1 reply to this topic

[SEMMatt]

Hello,

A friend recently told me something that I'm trying to either confirm or deny. The scenario is this: a guy goes to Google.com and clicks on my Google Paid Ad; he then comes to my site, clicks around and subsequently leaves without performing any conversion. The same day another guy goes to Yahoo.com and clicks on my Yahoo Paid Ad; he comes to my site, clicks around and leaves without performing any conversion action. The next day, guy number 2, from Yahoo, comes back to my site on his own or through organic search and performs a conversion.

Now here's the question; my friend tells me that in this case BOTH Google and Yahoo take credit for the conversion vis a vi their reporting mechanisms. My friend tells me that this is a common problem.

I want to know if this could possibly be true and if so how to resolve it?

thanks to all!

[Alan Perkins]

No, it's probably not true. It could be true in certain circumstances, e.g. if the two guys in question shared the same browsers, but let's not go there - because they'd then be, for all intents and purposes, one guy.

The problem I think you're alluding to is this one (modifying your example slightly):

• a guy goes to Google.com and clicks on my Google Paid Ad; he then comes to my site, clicks around and subsequently leaves without performing any conversion
• the same day the same guy goes to Yahoo.com and clicks on my Yahoo Paid Ad; he comes to my site, clicks around and leaves without performing any conversion action
• The next day, the same guy comes back to my site through, say, Bing organic search and performs a conversion.

In this case BOTH Google and Yahoo take credit for the conversion via their reporting mechanisms. So they will report one conversion each. However, your analytics package may attribute the sale to Bing organic search. Therefore, you can be in a position where Google says it had a conversion, Yahoo said it had a conversion, and your own analytics said neither Google nor Yahoo had a conversion but Bing did - and it's all the same, single conversion.