Google Analytics/AdWords Question

I have conversion tracking set up on both Google Analytics and through my AdWords account. When I receive a lead (conversion) from my web site, Analytics shows the keyword that the user searched on Google to find my site but it always reports that conversion as an organic conversion when I know that it came from a PPC ad. I know because I don't rank organically for that keyword and when I look at my AdWords account, it shows that click and conversion. Why does Analytics keep reporting these as organic when they are not? Anyone have any idea?

Read the last threads linked from the last post in the sticky thread Using Web Analytics including Google Analytics. Those posts explain how Google Analytics tracking works and what affects how well it tracks.

Google's conversion tracking places the conversion on the keyword and date of the first click (first visit to your site). Google Analytics (GA) places the conversion on the source of the last visit. Because of this difference GA does not attribute anywhere near the total sales and revenue generated by Google Adwords to those ads.

Most buyers buy after more than one visit. Many of the other visits will overwrite your ad tracking code. In Yahoo stores, GA may attribute only 20-25% of sales I know for sure were generated by AdWords to the ads.

I know that because that is what percentage it tracks when I add ads for new products that are not listed organically and have never sold before. I also see this issue clearly when I create ads for products that have been on a site and in a store's product feeds for an extended amount of time yet have never sold any of that item.

If four sell within a few weeks of my creating the ads, GA will generally attribute one to AdWords, one to Google organic, and two it either can't track OR it attributes them to some other source. Clearly all of them would most likely have been generated by the new ads since that is the only thing that was changed during that time period.

So there's nothing really that I can do to straighten this up in Analytics? I just need to check AdWords first to see if the lead came from there and if it didn't, then check Analytics to see where it came from?

Thanks for the input.

Custom configuration of Google Analytics can reduce some of the tracking issues, particularly those related to it seeing multiple variations of the same domain as separate entities, i.e., www.yourdomain.com versus yourdomain.com (without the www in front) versus store.yourdomain.com (if your ecommerce solution includes this type of URL).

The true solution is for an analytics solution to track all visits to a site. Few of even the far more sophisticated and expensive analytics programs do this.

There are a few visionary types working on potential add-ons to Google Analytics to do this. I believe if Google Analytics would simply offer the option to track first click instead of last (the way their conversion tracking does) Google Analytics would be far more useful to the average non-Fortune 400/500/1000 company.

A really large company running branding campaigns may have a greater use for last click data. A smaller online business if more likely to want to know how someone first became aware of them.

I suspect that buyers shop around, decide what they want to buy and from whom, and then come back later to make their purchase when they have more time, get paid, or make a payment on their credit card account.

If that is true, it is less important to know how they got back to your site that day than how they found you the day they decided what they were going to buy in the future.

That is more important because it is that information a PPC advertiser will use to determine where to spend their advertising dollars.

I again caution advertisers and PPC consultants not to make changes to advertising that is currently profitable based on analytics data that does not actually track what they assume it does. This can seriously affect sales and profits.