Why Don’t Conversions Match Between Google Analytics And Google Ads?

The Google Analytics and Google Ads conversion tracking systems use different methods to track conversions. This is why the conversion numbers do not match.

The Google Analytics system counts a conversion when a user completes a goal on the website. The goal could be signing up for an email newsletter, purchasing an item, or downloading a white paper. The Google Ads system counts conversions when a user clicks on an ad and then makes a purchase on the advertiser’s site within 30 days of clicking on the ad.

There are some ways to ensure that there is more consistency between the two systems.

1. Integrate your Google Ads account with your Google Analytics account in order to monitor all conversions through one platform
2. Use Google Analytics 4 instead of universal Google Ads Analytics so that you can track all users

Data Discrepancies Between Google Ads And Analytics

Conversions are recorded in Google Analytics but not in Google Ads even though accounts are linked to any ideas. So I presume that conversion came through Google Ads. There will be a lag by the time the conversions come through into Google Ads and trying to match Google Ads and Google Analytics is never going to happen.

There will always be some discrepancy. It is recommended that you are link Google Analytics and Google ads and you’re importing those Google Analytics goals or events into Google Ads. What you don’t want to do is double-count. So anything which is coming through Google Analytics in the good old days before we used to not include it in the conversion column. Now it has become primary and secondary conversions. So the conversions from Google Analytics ones we can keep as secondary and the Google Ads ones as primary. Because the Google Ads tag or the algorithm looks at the Google Ads data a lot more and it’s going to see the conversion tracking so you must put that tracking and the tags in for Google Ads to optimise your Google Ads campaigns but other marketers will say differently that we only use Google Analytics, each to their own. But that’s what we do we go with the Google Ads conversion data.

Written by Uzair Kharawala

Founder of SF Digital Studios, a Google Premier Partner agency. Uzair has been helping businesses grow with Google Ads since 2002 and teaches it every week on YouTube.