Assuming the landing page that that you are using does not have a 301 redirect in place – AND – assuming that landing page has your Google Analytics code, the visitor will be tagged on the landing page based on the information passed through your ?utm tracking parameters. And you’re right – once you move on to another page, the tracking parameters disappear. But it’s that first page – the landing page – that is important for ensuring that the visitor is tagged (and tracked) as a visitor from Yahoo PPC throughout your site.

Thanks,
Sumit

Not a problem! I likely would’ve been oblivious to this type of issue if it hadn’t happened to me, too. All the more reason to share my findings and solutions.

Thanks for commenting!

thanks for the great post. This has helped track down a problem we were having.
mike

Glad you learned something (as I did!). Thanks for commenting.

@ Taylor,

I’ve reviewed Google’s documentation for Conversion Tracking, and don’t see *anything* that would suggest 301 redirects will interfere with PPC conversion tracking. Google (and all the PPC search engines) utilize cookies to track conversions, and since this is something placed on the user’s computer, your site’s 301 redirects should have no effect.

In terms of SEO, resolving duplicate content with 301 redirects is a must – so us PPC advertisers need to learn to work with and/or around those redirects! Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any more questions. : )

This is great information. I’ve researched in the past on this topic to little avail. In any case, do you know if using 301 redirects will also interfere with Adwords Conversion Tracking, or are we dealing only with Analytics here?

Some of our ads include http://www. in the destination URL, some don’t. For SEO purposes, we’re talking about using a 301 redirect to make non-www. URLs always resolve to the http://www. version. As head of PPC, I want to make sure we don’t screw up our conversion tracking, etc.

Any info you could provide would be awesome. Thanks so much!

In my situation, it happened to Google, Yahoo and MSN adCenter. I would suggest that you try testing your landing pages first ( http://www.example.com/landingpage?utm_source=test ) If the tracking parameter disappears when the page resolves, you’ve found your problem. But if the code remains attached to your URL, then the code should be passing to your site correctly.

I would also suggest that you double check your URL tracking parameters. Make sure that you are properly assigning source to MSN (or adCenter, whatever floats your boat) and that the medium is set to “CPC.”

Any one else have any suggestions for why this would happen to adCenter only?