PPC Count Accuracy

Numbers from Overture don't match our logging

[clevelandweb]

We wanted to track how many PPC referrals are becoming valid leads on our site (the goal of the site is to have a visitor sign up as a 'lead'.) So we implemented approrpriate code on our site to track this.

But our basic problem is the initial count of 'src=overture' or 'src=google' is 10 - 15 percent lower than the reports we're receiving from Google and Overture. This is consistent over the last couple weeks. We thought maybe AOL or others were caching the site, so we set 'nocache'. But we're still low. I have a hard time believing this is just due to the site being unreachable by a user.

Do others have this problem? Is there something else that we're missing?

[sullen]

since its only 10-15% I suspect it's down to users with slow connections getting impatient (so G and O would register the click but they never actually reach your server).

Or could it be that your server was down?

[clevelandweb]

I think our server has been up the entire time...and the difference between the numbers has been pretty consistent over time.

[Tropical Island]

We have run into this with other PPC search engines. We like to call it "drive by" traffic. It usually comes from poor partners (Gator or Webshots?) and general search terms. It occurs when the searcher doesn't wait for the page to load and leaves after a few seconds. In some terms we reduced the problem by going to 3rd place (or lower) instead of #1 in more non-specific terms.

[cfx211]

We have always found our counts to be a tiny bit lower than overture. This is probably because overture will not charge you for a second click off the same term in the same session.