Meaning of source stats

[JamaC1]

While looking at Weebly stats, I am trying to differentiate between standard google searches for our website, and searches we paid for with google ads. 

In last 30 days, we had 823 sources that were either "google.com" or "www.google.com," and 49 that were "tpc.googlesyndication.com". I understand the last one on that list is most definietly from google ad clicks but my ad consultant says the other 823 from google.com or www.google.com are ALSO ad clicks. This doesn't make sense, as that would leave 0 standard google searches for our website.

Can you tell me if google.com or www.google.com is a simple google search, for which we did not pay? Or might google ad clicks be part of this number?

Our consultant controls the google analytics with password, I don't have access to that, haven't used it, and don't know if google analytics differentiates between ad clicks and standard searches. I am website admin and am asked to report to managers on cost effectiveness of ads, if they are steering a lot more traffic to our website, or only a small amount. 

Thnx.

[Adam7]

I'm not an expert on this, but my understanding is that any referrer hits from www.google.com and google.com are search result clicks. I've seen those on sites of my own and I don't use adsense, adwords, or any other advertising.

[bobafett]

@Adam: Oh really?  I thought they came from Google crawling your website.

[JamaC1]

Well that is an interesting suggestion as well!

Of course google would crawl websites to archive search terms. But I wonder if that would come from google.com or some other google url?

[Adam7]

It could be that, too - I don't know what referrer Google's bots would show as. Maybe it's both?

[JamaC1]

Thanks Adam. Your answer is the same way I thought about it. Is there an expert on google analytics or google ads on this forum whom  I might ask?

Before we purchased google ads we also had standard google searches with the "google.com" url, but there ARE more google.com referrals this year. The google ad consultant is claiming those increased results, but two things regarding our event publicity are different this year a) we paid $1200 in google ad choices AND b) we greatly increased other conventional forms of advertising and promotions, such as more press releases, newspaper and magazine articles, online calendars and blogs, radio spots and interviews, etc. I am not sure I can sort out the role of google ads except for the tpc.googlesyndication.com, which IS an ad click.

[Adam7]

It might actually be better to ask this one on Google's product forums. I'm sure they would be able to shed light on what that includes:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters

[bobafett]

@JamaC:  My personal take on those google consultats - vast majority of them hocus-pocus selling medicine men. I wanted to be google ad consultant - but decided for me it would be a waste.  I don't have the skill set to create a smoke screen!

Jama, you seem to be have brains.  Why not yank out the google analytics password from them.  It is your site, you OWN the account.  Give some valid reasons to have the password like my management is asking me do some stuff.  I am unclear of requirements.  If I could see the data I could write a story for them - blah, blah blah.

[JamaC1]

Fun answer there, Boba. You have probably guessed correctly this is a Marketing vs. IT conflict. Marketing is claiming great success for google ads, but I track such things over time and don't see a huge impact from the paid ads vs. the regular google search.

Thanks Adam for the google help link. I will try there and will let you know what I find out.

[Adam7]

Good luck, and if you find something out feel free to share that here.

[JamaC1]

Adam

What I learned from google analytics help is that all of these are "organic searches" where someone types into a google search box on a desktop, phone, or tablet. They don't contain google ads or robots. 

www.google.com

google.com

google.android.quicksearchbox

google.SomeOtherNation

google.android.SomeOtherNation

In my case weebly recognized 881 such organic searches and google analytics cited 884 for the same period.

The referral source tpc.googlesyndication.com is indeed a referral source triggered by a google ad click, but weebly doesn't pick these up very well, or there is some breakdown between click and website arrival, such that weebly said we had 53 referrals from this source, but google ads charged us for 476 clicks. Thats a pretty big discrepancy.

My questions were answered - the google ads are not hiding in the regular google.com referrals sources. But they are hiding somewhere else. Thanks everyone.

[Adam7]

Ahh, interesting! Thanks for sharing, @JamaC.