Using + in Adwords URL
-
Hi.
I am using keywords in my Destination URL in Adwords. So http://example.com/?football+boots+supplier
This was done by someone else and I am trying to understand the full meaning behind this. If I go to the page it links to, it is just the homepage of the website but obviously shows up in Analytics as a landing page that stills out from the general landing page of homepage /
Is that the reason so its easier to track the data? I would have though using the Paid referral in Analytics does this better?
Any help be great. Thanks
-
Thanks Steve! Yes, I totally agree.
There are so many options out there for tagging and tracking. Personally, I prefer to leave it up to Google unless I'm tracking the information elsewhere (of course unless you're working with Bing, then you definitely need it!). Steve, do you tag all of your URLs even when they just go directly to GA from AdWords? When would you recommend using any manually tagged parameters?
Thanks for chiming in!!
-
Just building on Jasmine's comment, the Google Analytics URL builder is a handy tool to created tagged URLs easily. It particularly makes it easy if you want to name a campaign something like 'Campaign #1'. You can't write '?utm_campaign=Campaign #1 in the URL. If you just fill out the fields in the URL builder, it automatically builds the proper URL for you, i.e., utm_campaign=Campaign%20%231
%20 = 'space'
%23 = #
In short, don't stress about why that particular URL is constructed the way that it is. It doesn't follow best practices. There's better ways of building/tagging URLs.
-
Unless there's something on your back end that is picking up this data, there's absolutely no reason to have this on the end of your urls. Just make sure that your auto tagging is on on both Analytics and AdWords. It's much easier to track your accounts if you let AdWords & Analytics communicate with the features that have already been created.
Typical URL tagging structures are:: .com?utm_campaign=football&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc
If you have any additional Business Intelligence team pulling information from the URL, you should discuss with them what they would like to see, but it's typically not necessary.
-
They could be using it to track what keywords are being used, it is a poor choice as linking GA to Adwords is a better option, or using {keyword} to get the actual keyword used instead of hard coding in each and every url from Adwords. They might have a system in place that needs that, but from both a toll perspective and and SEO perspective there is no beneficial reason to do that in my opinion.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google AdWords Class Action Settlement?
Has anyone received and responded to a notice of class action settlement from Google Adwords? The sender (and the website it directs to) is adwordsclassaction.com. I see that there was such a thing, I am just not sure whether that domain is the official one to respond to?
Paid Search Marketing | | Linda-Vassily0 -
Search Volume, Organic Rankings and Adwords
Hi, I hope you can help. And if this has been answered before, I apologise. Just spent two hours searching but couldnt find much at all. So I have this website, and it ranks in the top 10 for around 150 keywords. Its fairly niche market for targeting the UK market, but subject is for a local area, its got a good optimised site, no link issues, works well, good UI etc. Problem I have is this. It used to get a fair amount of organic traffic a few years ago to generate around 30 leads a day, and back then that was from just one keyword. Today, we may get one a lead a day from organic even though we rank for a lot more keywords and our exposure all round is good. However, we also pay for adwords to make up for the lost leads, the same keywords we are ranking for organically! So we bid on adwords and get our 30 leads with the same keywords and monthly search volume as we have organically, yet we dont get any leads for those keywords organically. So Adwords produces leads, organic doesn't, but they are the same keywords and rank next to each other. How does that work? So my question is, why do our organic keywords that rank just under the adwords that we bid for, with the same monthly searches, only give us 1 lead a day (when they used to give us 30) and adwords now give us 30 leads a day? Thanks James
Paid Search Marketing | | jaimo6930 -
CPC of Adwords Remarketing for Search (RLSA)
When a previous visitor to your site clicks on an RLSA ad, is the cost per click the same as if you were bidding on that same Keyword for a new visitor?
Paid Search Marketing | | richdan0 -
Impressions data: Google Webmaster Tools VS Google AdWords
Dear community, I was doing some research within Google Webmaster Tools (WMT) keyword data when I noticed that the impressions within this tool are quite different compared to the keyword impression data provided by Google AdWords (ADW). Some specs about the situation: Date: December 2014 (31 days). Keyword: brand + main keyword* (e.g. amazon shoes, if Amazon would have been the client) Visitors come from: the Netherlands (>97%). Search volume: 3,8 K for this branded keyword last year (December 2013), of which >99% came from the Netherlands (source: Google Keyword Planner). Search query data: "impressions" for Google WMT (organic keyword impressions) and “impressions” for Google ADW (paid keyword impressions). Of course the ADW keyword is [exact]. So, what's wrong? The data doesn’t match, while I expected approximately the same amount of impressions assuming the keywords are: both [exact] keywords; (check! ✓) within the same period of time; (check! ✓) the Ad is being displayed "all the time" (check! ✓) the domain/page is being indexed "all the time" (check! ✓) How much of a difference is there? Organic impressions: 7,4 K (source: Google WMT) Paid impressions: 2,1 K (source: Google ADW) Note that the search volume according to Google Keyword Planner of last year is somewhere in between: 3,8K. The search volume from this tool of last December is not available just yet (but I don’t expect much difference here since Google Trends shows a steady search volume). If the difference would have been 10-20%, I wouldn't be surprised at all, but this is huge. **What could explain the differences? ** If a lot of people were using AdBlockers (they do, but not nearly as massively (around 10%)). If we would have made mistakes in AdWords: budget, bidding, targeting etc. - This is not the case, got this confirmed by the manager who double-checked the data and settings. Also: since it’s a branded keyword it’s really cheap for us and easy to get high quality scores. If we would have made mistakes regarding indexing/crawling that would have caused an extreme loss in domain visibility in the SERP's: possibly caused by robots.txt, a noindex-tag, server problems etc. This was not the case and Google WebmasterTools says the average position was 1,0 during the complete month. "Something else" went wrong during that specific period of time with this specific domain. I don’t think so because I checked multiple months and multiple other domains of other clients. These gave me the same relative results (okay, some were a bit closer: 30 K paid impressions vs 62 K organic impressions for instance, still a big difference). What other possibilities are left? The impressions from Google WMT and Google ADW are not the same, even though they are called the same and therefore suggest they should be (about) the same. AdWords just randomly fails to display and/or measure some branded ads (even though there is plenty of budget, bidding is fine and QS is 10/10). Definitions of "impressions" for both tools according Google: AdWords definition of "impressions" WebmasterTools definition of "impressions" Hope someone has some more suggestions or useful links! Thanks in advance! Ektor Tsolodimos
Paid Search Marketing | | BlueMango0 -
AdWords Different Budgets on Different Days
I have a single campaign and this is what I want. Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri to have a budget of $270 per day
Paid Search Marketing | | UnderRugSwept
Wed to have a budget of $324 per day
Sat, Sun to have a budget of $432 per day Currently, the only way I can see to do this is to have three separate campaigns, which is very disagreeable. Please tell me there's something I'm overlooking. Thanks0 -
Top Ad in Google Adwords
Hello. How much of a difference does it make in click-throughs to be the first listing in Google Adwords versus the second or third (still at the top of the page)? Thank you!
Paid Search Marketing | | nyc-seo0 -
Adwords Bulk Discount
Had a few calls recently from agencies offering bulk discount on Google Adwords spends if we pass management over to them and spend more than £5,000 ($7,500) a month, they claim they can offer a 5% discount over what we're currently paying... Can't find anything about this, does Google offer such a deal to agencies?
Paid Search Marketing | | digitalarts0 -
Adwords budget for different days of the week
We operate a Google Adwords campaign that clearly performs better conversion wise on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays ... What is the best way to stack a higher daily budget on specifc days in Adwords - There doesn't appear to be any formal way of doing this and the advice online is mixed...
Paid Search Marketing | | digitalarts0