One of the drawbacks of passing keyword information into any third party application are the limits Google imposes on the amount of information able to be transferred. Information such as keyword, match type, campaign, and adgroup for Google Adwords automatically passes with the automatic gclid parameter, but third party applications, such as Mongoose Metrics, are unable to read the gclid parameter.  Google, Adcenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing allow you to manually tag keywords and ads so that advertisers can get such information passed into their systems. However, depending on what kind of data users want transfered, the manualy tagging of URL keywords can provew timeconsuming.

Thankfully, Google, Mircosoft Adcenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing allow advertisers to dynamically pass keyword information without manual tagging of each keyword. For Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter this tag is keyword={keyword} and for Yahoo it is keyword={OVKEY}.  However, these URL tags do not pass the match type of the keyword.

This can be a huge problem for advertisers that are bidding on the same keyword with different match types. Google does not pass the match type with the {keyword} tag. However, one can still dynamically pass the match type into the system by changing the setup of the URL string. One of our clients came up with a simple solution that allows them to see the match type of the keyword. We want to thank them for sharing it with us and the rest of our client base. Check it out below:

A normal URL tag reads similar to the following:

http://www.mysite.com/?mm_campaign=9999b42gg455fr3b64f67b185bbf&keyword={keyword}&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Adwords

This tag can be used to represent a broad variation of the keyword.

For phrase match the URL can be adjusted to read the following:

http://www.mysite.com/?mm_campaign=9999b42gg455fr3b64f67b185bbf&keyword=”{keyword}”&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Adwords

For exact match the URL can read:

http://www.mysite.com/?mm_campaign=9999b42gg455fr3b64f67b185bbf&keyword=[{keyword}]&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Adwords

To install the correct URL string in Google Adwords Editor users must search and replace by match type.  While this seems time consuming, proper setup only take a few minutes. Now clients can fully understand which keywords convert into phone calls.

Last week on the Google Analytics Blog, Sebastian Tonkin wrote about the new a Google Analytics feature which allows Adwords advertisers to import Google Analytics goals directly into Google Adwords conversion data. This is great news for those who use the conversion optimizer feature in Google Adwords to obtain better conversion rates.  This also means that you no longer have to use two different conversion codes on the goal/conversion page. Instead of using both the Adwords conversion tracking code and the Google Analytics goal code to track other traffic, you only need to use the Google Analytics goal code.

However, I want to point out that traffic from Adwords is tracked differently than normal organic and direct traffic.  Google Adwords traffic is cookied while normal traffic is tracked as a user goes from  page to  goal page. While the Adwords conversion code is no longer needed, Adwords traffic is still tracked with cookies. Keep in mind that in order for Goals in Anayltics to work traffic can not be redirected from another site to your goal page. For example, if a user is at a site and clicks on the goal page, they can not be redirected to another site or server. The new feature is helpful, but remember the differences pertaining to Adwords traffic.