[UA] Incorrect data [Legacy]

In this article:

Google Ads data from wrong campaigns in Analytics views

When you link a Google Ads account to your Analytics account, sometimes the Google Ads data for one website appears in the wrong Analytics view. When you apply cost data from a Google Ads account, data from the entire account is applied to each view: Analytics does not automatically match campaigns to specific views.

If your Google Ads campaigns are for a single website, and you have multiple websites in your Analytics account:

1. Log in to your Google Ads account at https://ads.google.com.
2. Click the Tools and Analysis tab, then click Analytics.
3. For all views except the view in which Google Ads data should be included:
   • From the Website Views table, click Edit.
   • In the Main Website View Information table, click Edit.
   • Clear the Apply Cost Data checkbox.
   • Click Save Changes.

All Google Ads cost and impression data is imported into any view for which you select the checkbox.

If you are running campaigns for multiple websites, and are tracking these in your Analytics account:

For each view that should include a subset of your Google Ads data, create a custom Include filter as follows:

1. Log in to your Google Ads account at https://ads.google.com.
2. Click the Tools and Analysis tab, then click Analytics.
3. Create a filter with the following attributes:
   
   Filter Type: Custom filter > Include
   Filter Field: Campaign Target URL
   Filter Pattern: [the domain of your Google Ads campaign's destination URLs]
   Case Sensitive: No
   
   For example, if this view is tracking the campaign for website www.example.com, enter example\.com as the Filter Pattern (note that the dot in the URL must be escaped by a backslash).
4. From the Available Website Views list, select the view to which this filter applies, then click Add.
5. Click Finish.

This filter tells Analytics to include only the Google Ads data for campaigns that lead to a specific domain. You need to create a similar filter for each view in which you want to include Google Ads data, and make sure that you apply each filter to the correct view.

Traffic from campaigns that don't exist in my Google Ads account

It is possible to find campaigns within your Analytics account that aren't in your Google Ads account. If you find campaigns listed that have no clicks but many sessions, this normally means another Google Ads account is sending traffic to your site. When there is another Google Ads account with Auto-tagging turned on and sending traffic to your website, you see those campaigns listed with sessions in your Analytics account. You do not see cost data associated with these sessions because the two accounts aren't linked.

CPC data is reported as organic or direct

If your CPC data is appearing in your reports as organic or direct traffic, it's likely due to improperly tagged or untagged destination URLs in your ads. If you haven't manually tagged your URLs, please enable Destination URL auto-tagging in your Google Ads account.

For non-Google Ads campaigns, you need to manually tag your links. You can use the URL Builder tool to generate properly formatted links that include source and medium information.

Finally, make sure that you've added the Analytics tracking code to your landing pages. If a user lands on a page that isn't tracked, the campaign information associated with the link to that page will not be recorded. This is true even if the user then navigates to another page of your site that is being tracked.