Traffic not attributed to correct Google Ads campaign

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We got a total of 11 conversions in January and we’re able to just attribute just 3 of them to the correct Google Ads campaign.

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We had 11 conversions in January but only 3 were tracked in Google Analytics. 8 conversions are attributed to “not set” and the remaining 3 are assigned to their corresponding campaigns and ad groups. I want to know what can be done to decrease this discrepancy?

Here are the details for my troubleshooting:

  1. The Ads and Analytics accounts are linked

  2. The gclid parameter is not dropped. Here is a sample test gclid paramter attached to the website URL: https://www.shaipe.com.au/?gclid=Tester123#xyz

  3. Auto-tagging is turned on in the Ads account and a URL tracking template has been added.

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  4. There’s a URL tracking templated added at the account level. This is the tracking template:

{lpurl}?utm_term={keyword}&utm_campaign={_utmcampaign}&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=9400479031&hsa_cam={campaignid}&hsa_grp={adgroupid}&hsa_ad={creative}&hsa_src={network}&hsa_tgt={targetid}&hsa_kw={keyword}&hsa_mt={matchtype}&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3

This was added automatically by the Ads API, I guess because we’re using Google Analytics (UA) and HubSport CRM

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  1. Google analytics is set to prioritize auto-tagging values and not UTM values.
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I came across this article [UA] Check if Google Ads auto-tagging works - Analytics Help. which states that URL case conversion might be at play and due to which we don’t see the data attributed correctly. I’m not sure how to check if the gclid parameter is being case converted or not. I don’t see the gclid paramter changing case when performing the test.

I would appreciate if someone can help me solve this issue.

Thanks,
Oliver

Last edited by @oliver1 2023-01-31T22:26:19Z

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Interesting data @oliver1. Maybe @whoiseddie can add his input.

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Thanks @sakib - Feel free to tag more people. I am hoping to get an answer soon. Thanks!

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@jessica_best Thoughts?

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You already tried the thing I would have looked at which is whether something is getting misset or overridden.

I do notice, though, that you have #xyz in your link. Is that in a UTM parameter in the middle of the URL or the end? In email, we learned that anchor links/jump tags won’t work unless they’re at the end, but I haven’t seen it mess up tracking before. I wonder if it’s worth removing any # from the URL and seeing if you can test/track that way?

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