Adwords conversion tracking

Site URL: https://www.rootworks.com

We are having tracking issues related to paid search. At first I tried adding the adwords conversion and event tags but that didn't fix the issue. (in GA, I am seeing very little traffic attributed to paid search and no conversions - it looks like it is attributed to organic instead). Next. I installed Google tag manager but I'm still seeing very low sessions compared to clicks when I look in GA.

We recently launched adwords for this site but we can't seem to get correct traffic and conversion attribution.

Thanks @edharris We are trying to record demo form submissions as conversions. I do have that set up as a goal in GA. The conversion is getting recorded but not as a paid search conversion - it is coming through as organic as are sessions. Both our adwords and GA account are linked. I'm wondering if adding utm parameters would fix the attribution issue?  

If your Google Ads and Analytics accounts are linked and you have imported your GA Goals as conversions in your Ads account the two systems should work together pretty seamlessly to attribution conversions to your Google Ad campaigns. You don't need to manually add any UTM parameters to the URLs you're using in Google Ads in the same way you would for other PPC conversion sources like Facebook ads.

Couple of other thoughts that might be helpful:

• There is definitely a lag time in conversion reporting between Google Ads and Analytics – you'll often see a Goal / conversion in GA pretty much in real time, but the conversion doesn't show up in the Ads reporting dashboard until a few hours later.
• Do you know for sure that you are getting conversions from you Ads campaign yet? i.e. have you seen a "conversion" get recorded in Google Ads reporting that is not showing up as a paid search conversion in Analytics?

Let me know if you want to book a quick Zoom call to review the dashboards and try to diagnose the issue – I have some availability Friday or next week.

Thanks @edharris for your kind offer. We were able to fix attribution by using utm parameters - both conversions and traffic are now being assigned to the proper channel. 

GTM uses a different API so will report conversions up to 48 hours after they have happened. Often it is not the case, but you should work that in.

@DCaamano what you are saying is the fix makes no sense from a tracking point of view because if someone clicks a Google Ad it will be automatically tagged with the GCLID that tells Google Analytics to record the traffic as a Google Campaign. However, we have seen that GCLID performs differently under some very unusual circumstances. The UTM hardcoded into the ad-campaign can be stronger in terms of ad-reporting, but that an ad-click is coming in under organic is frankly something you would want to explore.

My advice would be as follows.

1. Set the tracking back to before.

2. Clear your browser cookies.

3. Login to Google Analytics

4. Open Real time view.

5. Go to Google and click on your ad.

6. Watch the session appear in Real Time View

7. Click on location of the session and isolate your visit

8. Click on Traffic Sources (in real time)

9. Perform conversion action.

10. See if there is a change on "traffic sources"

This test while not perfect will give you a clearer understanding on what is happening to your source/medium attribution.

🙂