Just outside my houseboat, there is a small pathway that connects the street to my front door. The pathway is shouldered by a parking space. On this pathway, two motorcycles usually decorate the view out of my window.
Today, some idiot bumped into one of these motorcycles while trying to park his car…
My Ducati fell. Mirror broken.
The point of the story is this: I had to go online and buy a new mirror for the Hypermotard. The transaction was easily paid via iDeal (the favorite payment gateway for Dutchies). And PPC-nerdy me immediately started looking for conversion tracking tags being fired on the thank-you page (please tell me I’m not alone). I couldn’t find the Google Ads conversion tracking.
Most probably, this vendor is tracking conversions via Google Analytics.
And this reminded me of an expensive lesson from my not-too-distant past:
If you are importing transactions via Analytics into Google Ads, and you did not add all the payment options in iDeal (or any other payment processor) to the ‘Google Analytics Referral Exclusion List’, these transactions will not be imported into Google Ads!
The reason is: let’s say furious Nils discovered your super-duper-Hypermotard-mirror-selling-webshop via a Google search and clicked on your ad. To complete the payment, still-grumpy Nils goes to the website of the selected payment option (e.g., klarna.com, ing.nl). After completing the payment, Nils is slightly relieved and sent to your thank you page. Now in Analytics, this initiates a new session with the website of the selected payment option being the referral. Since Analytics attributes conversions to the last non-direct source/medium, the transaction is being attributed to the domain of the selected payment option (medium: referral). This transaction is not imported by Google Ads.
Here’s my advice: when importing transactions via Analytics into Google Ads, be sure to frequently check your Referrals for attributed conversions. You might want to add some domains to your Referral Exclusion List.
NB: This is especially important if you are running on Smart Bidding, because not having these types of conversions tracked in Google Ads strongly reduces performance.
– Nils