PPC Advice please

[Ian J]

Last week a friend decided to give me a hand with my enquiry levels for a certain product and he set up and paid for a PPC campaign stipulating UK only.

I have a stats package on the website and it tells me that since last Thursday there have been just 20 visits to the website from GoogleAds and 11 of them have been overseas.

My friend tells me that Google are telling him that there have been 53 clicks to the site since the campaign began and all were from the UK.

Is this normal or am I reading it wrong?

 

[Clinton]

I do not trust Google's stats. There have been numerous occasions Adwords has claimed to have sent visitors yet the traffic logs (and even Google Analytics) don't agree. There have also been numerous cases of 0 second visits (probably bots) but Google still charged.

 

[UKSBD]

Likewise, I don't trust any of the stats packages I have used 100% either.

 

[Clinton]

Tip for Ian: You don't need to rely on any stats package. If Adwords give you some BS about it being your stats package at fault - or even that you haven't setup Analytics properly on your site! - don't accept it. Dig into your server logs ... and nobody can argue with that. Your server logs will contain every single visit!

If you don't know how to read server logs, Google it... or read this article I wrote some years ago about how to interpret the data in your logs.

 

[Erno Horvath]

Most likely your friend set up your campaign in a sub-optimal way.
There are two kind of location targeting within Google Adwords:
- People in, searching for, or who show interest in my targeted location (recommended)
- People in my targeted location

Meanwhile the first one is recommended by Google and this is the default one it can generate traffic outside the UK. Eg: if an SEO guy in India/Pakistan searches likes this:
"factoring london" or "factoring specialist uk" he might see and can click on your ad because Google considers the word "london" & "uk" as interest about the UK.

I strongly suggest to choose the second option to eliminate non uk based traffic.

 

[Clinton]

Also, as of yesterday, Google decided to change how daily budgets work.

They've decided that they can spend 2x your daily budget. Report

So don't be surprised if you get a lot of traffic in the first half of the month ... and nothing after that!

 

[adzeds]

Yup, always keep up to date with the changes that Google makes to Adwords!! Often feel like they are trying to catch people out when updating the product!

 

[makeusvisible]

The first thing to remember here is that no stat package or system (including Google's own) can be 100% accurate with regards the country a user is in at the time of browsing. even your server logs cannot be 100% accurate in terms of determining the user's country.

When you choose a geographic audience within Adwords Google will only display the ads to people it determines are within the location. I don't believe there is an underhand technique being used by Google to broaden that reach.....lots of our clients use geo-targeted Ads and we find they work well.

If google Adwords is reporting 53 clicks, all from the UK, and your stat package is reporting 20, and 11 from the uk..... there is clearly an issue. What is Analytics reporting ....or were you quoting Google Analytics in your post?

 

[Ian J]

If google Adwords is reporting 53 clicks, all from the UK, and your stat package is reporting 20, and 11 from the uk..... there is clearly an issue. What is Analytics reporting ....or were you quoting Google Analytics in your post?

Unfortunately that is the only one of my many websites that I don't have a Google Analytics account for

 

[makeusvisible]

I'd get Google Analytics installed on there as a starting point.... your stats are very low right now so before you start spending significant money I'd definitely suggest Analytics, and integration between your analytics and Adwords account so you can do a comparison.

 

[thiennp]

Thank you, Clinton, Besides serve logs, Do you have another way (simple).

 

[Remb1000]

A lot of stats are iffy, even from large reputable companies.

The best way is to gather data from multiple sources and cross compare to obtain an average.