Conversions Showing Up Late

Recently conversions have only been coming through weeks late, the norm?

[ZeeOne]

I've been finding it increasingly difficult to compare the current months' figures to the previous as conversions keep rolling in days after the actual conversion took place.

Nothing wrong with an increase in conversions, its like a late bday present, but not ideal when presenting a client with a month-end report on how many conversions they've got and how many they can expect to get the next month.

We're looking at a 1/5 increase here, so nothing small-fry.

Anyone else have conversions pulling in weeks late for the party?

[Atun]

Yes!

Not always, but often they don't show the same day.

Not sure about weeks as I've given up using the Google web interface to track conversions. I've got a proprietary way to check.

Conversion stats just ain't accurate. They used to show within 3 hours.

Atun

[Robar]

Completely normal. Adwords uses a 30 day cookie and attributes conversions to the day of the click.

[netmeg]

I have ONE account where all conversions have been showing up 2-3 days late for months now. I've asked and asked Google to look into it, but they say they there's nothing they can do. All my other client accounts are fine - conversions usually show up within a couple hours. Really aggravating.

[SanDiego Art]

If you are sure that the keyword click and the conversion happened on the same day, then there is a problem.

But like Robar said, Adwords uses click date to track conversions. So if I click today on your ad, but don't "convert" until 3 days later (when you see the conversion happen), Google will attribute that conversion to 3 days earlier.

If you look at end of month reports, they are "official" besides day 1, as 30 days hasn't expired from the rest of the dates, on the 1st of the next month.

If this client has a longer sales cycle than your others, it probably is the explaination.

[netmeg]

I have a filter that tells me exactly which source and keyword are tied to each transaction. I know for a fact that the conversions and the clicks are happening on the same day. I monitor my analytics like five vultures on carrion.

[Atun]

I know for a fact that the conversions and the clicks are happening on the same day.

Same here. In fact, I thought I wrote that sentence at first.

The conversions used to be 99% accurate and timely within 3 hours - just like the other stats.

Then a few months ago I started seeing missing conversions, late conversions, who knows. I've given up trying to reconcile what Adwords says.

Atun