Why Google Ads reports more sales than your shop
Why Google Ads and Meta report more conversions than your shop has orders, from view-through to modeling and double counting, and how to count each buyer once.
Buyer
A buyer is a person who bought in the period you are looking at, counted once however many orders they placed.
Orders count transactions; buyers count people. A customer who places three orders in a month is three orders and one buyer. The difference matters when you judge a channel: one that brings a single loyal customer with many orders looks strong on orders and thin on buyers.
Counting buyers needs a way to recognise the same person across visits, because the first visit and the purchase are often days apart. Without it, a tool can count purchases per visit but cannot say how many people bought.
In MIRA FIVE
Buyers are the people who bought in the period, where buying means reaching the goal with the Purchase role. Buyers is one of the four key numbers on the Overview, and “What changed” names the channels, campaigns and pages that gained or lost buyers against the previous period. Acquisition shows buyers for each channel and campaign and, with the Google Ads connection, the cost per buyer. Time to purchase runs from a person’s first visit to their first purchase.
Example
The Acme Shop had 138 buyers in the last 30 days, 19% more than the 30 days before. Organic social brought 12 more buyers than in the previous period.