Meta reports 26% more conversions than your analytics tools show. Google Ads over-attributes by 15-20%. GA4 underreports by 18-35%. You’re looking at three different dashboards showing three different numbers for the exact same sales—and none of them match your WooCommerce orders.
Here’s what nobody tells you: these platforms aren’t broken. They’re working exactly as designed. Each one claims credit for your conversions because that’s their business model. Every advertising platform wants credit for your conversions—that’s not cynicism, it’s how they justify your ad spend.
Why Your Platforms Show Different Numbers
The discrepancy isn’t a bug to fix. It’s a feature of how attribution works. Each platform operates in isolation, tracking only its own touchpoints while remaining blind to what happens elsewhere.
According to Meta, more than 65% of conversions start on one device and are completed on another (Meta/Facebook, 2024). When someone sees your Instagram ad on mobile, then buys on desktop three days later, Facebook claims that sale. But GA4 sees a direct visitor because it can’t connect the cross-device journey without Facebook’s login data.
Each platform essentially plays by its own rules in assigning credit, leading to inconsistent numbers for the same conversion.
What Each Platform Actually Measures
Meta (Facebook/Instagram): Uses a 7-day click/1-day view attribution window by default. This means if someone saw your ad but didn’t click, then purchased within 24 hours, Meta claims credit. These view-through conversions are invisible to GA4 entirely—GA4 has no way to track an ad view without a click.
Google Ads: Uses attribution windows ranging from 30-90 days depending on your settings. With Enhanced Conversions and Consent Mode V2 active, Google Ads over-attributes by 15-20% through modeled conversions (Google Ads Documentation, 2024)—statistical estimates for users who don’t consent to tracking.
GA4: Relies on cookies and JavaScript that users can block. GA4 underreports conversions by 18-35% for paid campaigns when cookies are rejected or blocked (EasyInsights, 2025). With 31.5% of global users running ad blockers (Statista, 2024), GA4 is always working with incomplete data.
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The Math That Drives Marketers Crazy
Here’s a real scenario from Ruler Analytics research: If Facebook shows 250 conversions and Google Ads shows 280, your actual results could be closer to 300—the rest is duplication (Ruler Analytics, 2025).
The numbers don’t add up because they’re not supposed to. When a customer sees your Facebook ad, clicks a Google ad the next day, and converts through an organic search, you get:
- Facebook: 1 conversion (view-through attribution)
- Google Ads: 1 conversion (click attribution)
- GA4: 0-1 conversions (depends on cookies and attribution model)
- WooCommerce: 1 actual order
Three platforms potentially claiming credit for one sale. This is platform attribution myopia—each platform only tracks its own touchpoints, giving itself credit while unable to see the full picture.
What You Should Actually Trust
Stop trying to reconcile the platforms. You can’t, and you don’t need to.
Your WooCommerce order database is the only source of truth. It shows actual transactions—real money from real customers. Platform attribution numbers are useful for optimizing campaigns within each platform, but useless for understanding your actual business performance.
Here’s the practical approach:
- Business decisions: Use WooCommerce order count and revenue
- Facebook optimization: Use Facebook’s reported conversions to optimize within Facebook
- Google Ads optimization: Use Google Ads conversions to optimize within Google Ads
- Cross-platform comparison: Compare platform totals against WooCommerce to see overlap
The question isn’t which platform is right. They’re all telling different parts of the same story. The question is whether each platform receives complete, consistent data to make their methodology differences the only source of discrepancy.
You may be interested in: Stop Managing 6 Pixels: Multi-Platform WooCommerce Tracking
The Data Quality Problem Behind Attribution
Attribution discrepancies fall into two categories: methodology differences (acceptable) and data gaps (fixable).
Methodology differences will always exist. Meta will always count view-through conversions that GA4 cannot see. Google Ads will always use different attribution windows. These aren’t problems—they’re design choices.
Data gaps are the problem you can actually solve. When your Facebook Pixel fires for some visitors but not others due to ad blockers, Facebook’s attribution becomes unreliable. When GA4 loses 35% of conversions to cookie rejection, its numbers become meaningless for cross-platform comparison.
Server-side tracking doesn’t fix attribution methodology differences—those will always exist. But it ensures every platform receives the same underlying conversion data. When all platforms start from identical event data, their different numbers represent genuine attribution philosophy rather than data capture failures.
Sending Consistent Data to All Platforms
Transmute Engine™ is a first-party Node.js server that captures conversions once at the source—your WooCommerce order hook—and sends identical data to all platforms simultaneously. The inPIPE WordPress plugin collects events and routes them through your own subdomain to GA4, Facebook CAPI, Google Ads Enhanced Conversions, and more.
Platforms will still attribute differently. That’s expected. But when Facebook, Google Ads, and GA4 all receive the exact same conversion event with the same data, you know the discrepancy is about attribution methodology—not missing data.
Key Takeaways
- Meta reports 26% higher conversions than analytics tools due to view-through attribution that GA4 cannot track
- Google Ads over-attributes by 15-20% with Enhanced Conversions and modeled data
- GA4 underreports by 18-35% when cookies are blocked or rejected
- 65% of conversions are cross-device—each platform attributes these differently
- WooCommerce orders are your source of truth—use platform data for optimization, not business decisions
- Server-side tracking ensures data consistency—attribution differences become methodology-only, not data gaps
Facebook counts view-through conversions by default—sales from people who saw your ad but didn’t click. GA4 cannot track view-through conversions at all. Facebook also uses a 7-day click/1-day view attribution window, crediting sales to ads viewed within 24 hours even without a click. This fundamental methodology difference means the numbers will never match.
You don’t—and you shouldn’t try. Your WooCommerce order database is the only source of truth. Each platform uses different attribution models by design. Instead of reconciling platform numbers, use your actual order count for business decisions and use platform data only for optimizing campaigns within that platform.
No platform is lying—they’re just measuring different things. Meta counts view-through conversions and cross-device journeys using its login data. Google Ads uses Enhanced Conversions to model behaviors it can’t directly track. GA4 only sees what cookies and JavaScript can capture. Each tells a different but valid story about the same customer journey.
Never add platform conversions together. If Facebook shows 250 conversions and Google Ads shows 280, your actual sales might be closer to 300—but most of those are the same people being double-counted. Compare your total platform conversions against your WooCommerce order count to see the overlap.
Ready to send consistent conversion data to all your platforms? Learn how Transmute Engine eliminates data gaps from your attribution.
