The difference between a visit and a click.

[Mark_A]

I expected everybody who clicked on an adwords advert would become a visitor to the website.

But apparently this is not the case as we generally have more clicks than visitors. But then sometimes we have more visitors than clicks.

[Mark_A]

Google says:

Click A click (sometimes called a click-through) occurs when a user sees your ad and clicks on the title of your ad, leading them to your website.

It does not seem to define a "visit".

[Mark_A]

BTW, I can see this in Analytics not adwords (sorry for any confusion)

[kelhal]

Hi Mark,
You will find here a short video tutorial explaining simply the causes that can lead to a difference between your number of clicks and your number of visits.

<no promotional urls, please>

Kind regards,

Kelly

[edited by: tedster at 9:26 pm (utc) on Sep 20, 2010]

[netmeg]

My Analytics numbers (traffic, pageviews, even ecommerce transactions) has typically run 20 to 25% short of actual traffic, pageviews and transactions since GA started up. Across hundreds of sites. And if you go into the GA google forum, you see lots of other people with the same issue. The stock answer is that Analytics is more for trends, and not exact. So don't expect those numbers to match up.

Use your own server logs (and/or buy a log analyzer or analytics program) if you need to closely track like that. Don't rely on Analytics.

[kelhal]

Hello netmeg,
The numbers will never add up because they do not represent the same things and are calculated differently.
If the difference is important (lets say more than 20%) it can be that your tagging is not correctly implemented.
Otherwise, there a lot of reasons explaining the discrepancies:
- invalid clicks filtered out in Adwords
- visitors quickly quiting the page
- ...
<url removed>

[edited by: tedster at 9:25 pm (utc) on Sep 20, 2010]

[netmeg]

Ok, please stop dropping links to promotional videos; that's not allowed here.

What I said still stands.