• PPC

  Google ads/GA4 report purchases/transactions that are not actually happening

  Posted by therealcrowdpleaser on August 23, 2023 at 12:08 pm

  I’m having some weird stuff going on that I’m having a hard time trying to figure out. Google Ads and GA4 are showing purchase conversions but they are not adding up at all in our bank account/database and I can’t find any information on this issue on Google.

  This month shows:
  \- Google Ads – 15 purchases (primary goal) $420
  \- Google Ads – 21 purchases (Secondary goal through GA4 import) – $490
  \- GA4 – 24 purchases – $1021
  \- Bank account/database – 8 purchases – $837

  July has similar data.

  I am fine with Google Ads and GA4 showing different data due to attribution models and how data is calculated. Also, I would say the value differences are irrelevant right now as the number of purchases is not syncing closely.

  My guess is that it is related to tracking setup but why I find it so weird is that during the testing (20-25 different tests) upon this tracking setup all the purchases(dynamic values), signups and started trials custom events fired at the correct occasion and sent the correct information through the data layers.

  The signup and trial custom events seem to work great and are syncing between Google Ads, GA4, and the database (-+ 5%)

  During testing the custom event for purchases is triggered when the payment has gone through. Therefore I have no idea how Google Ads can report so many more purchases than transactional actually happening in the database.

  I have two ideas that could cause it but I don’t know how it could be happening.

  1. Some sort of duplicate issue but no duplicates are happening in GTM preview mode or GA4 preview mode.
  2. As Universal Analytics e-commerce tracking was used before this setup that code is probably still there. Could that interfere in any way causing duplicate information etc? They are not sharing the same custom events so not sure how they would interfere but yeah.

  I’m up for discussion if anyone has any ideas for this issue or has been through something similar.

  Thanks

  therealcrowdpleaser replied 8 months, 2 weeks ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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