Visits and clicks data provided by search engines, ad networks or affiliates do not match Acquisition reports in Matomo

You may get reports from search console tools, partners, affiliates, or ad networks on clicks from their website to yours. When comparing the search console reports from search engines, with the Acquisition reports in Matomo Analytics, it is normal to notice slight data differences. The following sections will explain the common reasons behind the discrepancies between your data sets.

Comparing clicks with visits

For example, in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster, Baidu Webmaster, or in Yandex Webmaster Tools, it lists Clicks and Impressions. In Matomo Acquisition reports (such as Overview and All channels reports), it will show Visits.

A single “Visit” by a visitor might involve several clicks on search results, and search engines count these clicks individually. However, Matomo would only count one “Visit” (assuming they searched within the 30 minutes visit duration). Similarly, with ad network reporting (Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads, AdRoll), they typically provide impressions and clicks.

Matomo may exclude users who asked not to be tracked (DoNotTrack)

Matomo automatically respects the DoNotTrack setting by default. If visitors enable this setting in their browser, Matomo stops collecting tracking data. If you think many of your users are using DoNotTrack, disable the setting in the Privacy settings. The JavaScript tracker handles this feature.

Matomo will not track people using ad blockers

Some ad blockers prevent the tracker from running, so Matomo will not be able to track users with ad blockers. Meanwhile, the search engines and affiliates will still report clicks even from users that use ad blockers. This could explain 5-10% of the data discrepancies where Matomo may report less visits if your audience uses ad blockers.

Additionally, there are browsers (used by a small percentage) with special features that may not send the Referrer URL. Or they may remove the UTM/Campaign parameters from clicked URLs, which would result in visits tracked as Direct entry in Matomo.

Some users may be excluded from Matomo using IP address or other ways

There are several ways Matomo can be configured to exclude and ignore some traffic, such as applying IP exclusion rules or User-agent exclusions. However, the search engines and affiliates will still report clicks from users ignored in Matomo.

Position of your Matomo JS tracking code

Matomo will only track users who stay long enough on the page to execute the JavaScript tracking code. Some users may close the browser window before the Matomo tracking code executes. For example, if the page takes 5 or 10 seconds to load. We recommend to placing the Matomo tracking code just before the closing </head> tag in your pages. Ensure any other scripts in the pages execute quickly. The faster your page loads, the faster the Matomo tracking code loads and will be more likely to track the visits.

Are you using a redirect on your website landing page?

If you are using a redirect on a landing page, the visitor’s browser may lose the referrer information. If you are tracking campaigns, and the landing page has a redirect, the URL loaded after the redirection will lose the campaign parameters. Make sure that your visitors arrive directly on the page with the Matomo tracking code installed.

Is your website using HTTPS (SSL)?

Most websites run over HTTPS. When someone is visiting a website over HTTPS and then clicks on a link to your website, you want to make sure that the link also references the HTTPS version of your website. If a user on an HTTPS website clicks on a link to an HTTP page, it does not pass the referrer to the HTTP page. To ensure correct tracking of all your referrers in Matomo, check that your website works on HTTPS and that your links from other websites use the HTTPS version of your website URLs.

Make sure you are viewing reports for the correct website and date and the time zones match

In Matomo, make sure you selected the same date or date period as used in the other tool. Additionally, double check that the time zone of the Website in Matomo matches the time zone of your other tool and data set.