Conversion Totals Differ Between the Keywords Tab and Other Tabs

When filtering in the main Keywords grid, the total metrics seen here may appear under-reported compared to Ads, Groups, Campaigns, and Accounts grids when you're using the same filters. Below we'll explain what causes this and how you can fix it. 

What Causes The Issue?

There are two distinct causes for this issue, as follows:

  1. The reason for the difference in metric totals is usually unattributed data at the keyword level. This can occur for revenue if the system is not able to identify a keyword in the account to attribute conversions to. What will happen is that the system will attribute revenue only at the ads level (which will roll up to the group, campaign, and account levels), but will not attribute for specific keywords. Instead, this revenue will appear in an overall grey Unattributed bar seen in a Keywords-subtab when clicked within a specific group. By opening a revenue file, you can find these by filtering the Results columns for: Warning: Attributed only to the creative.

    These unattributed conversions can occur for a number of reasons. You can find out more about unattributed conversions from Revenue & Conversion Tracking: Understanding Unattributed Revenue or Conversions.
     
  2. Another reason for the difference in metric totals between grids is content. Content data within a campaign will not be brought down for specific keywords since the system does not have individual keywords to sync with this. In addition, content conversions are only attributed to creatives, not keywords. Instead of seeing this data for individual keywords, this revenue will appear in an overall grey Content bar seen in a Keywords sub-tab when clicked within a specific group. In the revenue file, the Results column will say Success. However, this conversion and revenue data will not appear in the Keywords tab, even if a valid Keyword ID is passed in the revenue file.

    Another way to check if the conversion data is content within the Groups, Campaigns, or Channels tab is to filter for Content in the Keyword Match Type filter on the left-hand side of the screen.

How To Fix The Issue

This is the platform's expected behavior.

For reporting purposes, we'd recommend that you compare metric reports from the same tab level to avoid discrepancies like this one. Also be sure that you have the appropriate filters enabled or disabled as required.

Written by Marketing @ Marin Software

Last published at: December 8th, 2023