Over the past two months we've been taking you through the intricacies and eccentricities of Google AdWords and Analytics.

Today, in our final entry, we'll attempt to make sense of these two marketing monoliths. You can read the previous installments here and here.

A tale of two yardsticks

To complicate matters further, by default, both platforms use different attribution models.

• GA uses Last Non-Direct Click Attribution by default.
• AdWords uses Last Click Attribution by default.

So GA will not attribute any Goals that come from AdWords unless AdWords was the Last Click prior to the Goal being triggered.

This is of course different  to AdWords’ own model.

From AdWords’ point of view, a user just has to click an ad and as long as they convert within 30 days, that’s job done.

A hypothetical example

• Day 1: User clicks AdWords ad and goes to website without converting.
• Day 2: User clicks a Facebook social post to again get back to the website without converting.
• Day 5: User clicks an email to again get to the website without converting.
• Day 8: User searches and clicks an organic link to finally convert.

In the above example:

• AdWords will count this as a Conversion.
• Analytics will not count this as an AdWords Conversion.

The final step to having both Adwords and GA reflect each other more closely is to use the same attribution model on both platforms.

Hopefully this will help you align your Google marketing mix, and lead to greater clairity and results all round. Happy Googling!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Sugihto is founder of specialist, Melbourne based Pay Per Click agency and Google Certified Partner, Intentional. Since 2009, the Intentional team have driven online advertising for companies in global markets such as Prague, Paris, Tokyo, London, Shanghai, Bangkok, New York and LA; as well as being digital advisor and partner in the Australian domestic market for numerous household brands and NFPs.