Google Ads Tracking Tag versus ClickMagick
Is the Google Tag actually sabotaging your ads and killing your ROI?
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Patrick Kelly
ClickMagick Founder -
February 1, 2024
Created on -
6 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 you see 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 ...
... and plugging ClickMagick into your business will instantly improve your ad tracking, ad optimization, and ROAS.
Let’s compare the Google Tag vs. ClickMagick and see how the Google Tag is actually sabotaging your ads ...
Patrick Kelly, Founder -
Google’s 30-90 Day Attribution Window
ClickMagick tracks visitors “forever” so all your sales are tracked. This is non-negotiable.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 sales 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.
This alone means the stats you see in your Google Ads account can never be perfectly accurate, but that’s just the start ...
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Google’s Weak Mobile Tracking
Only ClickMagick can accurately track individual iOS users.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 could make up 50% or more of the people clicking your ads — and 96% of them are opting out of iOS tracking ...
... so this renders your stats you see in Google Ads almost useless.
But that’s not all, there are more problems with the Google Tracking Tag ...
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Google’s “Greedy” Attribution
ClickMagick’s multi-touch attribution reveals what’s really working — top, middle and bottom of funnel.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 your Facebook Ad, 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 absolutely nothing to generating the conversion, yet the Google Tag will still take full credit for the sale.
Google is desperate to show results — so you keep giving them your money — even if those results are not very accurate.
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Google Ads
Did you know Google Ads takes credit for sales even when people don’t click your ads?
View-Through ConversionsBelieve it or not, Google Tag attribution is even more greedy than that ...
Their attribution system actually causes them to take 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 maybe didn’t even see — your Google ad at all.
And at this point the stats you see in Google Ads simply can’t be relied on at all.
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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 you see 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, so they use conversion modeling to "predict unobserved conversions."
And they also have way too much data to analyze quickly enough in order to show the stats you see in your ad manager, 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 what you want when you’re trying to optimize your ads ...
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Bad Data Destroys Ad Optimization
We send your true conversion data to Google in real-time, so they can better optimize your ads.I could go on and on but hopefully you get the picture — you can’t rely on the stats in your Google Ads account.
Growing your business with paid ads is a simple matter of scaling what’s working and killing what’s not, but you just can’t do that effectively with the inaccurate tracking and stats provided by the Google Tracking Tag.
And to make matters worse, Google’s AI algorithms are also using all this bad data to try to find you more customers.
But because they’re using bad data they can’t properly optimize your ads ...
... which means they end up showing your ads to people who are less likely to engage with your business, and your ROI suffers.
It’s a simple math problem
ClickMagick wouldn’t exist if you could rely on the Google Tag for accurate tracking and conversion attribution.
And your choice is really just a simple math problem ...
All these issues with the Google Tag are costing you a small fortune — and stressing you out — and the reason we’ve helped over 100,000 small businesses is because we fix it all for about 5 bucks a day. ClickMagick just makes sense.
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 about 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, FounderP.S. ClickMagick offers tons more I haven’t even talked about ...
One-of-a-kind stats like ROAS24 which tells you if you’re making or losing money on the frontend of your funnel.
More visual reporting than Google Ads, and a detailed “user journey” for every visitor and customer.
Best-in-class bot filtering, click fraud protection, bit.ly style tracking links, affiliate marketing tools ...
And the best customer support you’ve ever experienced. I guarantee it.