itself? Did you have any visits from AOL, etc?