I can't seem to figure out why Pinterest Analytics shows so many more clicks & visits to my website than my Google Analytics. Here's an example from the dates of 5/24/2017 to 6/6/2017.
You can see that on one day it shows over 800 visits. But now look at my Google Analytics for the same date range.
And you see that on that same peak visit day, I didn't break 200.
I researched this and couldn't find any definitive answers. There was some speculation here on a Google forum.
Pinterest also responded in their Help section by saying:
It's normal to see more clicks than other analytics tools because we're tracking clicks, not visits. It’s also possible for a person to go to your site and leave before your website analytics tracking code can record the visit. Check with your analytics provider if you see any discrepancies.
So I still have no answer to this question. I think I'm going to purchase a different Analytics tracking software to run simultaneously with Google Analytics so that I can compare stats. If Google Analytics remains my benchmark than it's hard to know whether Pinterest or Google is causing the discrepancy. I'm just not sure which analytic software to use. I'll do some research later.
It’s pretty sad that there’s only a random comment every year or two on this. I can’t believe more people aren’t seeing this same issue and asking the same question. As I’ve dug into this, I can see a few additional considerations that I have yet to verify:
1. Pinterest may be tracking ‘pin saves’ and ‘pin shares’ as outbound clicks – which would definitely inflate that click number without boosting site traffic.
2. Pinterest may be using an algorithm to calculate performance rather than adding them up and aggregating the actual data. If true, this is a lazy approach but it would mean their on-platform data is, at best, directional but not definitive.
3. Google Analytics has a ‘filter bots’ setting that I’ve yet to see on Pinterest. It may be that we are seeing bot traffic included in Pinterest analytics and not
@paul although this article is already 6 years old, the issue seems to persist
@michael were you able to do some further verification? I would be very interested in your findings.
On top of your suggestions the following might also explain the differences. There are two versions of Google Analytics: GA4 (free) and GA360 (paid). A major difference between the two is that GA4 uses sampled data whereas GA360 uses actual data. Sampled data means that Google makes an “estimate” of numbers. The bigger your audience, the better the numbers will resemble actual data. But keep in mind that data will never be accurate.
I see the same discrepancies so I immediately paused our Pinterest ads because the math wasn’t adding up. Pinterest claimed 50 outbound clicks ($91 spent) but Shopify reported 4 inbound visits from Pinterest.
Nicole – the only reasonable explanation I ever got since I wrote this article is the same one I mentioned in the post… which is that people are clicking the Visit button on Pinterest but then hitting back before the site loads and the Google Analytics tag is triggered. It makes sense, but the discrepancy is still surprising. I’ve never gotten a better answer than that though.
Did you ever get more data on this? I am seeing a 91% discrepancy between the number of Pinterest clicks on an ad and the number of visits received. That’s generally an indication of click fraud, but their help people are indicating that it’s normal.