{KeyWords}{Creative}{Ifsearch:c}{ifcontent:s}

Using AdWords Dynamic Parameters in Links - Stolen from Brad Geddes of Ewhisper. Excellent post Brad!

Google allows four different dynamic URL parameters to be added to any AdWords destination URL string to pass along information about that particular click. These parameters are replaced with actual data about the click so that your log files, or tracking system, contains additional data about your AdWords clicks enabling one to analyze more data about any campaign and individual click.

The four parameters pass along:

* If the click originated from search or the content network
* The keyword in your account that triggered the ad that was clicked
* The creative that was clicked
* The originating website (for Site Targeted campaigns)

In the URL illustrations, I’m going to be using this URL as a starting point:
http://www.example.com?
src=AdWords&medium=PPC&campaign=AdGroupName

In this URL, these are the current definitions (i.e. the minimum tracking I add to any URL for any paid traffic):

* src=AdWords - The traffic source
* medium=ppc - The medium for the traffic source (i.e. this could be banner, ppc, email, etc)
* campaign=AdGroupName - The ‘theme’ of the traffic. (For Yahoo Search Marketing, this would be the category name.)

The AdWords Dynamic Parameters:

Is the traffic from the search or content network?

This is the parameter to determine if the traffic is from the content or the search network:
{ifContent:Content}{ifSearch:Search}

AdWords allows one to replace the ‘Content’ or the ‘Search’ after the colon in the string to whatever you desire. If you only wanted to use a single letter to parse out the information, you would change the parameters to look like:
{ifContent:C}{ifSearch:S}.

This parameter is also known as ‘ValueTrack’. More information is available from the AdWords help section on ValueTrack.

The URL now looks like:
http://www.example.com?
src=AdWords&medium=PPC&campaign=AdGroupName
&Network={ifContent:Content}{ifSearch:Search}

What keyword triggered the ad?

With AdWords matching styles, it’s often possible for a variety of keywords within the same account to trigger an ad. The keyword parameter allows one to see which keyword triggered the ad. It’s a very simple parameter:
{keyword}

I generally add kw= in front of insertion to label what this parameter is showing. Thus, the URL now looks like:
http://www.example.com?
src=AdWords&medium=PPC&campaign=AdGroupName&
Network={ifContent:Content}{ifSearch:Search}&kw={keyword}

More Matching style definitions:

* Exact Match
* Phrase Match
* Broad Match

Which ad was clicked?

It is often useful in split testing or determining Profit by Click to know which ad was clicked for tracking sales or under preforming traffic back to the actual ad. This dynamic parameter adds the ‘ad id’ to the URL:
{creative}

The biggest issue with this is that it only shows the ad number (which usually looks like: 123653). It makes sense that Google isn’t going to pass the entire ad copy through the URL. To find which ad matches up with the ad id (which you’ll want to know when you line up the data to the ad) there are three ways to find the number:

1. In the AdGroup, view the source and line up the numbers (by far the most cumbersome)
2. Pull the information via the API (the easiest way when lining up numbers)
3. Run an ‘ad text’ report inside your AdWords account. When running this report, in the additional columns menu there is a check box for ‘ad id’. Click this box and it will display the ad id with the rest of your report.

I usually add ‘ad=’ before this parameter in the URL string for identification purposes. This now makes the URL look like:

http://www.example.com?
src=AdWords&medium=PPC&campaign=AdGroupName&
Network={ifContent:Content}{ifSearch:Search}&kw={keyword}
&ad={creative}

Which website triggered the click?

This parameter is only for site targeted campaigns. If the parameter has no data, then Google does not display the parameter. Therefore, it doesn’t hurt to add this to all URLs, however, just remember, many times it will be blank.

This will NOT show which website triggered the click in content targeting campaigns. For that level of tracking, you’ll have to choose an analytics package that reads past the ‘pagead2.googlesyndication.com’ in the referring URL.

The parameter insertion is pretty simple, just add:
{placement} to the URL.

This makes the URL now look like:
http://www.example.com?
src=AdWords&medium=PPC&campaign=AdGroupName&
Network={ifContent:Content}{ifSearch:Search}&kw={keyword}
&ad={creative}&SiteTarget={placement}

If you are using Google Analytics:

Each tracking system has it’s own set of parameters that it reads. Therefore, you might need to change ‘kw=’ or ‘medium’ etc in the URL string to something your tracking system will parse into appropriate categories.

It is important to also note that some analytic packages require the parameters to be in a specific order, while others just look for the identifying information and don’t care which order is utilized (i.e. one could add site target first, then keyword, then creative, then search vs content, etc).

If you are using Google Analytics, this is how the tracking string would look like with the proper parameters attached:
http://www.example.com/?utm_source=AdWords&utm_medium=PPC&utm_term={keyword}&
utm_content={creative}&utm_campaign=AdGroup&
Network={ifContent:Content}{ifSearch:Search}&SiteTarget={placement}

The only parameters that need to be adjusted in the above URL is the website (i.e. replace example.com with your website) and AdGroup (replace with your Actual AdGroup name).

Wrap Up

Google has done an excellent job with AdWords of allowing variable parameters to be passed to your website. It has made it easy to track just about anything, especially if you’re pulling information via the API and automatically generating reports based on both your log files and AdWords information.

Understanding the URL string, it’s parameters (AdWords or not) is very important to learn and master. It’s not just about tracking AdWords, it’s about tracking in general. Once you’ve lined up your tracking system with AdWords information, you’ll be very happy when you start using MSN adCenter which has it’s own set of parameters insertions.

If you’ve structured your medium, keyword, creative, etc identifiers in a standardized URL, when you start using other traffic generating campaigns, you’ll already have a default to just plug in the new information and off you go. This makes it easy to compare banner traffic versus email traffic versus PPC traffic.

Know all the variables. Choose the variables you want to compare. Analyze the data. Make decisions based on facts.

The internet gives you the capacity to track just about anything - use the available tools effectively.

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Steve Jobs at Yahoo

Another insightful article from payperclickhelpers.com .

This was an interesting article I saw on search engine watch. Steve Jobs over at Yahoo to inspire. I always took jobs as more of a Google guy, but perhaps he likes a good underdog story. In some ways the yahoo Google wars are synonomous with the MAC PC war, that i know very little about, but I know that for long time PC's kicked Macs ass, and So maybe Google is the PC here. Although its a younger engine, but the starting line for paid search was about the same time. YSM has taken a pouncing but simply put; Yahoo has lots of cool shit. Their main page makes them look like a pack rat of a search engine, but all of those little portals have great content, fantasy sports, news, movies, top searches, video games, all great places for niche advertisers. They also have and Adsense type program and a fairly large chunk of the small business hosting on the web.


October 1, 2007
Yahoo Calls In Steve Jobs to Inspire VPs

Instead of the rumored mass firing expected to take place at last week's all-day meeting of top Yahoo execs in Sunnyvale, attendees were treated to real goals and concrete plans from company leadership, and a guest appearance from Apple CEO Steve Jobs to provide an extra burst of inspiration, according to Kara Swisher.

What do you do when you want to inject a little inspiration into a company that needs a lot of it? Do you hold an all-day meeting of top execs where you actually outline specific goals and exhibit better leadership? Do you admit your corporate culture is a little weak and promise to focus on strengthening it? Do you trot out all the senior execs and let them talk about their concrete plans (and, better still, actually prepare them to deliver their spiel with some level of quality)? Do you do some post-lunch touchy-feely group exercises to get people talking?

Best of all, if you really want to send things over the top, do you bring out an icon so beloved as to give goosebumps to explain to the troops how he managed to turn his once-beleaguered and now-soaring company around?

All that and more occurred on Friday at Yahoo HQ as CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker really put on a show that seemed to resonate with the 300-plus top Yahoo executives (vice president and above) gathered there, capped by an appearance by Apple’s Steve Jobs, who is apparently now Silicon Valley’s equivalent of Oprah.

The company is 76 days into the return of Yang as CEO, following the departure of Terry Semel from that role in June. While Yang had promised a "100-day review," he has since backed off from a concrete timetable. Regardless of the timetable, it's clear that changes are already afoot, and more are planned at Yahoo, the perennial second-place search engine.

According to Swisher, much of the focus of Yang's plans revolve around an "ecosystem" that centers on the interplay of advertisers, publishers, and consumers. Plans include building out Yahoo's ad network, using its "consumer insights" to improve ad targeting, creating a corporate culture open to new ideas, and a more open developer network, Swisher said.