Adwords Product Listing Ads & Google Analytics mis-reporting
-
I hope you're sitting comfortably, this could be a long one and loaded with questions!
Cut to the chase: Why is traffic from google product ads showing as 'organic' traffic in GA?
Here's the scenario:
Google Shopping
I have thousands of products in a feed to google shopping (froogle, google base, google merchant, whatever you like to call it, I'll settle for google shopping for the purpose of this question).
The URLs of this feed is tagged with GA tracking data (notably utm_source=GoogleBase&utm_medium=Product-Search), I have also tagged this with internal tracking which comes through in the back-end to assign orders to that specific source. In this case 'GOOGLEBASE'.
Adwords Product Listing Ads
As you know, a new (ish) feature of adwords pulls in your products from google shopping so that you get a richer ad (image, title, price) and displays this in the 'advert section' of the SERP.
Once setting up a few of these, I noticed I was getting a fair amount of traffic for these new ads, taking one example, which resided in a relatively specific ad group (advertising Aviation Snips).
Naturally, I wanted to find out which keywords were driving that traffic in order to improve the ads, or kill them if they weren't working.
What was interesting is that I can't find anything about that traffic anywhere in adwords or google analytics. 254 clicks to 'aviation snips' must show up somewhere in analytics, if not the keywords, then what about the product? Analytics is showing nothing like that quantity of visits to those product landing pages where you'd expect. It's like ghost traffic.
Google Analytics
Since experimenting with product listing ads the organic traffic in GA has suddenly shot up, looking at the new keywords they are all queries which when I test them show up product listing ads in the SERP so it's obviously the paid listing ads driving this traffic.
Why is google reporting these as organic, rather than paid?
I also noticed a keyword appear as * in the PAID segment of analytics. I thought this was my missing aviation snips traffic, but digging into the landing pages for the * keyword, they are many different ones.
There's a connection between the * and product listing ads, but what is it? Is the traffic being doubly reported?
Back End
Meanwhile we've seen an increase for orders tagged in the back-end of GOOGLEBASE which makes sense - google are pulling in my google shopping feed into the paid part of the SERPs and these are generating sales.
Here are some of my initial thoughts / theories:
1. When google pulls in google shopping results into the organic part of the SERP, these get reported as ORGANIC in google analytics, even if you've tagged them otherwise. It seems they strip the tags out. This makes it very difficult to know if your google shopping feed is working well, or if you are doing well on standard organic traffic.
2. Google isn't separating out traffic as PAID with their new product listing ads, completely skewing the reports. It makes it look like you've gained great natural organic listings when if fact you are paying.
3. With relation to the missing Aviation Snips data - maybe google is showing a huge variety of products for that adgroup (even though it's specific) and therefore I can't see the traffic to the specific products that you'd expect. This I'm most confused about and wondered if I've missed a trick in setting the product listing ads up?
I've attached a couple of screenshots which I hope will help clarify some of this. I can see product listing ads being great if you could get proper data to analyse and improve them.
So here are my questions again if anyone can help?
How do I see which keywords are driving the product listing ads?
How do I see the landing pages for the product listings ads?
What is the * keyword coming through in GA?
How can you get GA to report product listing ads as paid rather than organic?
Thank you so much. If I can gather enough data on this all and work it out I'll try to write up in a blog post to help others.
-
Mike & crew, I think I've got to the bottom of it. (Mike - adding the utm_campaign was useful - thank you, but wasn't the cause of the problem)
Short answer: 301 redirects were breaking the tracking.
On the site in question we have products, parent products & child products (basically distinct SKU products but held under the parent - different sizing, or colours for example).
The site was still sending the original URL of the child product to google shopping (Rather than adopting the parent URL), the child URLs have a 301 redirect to the parent URLs.
So here's what was happening:
1. Someone clicks on the google product listing ad which contains within it the URL of the product. Google appends it's tracking info on that url (the &gclid=), including the tracking we've set so, utm_campaign, source etc.
2. That URL was being 301 redirected to the parent URL (so the customer eds up where they should!), but this in turn stripped the tracking from the URL.
3. Since there was no tracking after the 301 redirect, google couldn't see where it originated from.
Obviously it makes more sense to fix the root cause, rather than try to redirect the tracking info too (although I'm sure that could be done). We're changing the setup so that child URLs adopt the parent URL.
Hope this is clear. Thanks for all the help everyone.
Kind Regards
Ewan
-
Ewan,
Very interesting indeed. Because this is a public question, I think it could end up being tremendously helpful if you'd post any further findings. I don't want to take up too much of your time, so no need for a novel.
I suppose it's possible that having malformed tracking parameters on the (organic) Google Product URLs (missing utm_campaign) could be breaking things on the paid side as well.
Mike
-
Hi Mike
Thanks for taking the time to check in on this one. Since I wrote the question, I've done a lot of digging and am actually in touch with google about it. I've managed to answer some of the questions, but not all of them! (I'll go on to explain).
It turns out I'm not including campaign, something I'm going to get sorted now you've mentioned it <queue kick="" developers="" kindly="">. Thank you!</queue>
Regarding the remaining issues:
Adwords Product Listing Ads
- I can now see the keywords that have triggered these under the keyword report (you actually have to add a keyword ie [thisisakeyword] in order to see it. If you don't have one, google doesn't show the keyword report menu!
"I also noticed a keyword appear as * in the PAID segment of analytics. I thought this was my missing aviation snips traffic, but digging into the landing pages for the * keyword, they are many different ones."
- So these are definitely the keywords that trigger the product listing ads. If you look at the landing pages that are behind the * keywords you can see all the different products that have been targetted.
HOWEVER, we're definitely seeing a strange correlation whereby we're showing organic traffic which is almost certainly paid (from the product listing ads). The terms are for highly competitive ones where we have no chance (yet) of ranking for, but when I do a test search our ad comes up in the top right.
What I have noticed, and this may be related is that we're seeing some traffic in our live stats with <url>.html&gclid=<string>, this actually breaks our URLs and results in a 404, usually its <url>.html?gclid=</url></string></url>
Not sure if any of that is clear, it's been fascinating digging in, if you are interested I could tell you more!
Thanks for the interest.
Kind Regards
Ewan
-
Let me ask one simple question before looking further:
When you're tagging your Google Product Feed URLs, are you including source, medium, AND campaign. In the original post, you only mention medium and source. Campaign is also required, and it may just be that not including campaign is causing the whole thing to get thrown out.
Secondly, AdWords product listing ads, as far as I know (and have seen), should ALWAYS report as paid, rather than organic. Assuming you've got auto-tagging set up (in the AdWords settings), I'm not sure how this could be taking place.
Let's start there and work from there.
-
EGOL - thanks very much for the response. I agree with you that there should always be a feasibility argument before getting too wrapped up in specific data and worried about getting everything to add up, however in this instance there was definitely a need.
We weren't talking a small percentage of paid traffic that I was effectively flying blind on, we were looking at a significant percentage of spend. In this case it was prudent to dig a little deeper!
Luckily, I've managed to find where I was going wrong with the product listings ads. I mistakenly thought that adding a product listing ad to a specific ad group without filtering it would give me targeted ads. In this instance, the product listing ad for the 'aviation snips' ad group I mentioned wasn't just showing ads for 'aviation snips', it was showing ads for everything in my product feed (all 13,000 of them!) this means I hit the nail on the head with my 3rd assumption above.
I've just found a great resource which explains the set up in better detail http://www.hmtweb.com/imd/?p=880 (notably filters!). I have to say google (who only just launched this in the UK) make it too simple to simply go ahead and create these ads for every ad group without explaining the filtering.
http://www.hmtweb.com/imd/?p=880
I'm making the necessary changes and will see if this impacts or makes clear the keyword data in analytics over the next few days, at the moment the other questions / problems still stand!
-
oh... you are a numbers person. So am I - at least I am when it is practical - and sometimes even when it is not.
I have spent lots of time trying to solve some of these same types of questions. Unfortunately, we either do not have the incoming signals, the tools to capture them, the skills to create our own, or the time to spend acquiring them.
Bottom line.... I have discovered that it is often better to accept schloppy data and use it to make fuzzy conclusions than it is to spend a lot of time trying to solve the problem. If you make assumptions that go against your ROI calculations then you will at least know for sure that you are doing the right thing when red ink turns black.
Since you are a numbers person I explain it in your language.... the cost of the time that you are spending trying to solve this will go into the denominator of your profit calculation. If you redirect that time into activities that hit the numerator such as working on your conversion rate or work that will acquire more SEO traffic your profit number will be a lot higher.
Sometimes we must be able to work with uncertainty.
Now... if anybody knows easy ways to get these types of data, I am ready to hear it.
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
-
Disparities between AdWords clicks and Analytics sessions
Hi all, Have an Analytics account connected to my AdWords account which is showing HUGE gulfs in clicks and sessions for a CPM campaign. 500 clicks = 0 sessions. Does anyone have any idea why this could be the case? Auto-tagging is on and everything looks to be in place. The website itself is on a 303 so I was wondering could that be impacting things? The CPC is also just 1p so that's got me very suspicious. Thanks in advance.
Paid Search Marketing | | Whittie0 -
Google certification
Hi Just wondering what everyones thoughts on Google certification? I was wondering if anyone had any experience doing the analytics and adwords tests? Do you feel they give you a benefit or advantage to others in your field? And also what is the cost of the exams? Thanks in advance
Paid Search Marketing | | TheZenAgency0 -
Google Remarketing Targeting
I've been thinking lately about employing re-marketing in AdWords, and have been doing some research on it. My findings keep pointing to the fact that you can't target only people who visited your site but didn't convert. I keep thinking this cannot be true because it's simply too ludicrous to be. Why else would you want to use re-marketing? Can someone please either confirm or deny this? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Ad Rank and Performance for PLA
Hello everyone and happy Friday from London! I have just launched a Product listing Campaign and I can't get to find any information about ad rank and how it's performing. From AdWords all I can see is: 1.number of click 2.CTR 3.Position which is zero Any suggestions? Cheers
Paid Search Marketing | | PremioOscar0 -
Bing Ads Quality Score
Hi Mozzers, We've just imported (around two weeks ago) our Adwords into Bing and are just evaluating it. Pretty much across the board, but especially our best performing Ad Groups are showing up with abysmal quality scores. Case in point: our best ad group has mostly 10s, two 9s and one 7 in Adwords, yet nothing over 3 in Bing. Specifically landing page relevance is rated poor, keyword relevance and landing page experience as "no problem". So, what specifically is Bing looking for on landing page relevance that's dramatically different to Adwords? The Bing help references a blog post of 2 years ago suggesting increasing keyword count - yet the pages do well in organic search and adding more keywords to the copy will start to look artificial and stuffed, so I'm very reluctant to start there! Any pointers?
Paid Search Marketing | | WorldText0 -
Adwords Keyword Quality Score changes when keyword is paused
Today I was pausing a bunch of low quality score keywords for a client, the thing is, once I paused the keywords, the quality score would immediately change. For example, a number of keywords that had a QS of 3 while they were running, immediately changed to 1 once paused. Out of curiosity I un-paused one of them and it remained at 1. Has anyone else experienced this and/or have an explanation? Cheers
Paid Search Marketing | | David_ODonnell0 -
Adwords Quality Score Help
Hi, I have (well I though I did have) a well optimised landing page for Google Adwords for the keyword Sonos Play 3, but yet my quality score is 3/10 - 4/10. It has been like this for a while now. You can see the landing page here If you would like to see the Add Content let me know. (attached as an image) I appreciate any and all help I receive. Thank You Rick hdxKq.jpg
Paid Search Marketing | | Lantec0 -
Has anyone seen a recent study on % of clicks on Adwords vs Organic results?
HI, I am trying to find out what percentage of people click on organic search results on Google versus the percentage of people who click on advertisements. I have found many references online to studies that supposedly say 70-80% of clicks go to organic results and the rest go to ads, but I have never seen an actual study claiming this, let alone a recent one. Can anyone help? many thanks in advance, Annemieke
Paid Search Marketing | | AnnemiekevH0