adwords data inconsistent

report to report - does it add up for you?

[chewy]

go to adwords - dump all your keywords into an "all time" keyword report.

look at it - does the regular interface (on screen) figures match what the xls says?

not for me. how about you?

not only that, but the same report a month ago does not match the data from today - by a rather startling degree.

i see gaps at about 20% or more depending on how you count it.

one keyword converted once in one report, and 10 times in yet another.

[Spyglass]

yes I see it. Probably just a reporting glitch - have you queried it with adwords?

[chewy]

yes.

[Spyglass]

please post back if you hear anything useful from them. It is a pretty poor state of affairs if their 'new and improved' reporting system can't actually report properly!

Do you still have access to the old report centre? have you tried replicating the same report there?

[RhinoFish]

on screen, are you viewing "all" or "all but deleted"?

[RhinoFish]

and if you switch that setting, then download, does the problem get worse or better?

[after_hours]

Yeah I see the discrepancy as well.

[chewy]

re "querying adwords" - I have not picked up the phone or emailed or chatted with the adwords people in years - the last few times I spoke with anyone I seemed to find myself in the unfortunate position that I might have known more about it than they did.

Forgive me, I misread the earlier question as a computer query against the interface or adwords editor - not reaching out to a human there at the AdWords Googleplex.

[chewy]

just now, doing what we used to call the SQR (aka Search Query Report) trying to view all terms searched for (All keywords) for all time.

the interface clearly identifies the total amount spent at $ 6612 - and when downloaded, the xlsx clearly shows the total amount at $ 5138. Why would this number be off by any amount, never mind over 25%?

clicks and impressions are also off by a mile.

which number do I trust?

why am I doing QC on this?

if Google had any cares about quality control in this slice of data, this might be a good place to look.

[Eschatonic]

I wouldn't trust the SQR data to give accurate figures. It's been consistently off in every account I've ever seen. It's mostly useful for the queries themselves, although I suspect that given the accuracy of the figures you shouldn't trust it entirely for those either.

[Spyglass]

chewy, I am seeing the same discrepancies as you.

However, I was able to extract a full, all time keyword report from the old report centre and the figures in that excel file match the interface summary. (Luckily I had an old All Time Keyword Report template saved - it lets me run old templates as they are, but won't let me create new ones as the report centre is pretty much retired now).

It looks like the new report function is unable to extract all historical data for some reason, which is admittedly pretty cr*p, but better than Google telling outright fibs!

Can you try to extract the same report and see if yours also matches?

I am going to file this problem with Google for what it's worth. I'm with you on them not knowing as much as us tho!

[chewy]

SG, I have no templates saved on this particular account so I'm out of luck there - good luck with the Googlers and let us know how it goes.

Is AdWords advisor around any more in these threads?

[after_hours]

really shows where google's head is at considering that paid search still drives the company's bottom-line. i guess they're too busy shifting resources to conquer display advertising.

[Spyglass]

query has been 'escalated' (gotta love the high & mighty jargon for 'I don't know, let me ask someone else') to Google's tech team.
Previous experience tells me this will add at least a few days to the time it takes to get an answer!

[Spyglass]

OK, so I have a response and it does actually work, even if the solution does seem a bit convoluted.

Basically the discrepancy stems from the views you have selected in your campaign and ad group tabs, as well as in the keyword tab.

It is, apparently, not enough to select 'all keywords' in the keywords tab, you must also select 'all campaigns' and 'all ad groups' in those respective tabs too, otherwise Adwords will not downloaded deleted keyword data!

So;


1. Click all online campaigns
2. Click campaigns tab and change the view to 'all campaigns'
3. Click ad groups tab and change setting to 'all ad groups.'
4. Click keywords tab and change setting to 'all keywords.'
5. Now, download the report and the numbers should match up.

You should now see a .csv report that matches the Adwords interface!

Hope this helps you out chewy!

[after_hours]

^ Nice, thanks for that info.

[chewy]

looking forward to double checking this.

in the meantime - thanks everybody - especially spyglass - this sheds a lot of light where there was little before!

[RhinoFish]

"this sheds a lot of light where there was little before!"

ummm, i told you all the answer above. :-)