If you run PPC campaigns on Yahoo and Bing (MSN) then it is essential you change your PPC campaign destination URLs in Yahoo and Bing to properly track visitors from paid search engines and non-paid organic visitors from your SEO campaign.

Fortunately, Google Analytics already tracks visitors from Google correctly, so one-third of your job is already done for you.

It's a bit roundabout, but this is the way to track CPC traffic from non-Google sources (e.g. Yahoo).

Yahoo PPC Campaign Ad Tracking In Google Analytics

1. Create a custom tracking URL using Google's URL Builder:

Follow the instructions on screen and you should produce something like this URL string or similar:

http://www.yourdomain.com/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=keyw...

The "Yahoo+CPC+Campaign" can be anything you like which describes this CPC campaign.

 

2. Replace the parameter “keyword" with a placeholder which Yahoo will populate when they generate an ad to display. In Step 2 of Google’s instructions, in the box labelled “Campaign Term” enter {OVKey}.  This should produce a revised URL something like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/tracking?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term={OVKEY}&utm_content={OVADID}&utm_campaign={OVCAMPGID}

Or for a deep URL, something like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpagename.html/tracking?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term={OVKEY}&utm_content={OVADID}&utm_campaign={OVCAMPGID}

For more help on Tracking URLs see Yahoo’s help page.

 

3. In the Yahoo campaign manager, enter this URL as the tracking URL for the campaign.

You must first turn off Ad Tracking in Yahoo.  You may find this is the default setting anyway, but it is worth checking.

Do this by clicking on the “Administration Tab” and then clicking on “Tracking URLs” from the sub-menu.  On the next page – click on the radio button to turn tracking URLS off.  If you do not do this then Yahoo will append its standard tracking terminology it uses for its PPC platform and Google Analytics will not report on your Yahoo PPC traffic at a keyword level.

Now you can add your own Google Analytics friendly tracking URLs.

Clearly you do not want to add this URL for every keyword – so the best way to do this to change the “Destination URL” at the Ad Group Level.

Select the “Ad Group” tab and then click on your ad group.

This takes you to the “Ads Tab”.  Now click on “Ad Name” from your list of adverts.  You then get a screen which lists; “Title”, “Short Description”, “Long Description”, “Display URL” and “Custom URL” – paste the long URL into the “Custom URL” box and click save.

Now repeat this for every Ad Group.  If someone knows an even quicker way of doing this please feel free to post it here!

Wait for a day or so; and then check your Google Analytics reports to see whether you are now seeing paid search engine traffic from Yahoo.  You should be able to clearly distinguish and drill down into paid vs no-paid traffic from all search engines and have a list of sources something like this:

yahoo / cpc

yahoo / organic

Bing / CPC

Bing / organic

google / cpc

google / organic

 

Bing PPC Campaign Ad Tracking In Google Analytics

1. Create a custom tracking URL using Google's URL Builder:

Follow the instructions on screen and you should produce something like this URL string or similar:

http://www.yourdomain.com/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=keywo...

The "Bing+CPC+Campaign" can be anything you like which described this CPC campaign.

 

2. Replace the parameter “keyword" with a placeholder which Yahoo will populate when they generate an ad to display. In Step 2 of Google’s instructions, in the box labelled “Campaign Term” enter {QueryString}.  This should produce a revised URL something like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term={QueryString}&utm_campaign=Bing+CPC+Campaign

Or for a deep URL, something like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpagename?utm_source=Bing&utm_medium=CPC&utm_term={QueryString}&utm_campaign=Campaign1

 

3. In the Bing Adcenter campaign manager, enter this URL as the tracking URL for the campaign.

Clearly you do not want to add this URL for every keyword – so the best way to do this to change the “Destination URL” at the Ad Group Level.

Select “Ad Group”, then go to the “Ads Tab”.  Now click on “Ad Title” from your list of adverts.  You then get a screen which lists; “Ad Title”, “Ad Text”, “Display URL” and “Destination URL” – paste the long URL into the “Destination URL” box and click save.

Now repeat this for every Ad Group.  If someone knows an even quicker way of doing this please feel free to post it here!

Wait for a day or so; and then check your Google Analytics reports to see whether you are now seeing paid search engine traffic from Bing.

You should be able to clearly distinguish and drill down into paid vs no-paid traffic from all search engines and have a list of sources something like this:

yahoo / cpc

yahoo / organic

Bing / CPC

Bing / organic

google / cpc

google / organic

 

As search engine change the ways they handle reporting and tracking from time to time; please do add a post if this process has changed or nolonger works for you.

 

 

 

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