How accurate is conversion data?

I show 10 conversions in G but my site had only 3

[Hubie]

How accurate is this conversion data? Last week GAdwords shows me having 10 conversions. I had 3 sales.

This is MISLEADING info causing me to spend more than I am making.

what gives?

[RonnieG]

The conversion code should be on a separate post-sale "thank you" page, and not on the sale page itself, which may be canceled by the consumer. Is there some way to get to the post-sale page with the conversion code in it, other than through your sale page?

[Hubie]

Ronnie...it's on the thank you page. Still, G is showing me conversions that I never got.

[justageek]

If someone bookmarks the thank-you page and then comes back to it then it is possible to trigger another conversion. That may be what is happening.

JAG

[LucidSW]

In my case, it shows a lot less (about 20-25% of conversions).

I know, sales may be made long after they clicked my ad. I'm pretty sure that 90%+ of sales are made from AdWords but it would be nice to know for sure. And more important, on which groups and keywords.

Anyone know how long Google keeps click information on a keyword and able to report a conversion?

[RonnieG]

Anyone know how long Google keeps click information on a keyword and able to report a conversion?

In my experience, it seems to be 24 hours or less. About 70% of my conversions seem to be from AdWords on the same day, and reportable in the AdWords stats. Of the rest, I generally can't tell if the conversion is from AdWords, organic search results, or my other advertising.

[LucidSW]

I just checked.

Apparently, the tracking cookie lasts for 30 days. So I assume that if someone buys during that period, the conversion will be recorded.

It also mentions that if the user disables cookies, of course it doesn't get recorded.

I check almost every day the campaigns I manage for others. One of them had just under 5% conversion yesterday when I checked this morning. A few minutes ago, it went up to 7.1%

I'll ask him if his figures jive with the reported conversion. He also has an affiliate program with ShareASale. His AW clicks all go through SAS so essentially, he is his own affiliate.

I'll also check to see how many more sales he made last month. I normally download a month's stats in the first few days of a month. I wonder how many more sales will show up for last month a few weeks into December.

If I notice more sales having occurred in mid-month, I'll let you know.

[johnser]

Spent a few hours last week studying raw logs for exactly this purpose for a client.

When users do non-standard things, it screws up Google stats who don't know whats going on.
By and large their stats reflect a users' search followed by that user converting into a lead.

If users search multiple times, Google stats include double-counting.
If users refresh pages, Google stats include double-counting.

Above is probably a fraction of the things which could lead to what you would view as Google "errors"
Put it down to user behaviour, not Google mis-reporting.