Google conveniently provides easy integration of Google Adwords data with their Analytics program, allowing you to track results of your Adwords pay-per-click campaigns through Analytics.? If you have sponsored listings on Yahoo, Bing, or any other paid search program, you will have to do a bit of customization in order to supply the same data about these additional PPC (Pay-Per-Click) programs to Analytics.
In order to signify to Analytics that a specific visitor is a paid search visitor, you will need to provide custom destination URLs for your ads – these custom URLs have URL parameters that help Analytics identify details about the PPC campaigns you are running on other search services.? Conveniently, Google has provided a URL Builder Tool, to help create these URLs for you.? Once you start running your ads with new destination URLs, Analytics will automatically collect and display data on visitors who come in to your site from your campaigns.
Viewing paid "Keywords" in Google Analytics shows msn and yahoo PPC traffic.
For example, instead of inputting a destination URL of http://ccseo.com/ on a Yahoo! PPC ad, you can use the URL builder tool to generate a URL like this:
http://ccseo.com/?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=PPC&utm_content=Ad3&utm_campaign=Local
This URL has 4 added parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_content, utm_campaign), which signal to Google Analytics that incoming traffic from this particular ad originated through Yahoo PPC, come from ad number 3, and from the “Local” campaign.
Effective use of the URL Builder Tool can give you a lot of valuable information about traffic from non-Google paid search sources in Google Analytics, helping you to effectively measure and track the results of your paid search campaigns.
Have you used the URL builder tool? Do you have any questions about using this Analytics feature?
