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
-
Does having redirects in a Adwords text ad destination URL hurt quality scores?
I recently noticed that one of my clients had several redirects in their Adwords text ad destination URLs. I updated the destination URLS to land on the final location (thereby losing all the text ad history). However I'm wondering if this could have any impact on the text ad quality scores (none of them were disapproved).
Paid Search Marketing | | RosemaryB0 -
How to access bing adwords?
Hi Guys, One of my friend using bing adwords, he want to give me user access for that account for that i have create one microsoft outlook mail like abcd@outlook.com, now he has given access to me but confuse how to access the account? Is this a url - http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/sign-up ? Thanks! Dev
Paid Search Marketing | | devdan0 -
Locate Poorly Trending Keywords in AdWords
At the campaign level I see my CTR has been suffering for the last week or two relative to the past few months. It could be a few bad actors casing the downward trend. How can I quickly and easily locate specific keywords that are trending in the wrong direction? Why filters will not work... They don't take change into account. I want to identify Keywords that were once doing well are now doing poorly. Filters will yield all keywords that are doing poorly which is not what I'm looking for. Obviously I could be missing something with filters but this is my understanding. A few other points to note... I have search partners turned on. I do not want to take this traffic into account in my analysis. I'd also like to determine if it might be an ad that's not performing as well as it once was. I assume the same method used to find poorly trending keywords can be applied to ads as well but if not, is there a solution for this?
Paid Search Marketing | | tatermarketing0 -
Why do some Adwords agencies insist on setting up Adwords in their own account?
I'm an online marketing consultant and I work with a variety of agencies who handle Adwords. I keep running into an issue where agencies want to set up Adwords in a proprietary account for my clients rather than in the client's account and manage it through MCC. I have just run into again and this time the agency claims they are protecting their Adwords "secret sauce" but that the client will still have full access to keywords, negative keywords, Ad copy, etc. It just doesn't pass the sniff test with me. Can anyone tell me if there are some legitimate reasons for an agency to do this other than to simply try to hold data hostage so that clients can't leave them without loss? I am inclined to tell my client they should run away screaming, but thought I would bounce it off you smart people first. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | farlandlee1 -
OK to have a modal pop-up on an AdWords landing page?
We're about to launch an AdWords campaign targeting users who are searching for hand-crafted furniture. The website we're sending users to has a large inventory of furniture, and all if it is hand-crafted. But there currently is no page on the site specifically communicating that all the furniture on the site is hand-crafted. So, rather than dump the user right into browsing the inventory, we want to put an intermediate step in place to say, in essence, "Hey, welcome, yes, we have lots of handcrafted furniture. In fact, all of it is hand-crafted. Here, have a look around." The art director on the project is suggesting that a modal pop-up would be perfect for this scenario. It would greet the user, who could then dismiss the pop-up and move into the site. I have two concerns about using a modal, though: Does a modal violate Google's policy against pop-ups that open new windows? Assuming we trigger the modal using Javascript, will AdsBot have any trouble crawling the content of the modal, such that it could hurt the landing page component of our quality score?
Paid Search Marketing | | ydop0 -
Is there a tool that can use measure and improve the quality score of my PPC landing pages?
Hey guys, I'm trying to improve the quality score for a few of my PPC landing pages. Does any one know a Tool that can help me in the process. Something kind of like the "on page grader" but for quality score. Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Felip30 -
Why doesn't exact match appear to be working for me in Google AdWords tool?
Hi guys, I recently read Rand's article here and tried out the exact match symbols on my keywords. However, these don't appear to be working for me as the results aren't showing up as they do in the above SEOmoz article (attached screenshot). What am I doing wrong? Google_AdWords__Keyword_Tool-20130511-115528.jpg.jpg?resizeSmall&width=832
Paid Search Marketing | | featherseo0