Why does Google Analytics think PPC traffic is organic?

[Red_Mud_Rookie]

I have a bastard of a problem... Google Analytics is incorrectly tracking PPC traffic as SEO which is screwing up all my reporting .

I don't care for rankings, I care for actual SEO traffic and I can't be sure that what i am seeing is correct which is driving me nuts.

Any ideas?

[LinkRightMedia]

Ralph, If you're using a call tracking Software doing Dynamic Number insertion like Mongoose Metrics does, The visit will appear in many cases to Analytics to be Organic or Direct. Since tools like that use a URL Extension to Know when to insert the tracking number, you can add a Custom Channel Grouping and Define the following rule:

Landing Page URL -- Contains -- mm_replace=true (that rule is specific to Mongoose Metrics, but most will have some common phrase in the URL extension that you can use)

o5uco

[Gruenagency]

Hey Ralph,

I know this was posted a while ago but I'm running into the same issue. Our PPC urls are showing up as "organic" landing pages and screwing up organic traffic and conversion data. Did you ever hear back from Google on this?

Thanks!

[Branden_S]

Google analytics will place Ppc traffic in the "direct traffic"  bucket if you do not tag your ppc campaigns correctly.  Google Adwords is easy, just enable auto tagging. In AdCenter, you need to make sure that you use utm codes in all of your keyword destination urls...otherwise google analytics will just place this traffic in the direct traffic category.

There was a good blog post about this last month.  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-google-analytics-tagging-matters-whiteboard-friday

[Red_Mud_Rookie]

Thanks Damion... I have got Google looking at it now so fingers crossed they can find the fault.

[damionbrown]

I fully sympathise, and I fully identify with your assessment of it as a bastard of a problem!

Just to be square on the baseline stuff, is your Analytics correctly linked to your Adwords account? Incorrect linking can cause all manner of weirdness. It's pretty easy to link accounts these days but it didn't used to be, so if the adwords and/or analytics accounts for this site are more than a couple of years old that could be causing a problem.

Secondly, is Adwords auto-tagging set up correctly? It could be that Adwords isn't passing on the correct URL handling parameters, and so in the absence of appended campaign data Analytics is interpreting it all as a referral from Google, and therefore as organic traffic.

[Red_Mud_Rookie]

When I have "organic only" segmenting on i.e. non paid search traffic, it is showing that the top organic keywords are keywords that i have no top 30 rankings in organic, yet my ppc ad is number one.

Biggest traffic driver - cheap flights - no rankings for this domain, but the sister domain is on page 2
Second biggest - cheap hotels - pos 15-16

[scanlin]

What makes you think it's adding your PPC traffic to your organic report? When you are in Analytics and click on Traffic Sources, do you see "google (organic)" as one of the sources? Are you saying google is adding PPC visits to that row in the traffic sources table?