Duplicate GCLIDs received today reported on different day in Click Performance API

[shumar...@gmail.com]

Hello,

First of all looking forward to the communities thoughts on this issue. 

I have a scenario where our system has logged numerous clicks with the same exact GCLID. After doing some investigation we have found that the clicks are being reported by the Adwords Click Performance API in the past. Actually these are found back on the originating date of the first occurrence of this GCLID. So for example I have over 50 clicks with the same GCLID between Dec. 2015 - Jan. 2016. In this example the first occurrences of this GCLID was in December.

So my question is, how is Adwords assigning the duplicate GCLID? I have other examples which are a counter example, I am able to confirm its the same consumer, but with different GCLIDs. In order to ensure our process lines up with Adwords UI I want to address this anomaly via the best practice to ensure we are not misrepresenting the Marketers digital spend in our platform. What is the best practice to deal with this scenario.

My concern is that these clicks were sent via active tracking so I know that the click requests were sent on the date I received them, not via a bookmark on the users browser. If I were using web logs that could be the cause but am not using web logs so I know Adwords generated(assigned, appended) this duplicate ID in January but inevitably reported on this occurrence in December.

The other concern is that the data freshness doesn't clearly outline any limits on how far back to look so my concern is that I will not know how far back to keep looking for an original GCLID. https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2544985?hl=en

This article seems close but not exactly the same.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/adwords-api/gclid$20/adwords-api/t4xZxN9cAvo/b5fpa3OHEi4J

Please help :D

Thanks,

Brad

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hello Brad,

Sorry for the late response. Could you please provide me with your report definition, client customer Id and a copy of the report that shows this issue?

Thanks,

Anthony

AdWords API Team