Google Ads Tracking Tag vs. ClickMagick
Is the Google Tag actually sabotaging your ads and killing your ROI?
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Patrick Kelly
ClickMagick Founder -
December 1, 2024
Last updated -
14 minutes
Est. read time
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Hi, I’m Patrick — the founder of ClickMagick.
If you’re currently relying on the Google Ads Tracking Tag to track your ads, and you’re relying on the resulting stats in your Google Ads account to optimize your ads, this could be the most profitable page you’ll read all year.
You see, the Google Tracking Tags on your pages are actually corrupted with bad data ...
But the good news is you can instantly boost ad optimization and ROI when you fix this. As certain as gravity.
Let’s compare the Google Tag vs. ClickMagick and see how the Google Tag is actually sabotaging your ads ...
Patrick Kelly, FounderP.S. This page is for advertisers who really want to understand how the Google Tag and ad optimization works.
If you're not interested in the technical details and all you really care about is better results from your ads, just grab a free trial and give ClickMagick a try. It'll make you a lot more than it costs. Or you don't pay.
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Short Attribution Windows
Google has limited attribution windows that simply don't track all your conversions.Depending on your business, it could be weeks or even months before customers fully engage or make a purchase.
That’s why ClickMagick tracks your visitors “forever,” so even if you have a longer sales cycle all conversions are tracked properly.
With ClickMagick, even if someone buys 6 months after clicking your Google Ad, we’ll still track that sale all the way back to the original ad they clicked — and their entire journey inbetween.
But Google Ads has an attribution window of just 30-90 days, which means any conversions or sales more than 30-90 days after someone clicks your ad won’t be tracked by the Google Tag at all.
While you may see most of your conversions happen within 30-90 days, it’s critical you track every sale in order to properly optimize your ads ...
Because any untracked conversions messes up your stats, degrades ad optimization, and prevents accurate Customer Lifetime Value tracking.
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Weak Mobile Tracking
About 28% of Internet users are on iOS — and a whopping 96% of them opt out of tracking.When iOS 14.5 came out in September of 2021, it turned the online advertising industry upside down.
ClickMagick was unaffected, but major ad networks like Google Ads can no longer track iOS users who opt out of tracking.
iOS users make up approximiately 28% of all the people clicking your ads — and 96% of them are opting out of iOS tracking ...
... so this renders the stats in Google Ads almost useless.
Even worse, all of this missing conversion data significantly hinders Google's ability to optimize your ads (more on this in a minute).
But that’s not all, there are more problems with the Google Tracking Tag ...
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Blocked
The Google Tracking Tag is outright blocked by some browsers, and popular privacy plugins.
Google TrackingThis one is pretty cut and dry — some privacy focused browsers like Brave outright block all Google Tag tracking.
Other more popular browsers like Safari, Edge and FireFox have privacy modes that are easy to enable that also completely block Google tracking ...
And then there are popular privacy plugins like uBlock for Chrome which completely blocks all Google tracking as well.
uBlock alone has over 40M users, and while no one knows exactly how many people are using apps that block Google's tracking code — it's A LOT.
ClickMagick allows you to easily set up a custom tracking domain so your tracking code cannot be blocked ...
But when you're relying on the Google Tracking Tag all of this untracked traffic leads to even less accurate stats and degraded ad optimization.
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Flawed “Greedy” Attribution
Google Ads tries to take credit for every single sale it can — even when it makes no sense.Imagine someone clicks your Google ad right now but quickly bounces ...
Then, some time over the next week, something else catches their attention and they ultimately buy something from you.
Maybe it’s an ad you're running on another platform, one of your YouTube videos, or something you posted on TikTok ...
At this point the Google ad they clicked a week ago — and have probably completely forgotten — may have contributed nothing to generating the conversion, yet the Google Tag will still take full credit for the sale.
That's because Google is desperate to show results — so you keep giving them your money — even if those results are not very accurate ...
And this type of “greedy” attribution just muddies the waters even more.
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View-Through Conversions
Did you know Google Ads takes credit for conversions even when people don’t actually click your ads?Believe it or not, Google Tag attribution is even more greedy than that ...
Their attribution system actually takes credit for conversions that occur even if a user doesn’t actually click your ad.
Crazy right? These are known as “view-through conversions,” and here’s a scary example of how it works ...
If your Google ad is shown to someone but they don’t click, then they later engage with something you posted on social media for example and buy, the Google Tracking Tag is once again going to take full credit for the sale.
That’s right, Google takes credit even though the user didn’t click — and there's a good chance they didn’t even see — your Google ad at all.
And at this point the stats in Google Ads are getting ridiculously inaccurate, but we're not done yet ...
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Unreliable Cross-Device Tracking
About 39% of the time, Google can't detect or track visitors properly when they switch devices.The average person owns 3 devices and constantly switches between them.
This is a big problem for Google, because their “cross-device” tracking relies on users being logged in on all their devices all the time.
But studies show that Google users are only logged in to Google about 61% of the time while using the Internet ...
Which means when your visitors switch devices, there's a roughly 40% chance Google won't track them properly.
The same thing happens when people switch to private browsing mode right before making a purchase (which they do all the time) ...
The Google Tracking Tag can no longer identify the user, so they have no idea where the sale came from.
And this leads to even less accurate stats, and even worse ad optimization.
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Data Sampling & Modeling
Google guesses — ClickMagick shows you exactly what really happened.You’d think it couldn’t get much worse, but all of this bad data in your Google Ads account is indeed made even worse by Google's extensive use of “data sampling” and “modeling.”
What this means to you, in plain English, is this:
They know that they can't track everything correctly, so they use conversion modeling to "predict unobserved conversions."
And they also have way too much data to effectively analyze in a short period of time, so they use data sampling to "improve reporting performance."
So, basically, most of the stats they give you are just “best guesses.”
That’s right. By their own admission, they use data sampling and data modeling methods to estimate your stats. "Just trust us" they say.
But hopefully it goes without saying that estimated stats are not good enough when you’re trying to optimize your ads and your money is on the line ...
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Bad Data Destroys Ad Optimization
ClickMagick sends enhanced first-party conversion data to Google in real-time to improve ad optimization.I could go on and on but hopefully you get the picture — you simply can’t rely on the stats in your Google Ads account.
Growing your business with paid ads is just a matter of scaling what’s working and killing what’s not, but you can’t do that effectively with the inadequate tracking and attribution provided by the Google Tracking Tag.
But that's only the half of it, because Google’s AI algorithms are also using this bad data to optimize your ads and find you customers.
And bad data means their AI ad optimization doesn't work as well ...
... which means they end up showing your ads to people who are less likely to engage with your business, and your results and ROI both suffer.
On the other hand, ClickMagick sends your enhanced, first-party conversion data to Google in real-time, with extreme precision and accuracy.
And because ClickMagick's attribution is so accurate, we can always send back the Google “click id” and the other data Google is hungry for ...
Which leads to increased “event match quality” scores, improved ad optimization and increased ad ROI. Guaranteed.
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Direct Response Stats & Reporting
ClickMagick gives you one-of-a-kind stats and reports you need to scale like a pro, all in real time.In addition to fixing all of these problems, only ClickMagick gives you the direct response stats and reports you need to truly optimize and scale.
Here's what you get with ClickMagick:
Unique clicks
Repeat clicks
Bot clicks
Cost per click
Earnings per click
Optins / CVR
Sales / CVR
Custom goals
Total customers
New customers
Repeat customers
Lead/cust. cost
Average order value
Lifetime value
Total revenue
Frontend revenue
Upsell revenue
Backend revenue
Recurring revenue
Ad cost / COGS
Refunds
Net Profit
ROAS/ROAS24
ROI
And you can see each and every one of these stats for each and every traffic source, campaign or ad you have!
ClickMagick has better and more visual reporting as well.
The UTM Performance Report identifies your best and worst performing ads.
The Conversion Velocity Report reveals how long it takes visitors to convert.
The Lifetime Value Report shows you the cost to acquire a customer, how long it takes to breakeven, and how much customers are worth over time.
And the Funnel Steps Report paints a visual picture of the different paths visitors take through your funnel, and gives you the data you need to optimize your funnel for the most profitable paths.
I could go on, but you just don’t get these kinds of actionable, direct response stats and reports from Google Ads.
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Bot & Click Fraud Protection
Only ClickMagick's ClickShield™ protects the accuracy of your stats, and your ad budget.“Bots” are automated software programs that click your links, click your ads and waste your money, and even “opt in” to your list.
Then you’ve got competitors, and other people doing “market research” repeatedly clicking your ads ...
And even your own existing customers who search for you on Google and click your paid ad every time they want to get back to your site (happens a lot!)
Google doesn't protect you from any of this.
But ClickMagick has industry-leading bot filtering, and ClickShield™ ...
Which allows you to set up rules to define the type of click behavior that’s acceptable to your business, and block the rest.
That means more accurate stats, less wasted ad spend and increased ROAS.
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Experience & Fanatical Support
We've helped more performance marketers and small businesses fix their tracking than anyone.ClickMagick has helped over 122,000 small businesses with tracking and attribution. I'd guess we have more experience with this than anyone.
And we're pretty well-known for our amazing support.
At ClickMagick, we offer onboarding calls, live chat, fast responses to tickets, and even Zoom support if you need it.
And many users have told us our support is better than anything they've ever experienced before, because ...
Our team consists of real marketers with decades of experience — not low-paid, outsourced “customer support” reps who've never run an ad.
You just can't get help like this anywhere else, and with all the recent and ongoing changes in the industry I really can't stress just how valuable this is.
It’s a simple math problem
ClickMagick wouldn’t exist if you could rely on the Google Tag for accurate tracking and conversion attribution.
All these issues with the Google Tracking Tag are costing you a small fortune, and the reason we’ve helped over 122,000 small businesses is simple — ClickMagick makes you a lot more than it costs. Or you don't pay.
ClickMagick TrueTracking® gives you best-in-class tracking and conversion attribution ...
Every click. Every conversion. Every journey in between. Exactly as it happened ...
You can finally optimize your marketing based on your actual results ...
And we’ll automatically send your true conversion data back to Google as “enhanced conversions” in real-time ...
Leveraging first-party data collected on your website or in your online store ...
Which leads to improved ad optimization, and more conversions at the lowest cost possible.
Learn more or sign up for a free trial and get started right now. You can have everything up and running in under an hour, and I guarantee you’ll be blown away by the results.
And if you have any questions, feel free to email me personally — patrick@clickmagick.com
Patrick Kelly, Founder