Google Analytics has stored a higher number of results than Dotdigital reporting
A session is a group of browsing activity, and Google defines a session as being 30 minutes long by default. This means that if a visitor to your site doesn’t have any activity for 30 minutes, then starts browsing again, this counts as a new session.
It’s possible to alter this in your Google Analytics account. Learn more in this Google Analytics help article.
Google Analytics has stored a lower number of results than Dotdigital reporting
There are a few factors that can lead to the Google Analytics results being lower than the results in Dotdigital reporting.
One of the most likely scenarios to explain this discrepancy:
A contact clicks on a link and Dotdigital decodes the link and counts it as a click-through on the reporting page.
The page doesn't load completely, therefore the Google Analytics tracking query doesn’t have time to register the session.
This could be caused by:
The contact closing the browser before the page finished loading.
The web page took so long to load that the Google Analytics tracking couldn’t register the session.
The contact had already visited the same page recently, so the Google Analytics tracking didn't register the session.
Something on the page is throwing an error before the Google Analytics tracking on the page was reached.
The link wasn't being followed by a real user, but by an email scanning software that looks at the HTML, therefore doesn't trigger the Google Analytics JavaScript.
Google Analytics tracking for previous and future campaigns
Google Analytics can’t work retroactively; the Google Analytics account must be set up and configured before a tracked campaign is sent out.
If a triggered campaign has been set up before the Google Analytics configuration was completed, then the automated campaign must be re-saved for any future sends to be tracked through Google Analytics.
Time for Google Analytics to update data
Processing latency is 24-48 hours. Standard accounts that send more than 200,000 sessions per day to Analytics result in the reports being refreshed only once a day.
This can delay updates to reports and metrics for up to two days.
Google Analytics and External Dynamic Content (EDC) links
Google Analytics can track EDC links, and Dotdigital automatically applies UTM variables to links generated for EDC.
Discrepancies between the Dotdigital revenue figures and the Google Analytics revenue figures
If you’re using Direct tracking, the conversion period expires after one hour. In contrast, by default Google Analytics' tracking expires after six months.
Learn more about configuring Analytics cookies in this Google Analytics article.
Therefore, if a recipient clicks a link in a campaign that takes them to your website, but then decides to make a purchase after more than 60 minutes, they‘re tracked by Google as revenue against the campaign, but not by Dotdigital.
For Advanced revenue attribution, you can set your own conversion window, but the same applies if the conversion window you set in Dotdigital is shorter than that used by Google.
Where Google watches visitors for far longer than Dotdigital does, the Google revenue number can typically be higher than the Dotdigital one over time.