Discovery ponders an interesting question at the Search Engine Watch Forums. Apparently, Google AdWords reports are not accurate due to how they itemize the data. He is seeing more reports like this:
123 Other unique queries. 69 Other unique queries. As a matter of fact the "other unique queries" line item represents nearly 70% of the reported traffic. The report is no longer effective.
Similarly, the Google ad placement report is losing its credibility:
Now we have "other", "Domain Ad" and "Error" line items. Once again, these summary line items which provide no information you can act upon, have slowly increased to represent almost 40% of the reported clicks/traffic.
This is a sentiment echoed by other users as well. AussieWebmaster, for example, puts it bluntly: "most tools seem to become less useful once bought by a search engine."
But Mel66 says that she still is dependent upon it even though it takes a lot of time.
That said, I still find Google's reports useful beyond what I get from analytics. I suppose it depends on which analytics package you use, but I find I can more easily run granular/detailed reports within Adwords than I can from analytics. However, this is time-consuming, as you mention.
I'm all for making it less time consuming.
Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.
