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Help Me Understand My New Client’s Tracking Template. Maybe Parallel Tracking?
Hi everyone,
I just took on a new client for Google Search Ads and some analytics work. While going through Google Analytics, I noticed there was a significant discrepancy in Google Ad clicks (Headline/Sitelink) and Google Analytics sessions (3,116 in Google Ads vs 1,585 in Analytics).
When looking through the tracking templates for Ad Groups/Ads, I noticed a tracking template formatted like this:
[https://www.clientname.com/?url={lpurl}&utm_campaign=Campaign_Name&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid+search&utm_content={creative}&utm_term={keyword}&adgroupid={adgroupid}](https://www.reddit.com/?url={lpurl}&utm_campaign=Campaign_Name&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid+search&utm_content={creative}&utm_term={keyword}&adgroupid={adgroupid})
From what I’ve read, this type of template has to do with parallel tracking (which in doing some short research, seems to be mandatory/baked in for Search Ads anyway?). Whatever the purpose, a portion of sessions (346) have been assigned in Analytics per the UTM parameters above. The remaining 1,585 sessions appear to have been set to a medium of ‘cpc’ and by all accounts, auto-tagged.
What’s strange is all the ads that created those clicks use the same tracking template. So I’m confused why some would be categorized by the UTM parameters above, and others appear to use auto tagging. And frankly why the gap is STILL so high.
Any insight here would be helpful.