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The Secret of Tracking Yahoo! Keyword Data in Google AnalyticsPosted by John on April 3, 2008 in Advanced PPC Strategies, Reporting / Conversion Tracking |
Pay-per-click marketing and web analytics – they go together like peas and carrots. Why you ask? Because the reports provided by the PPC search engines aren’t always enough! Services like Google Analytics provide advertisers with a wealth of knowledge for fine-tuning and perfecting their paid-search campaigns. This includes data like bounce rate, time on site or goal funnel visualizations. For advertisers who are using Analytics in tandem with their AdWords PPC account, the process for tracking data is a cinch. Google has an auto-tagging feature that will pull all of your PPC data into Analytics – including keyword level data. The question then becomes, “How do I track this data for my Yahoo! Search Marketing PPC campaigns?” Today I’m going to quickly explain how you can build custom tracking URLs to get the same comprehensive data for Yahoo!.
The first step is to head on over to the trusty Google Analytics URL Builder. This tool will let you input your landing page and variables including term (keyword), name (campaign), source (search engine), medium (cpc vs. email or organic) and content (ad version). After you manually input your data, the URL builder will provide you with a full tracking URL that you can copy/paste into your Yahoo! ads. Here’s a quick example:
- Landing page: www.example.com/tracking
- Variables: Source is Yahoo!, medium is CPC, term is PPC Hero, campaign is Tracking URLs and content is Best Blog Ad 1.
- Custom Tracking URL: http://www.example.com/tracking?utm_source=yahoo &utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=ppc%2Bhero &utm_content=best%2Bblog%2Bad%2B1&utm_campaign=tracking%2Burls
This example would basically only work for a single keyword and a single ad text. If you have the time to create a separate URL for every keyword in your Yahoo! account, all I can say is go for it! If you’re like me, you need a much quicker process for capturing data. It just so happens that Yahoo! has an auto-tagging feature. In your account, go to the Administration tab and click on Tracking URLs. Select the option Tracking URLs On and save changes. This will tell Yahoo! to append your destination URLs with information ranging from the keyword you bid on, to the actual search query and account specific information like campaign and ad group IDs.
How do you pull this information into Analytics? It’s relatively easy. If you look at the custom tracking URL example above, you will need to make modifications to the term, content and campaign variables. You will need to insert Yahoo!’s identifiers into each of these variables to pull the auto-tagged information into Analytics. Some of the basics include {OVKEY} for the paid keyword, {OVRAW} for the actual search query, {OVADID} for the ad text ID number and {OVCAMPGID} for the campaign ID numer. Here’s another quick example:
- Old Tracking URL: http://www.example.com/tracking?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc &utm_term=ppc%2Bhero&utm_content=best%2Bblog%2Bad%2B1 &utm_campaign=tracking%2Burls
- New Variables: Term is {OVKey}, content is {OVADID} and campaign is {OVCAMPGID}.
- New Tracking URL: http://www.example.com/tracking?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc &utm_term={OVKEY}&utm_content={OVADID}&utm_campaign={OVCAMPGID}
Now you can use this customized destination URL for an entire campaign (if applicable) and you will still pull detailed information into Analytics. I should point out that using Yahoo!’s auto-tagging identifiers will only produce real data if you have turned auto-tagging ON in your account! Otherwise all of your Yahoo! PPC visitors will register keywords as {OVKEY}. And trust me when I say, that isn’t very helpful. Discovering this process and putting it to use in my Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts has proved to be an invaluable asset. I would recommend to everyone reading this blog to set this up for your accounts as soon as you get the chance! And check in next week – I’ll explain how to do this for your MSN adCenter PPC accounts, too!
***UPDATE: We’ve written an updated post on URL tagging for Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns. Check it out to make sure you’re getting the most up-to-date information!***
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April 3rd, 2008 at 9:07 am
Hey John,
Thanks for the link! As I mentioned in my recent article about Google Analytics campaign tagging (here: http://www.alexlcohen.com/web-analytics/2008/03/26/campaign-tagging-google-analytics/),
you probably want to define the utm_source something other than “yahoo”, since this is the value GA uses for organic Yahoo traffic. I recommend “YSM”
Cheers,
-Alex
http://www.alexlcohen.com
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Alex,
Thanks for the tip – and keep the helpful blog posts coming!
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
I still can’t believe I’m looking at a workable solution for anything related to Yahoo! Search Marketing. The mind… it boggles. Great tip!
April 7th, 2008 at 8:47 am
[...] The Secret of Tracking Yahoo! Keyword Data in Google Analytics – This post is very easy to follow and should hopefully take less than 15 minutes to implement. “Must read!” [...]
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:48 am
I believe I did everything mentioned in this article. I went to test it out, used the Google URL builder (which converted all the Yahoo identifiers to:
utm_term=%7BOVKey%7D&utm_content=%7BOVADID%7D&utm_campaign=%7BOVCAMPGID%7D
(I’m assuming the %7B and %7D are HTML codes for the brackets.)
Then I did a test click once Yahoo approved the ad. It didn’t register in Google Analytics.
What am I doing wrong?
Thank you, by the way. Outside of user issues (mine), this article and hopefully the MSN one next are very helpful.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
This is a great article! I wonder if you could suggest a solution for a problem we are having.
We have an AdWords account with 15,000 keywords. We recently asked Yahoo to help us open a PPC account. Yahoo took a complete account download of our AdWords account and put it into a Yahoo PPC account. In doing so, they reduced the number of keywords to bid on from 15,000 to 4,000. The main reason for this, they said, was that in Google we were bidding on the singular and plural versions of keywords and keyword phrases, and they said that was not required in Yahoo.
Anyway, they also took the 4,000 ad texts from Google AdWords and placed those in the new Yahoo account. The only problem here, though, is they took the destination URL’s for the ads as they appear in AdWords, including the tracking parameters that AdWords automatically places at the end of URL’s.
I am not looking forward to removing those parameters from 4,000 destination URL’s. And even if they were not there, how would I add the URL tracking parameters with so many keywords.
With Google I can use AdWords Editor. Is there a good way with a Yahoo PPC account to make mass changes?
Thanks!
April 29th, 2008 at 9:17 am
@ Karen:
You do need to be careful of entering brackets { } into the URL builder. As you discovered, they spit out extra characters. What you should do is fill in all of your information into the URL builder, then replace the extra characters with the brackets for parameters like {OVKEY}. The brackets are important! Let me know if this fixes the issue.
@ Greg:
Yahoo’s Advanced Match automatically recognizes plurals, so it is not surprising that your keyword list shrank like it did! In that the folks at Yahoo were correct. Unfortunately, there is no “easy” way to edit 4000 destination URLs! However, you can download your new Yahoo account into a CSV spreadsheet. From here, I would recommend that you use the Filter function in Excel and sort your spreadsheet by destination URLs (remove blanks). From here you can begin the process of removing the AdWords tracking data and inserting the URL tags for Analytics. You may be able to speed things up with copy/paste if you have several ads in the same campaigns or ad groups. Let me know if you have any other questions!
May 13th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Hi I’ve pasted the following URL into my yahoo ad: http://www.ostomylifestyle.org/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc &utm_term={OVKEY}&utm_content={OVADID}&utm_campaign={OVCAMPGID}
When I try to save it it tells me it is an invalid URL?
Am I doing something really stupid?
May 13th, 2008 at 10:37 am
@ Mark:
When I copy and past the URL you have here, it works properly (as in I am taken to your landing page). As to why you’re having difficulties entering this into Yahoo, I’m unsure.
Yahoo’s system should recognize everything after the “?” in your URL as being some form of a tracking variable. Just to experiment, you could try entering only parts of the full tracking code. For example:
http://www.ostomylifestyle.org/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term={OVKEY}
Try saving that and see what happens. And sorry if this insults your intelligence, but double check that you are entering this URL into the “destination URL” box and NOT the “display URL” box. If you continue to have problems, drop me a line via our contact form (from the main nav on the blog) and we can have a separate conversation!
May 14th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I have my regular destination URL of http://mydomain.com/search/results.html?search_in_description=1&keyword=thiskeyword
how can I add ?utm_source…. etc… I already have a ? in the URL…
any suggestions?
May 14th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
this is what google created for me..
http://mydomain.com/search/results.html?search_in_description=1&keyword=thiskeyword&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=%7BOVKEY%7D&utm_content=%7BOVADID%7D&utm_campaign=%7BOVCAMPGID%7D
should it have the curly brackets or the %7 stuff?
June 6th, 2008 at 7:06 am
This is a great solution guys and I’m happy to say that it is working great for me. I’m a big fan of your blog and you guys post a lot of helpful stuff here. I do have a quick thought though on the {ovadid} parameter. This doesn’t seem to be telling me anything useful other than a bunch of numbers, which I don’t see in my Yahoo account. I was expecting it to pull in the ad name that i created but no such luck. Can you give us readers a heads up as to what this parameter is good for?
Thanks!
June 6th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
@ Jesse:
Thanks for the kind words! I’m glad that you find our info help (we try to post things that we find helpful, too).
Since writing this post, I’ve refined my use of this tagging process. You’re right in that the ad id or campaign id bring in numerical identifiers that only make sense to your Yahoo! account!
While I’m unsure of a more elegant solution at the moment, I now directly input the ad group name and campaign name into my tags. This ensures that you can directly relate your analytics data back to your Yahoo or MSN ad groups/campaigns.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:48 am
Thanks John. In your reply you mention that you “now directly input the ad group name and campaign name into my tags.” I understand how to use the tagging to pull in the campaign name but how are you pulling the ad group name? I haven’t seen a tag that allows for that, did I miss it?
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Thanks for this article!
I have set i up and waiting for the results.. I was wondering why GA was not recording the referalls (clicks) that yahoo was charging me for
Thanks again
Nathan
June 25th, 2008 at 10:10 am
@ Jesse,
First off, I apologize for not catching your comment sooner! Secondly, I manually input the ad group name into my tagging (i.e. “ad_group_B”) :
http://www.example.com/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term={OVKEY}&utm_content=ad_group_B&utm_campaign=example_URL
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:45 am
Awesome post! As usual, you guys have provided a huge resource for your readers. I do have a question, however, more along the lines of implementing the tracking updates. Now that MSN and Google both have their desktop tools it is much easier to implement something of this nature for those mediums. With Yahoo, however, I have a few small advertisers who do not spend enough to warrant the ‘upload capabilities’ that are offered for larger spenders. That being said, their accounts are still quite large. Any tips on implementing these tracking variables in a time-saving manner?
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
@ Jon,
That’s an interesting predicament! My #1 tip would be to call Yahoo! support and specifically ask if they would be willing to perform a bulk upload for you. If yes, then you could go ahead and create the spreadsheet as usual.
I’m a bit jaded to the fact that I always have access to the upload feature and forget that it is a feature “earned.” Doh!
Does anyone else have any suggestions for making this work **easily** without the upload feature?
Jon – let me know if you get anywhere with Yahoo! support.
December 5th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Wow, talk about being generous with your knowledge! Great post, great blog!
I hope this isn’t the dumbest question on here, nor that you have answered this somewhere else already (I did poke around and didnt see it):
Just wondering about how and where Google and Yahoo! place the exact search term into a URL? I strictly undertake PPC as an Affiliate, so an Analytics solution will do anything for me, since I don’t own the final sales page.
I’m trying to figure out a way I can extract the actual full search term that led to an impression and a click on my ad.
I’ve only just recently learned that even though my destination link may be (for, say a clickbank product) http://www.MyId.hop.clickbank.net/?Id=KW1, what actually gets sent by Yahoo or Google is something different and somehow includes the full search term (via a parametized URL, I assume?).
So, I guess what I need to know is what the ACTUAL URL sent is, and where within the URL I can find the parameter with the actual search term value?
I hope that makes sense and I somewhat got that straight!
Thanks very much in advance for any advice you can provide!
December 5th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
@ Carrick,
Yahoo! sends the search query data through the referral string as OVRAW. You can read about all of the elements that are pushed through the Yahoo referral string here: http://bit.ly/67zk
For Google, I admittedly don’t have much experience getting the search query outside of Analytics. You may try to snag the “q” parameter (that’s how organic Google referrals pass the search query).
I may need to test out and circle back. Thanks for commenting!
December 7th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
[...] to you in detail how you can add extra information to your landing page URL, as this page about Tracking Yahoo! Keyword Data in Google Analytics on PPCHero.com already does that in [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
@John and @Jon Lee Clark – there are some commercially available tools that let you do things like that – of which acquisio is the best, they have an editor like adwords editor that does yahoo and msn too, with extended find and replace on basically anything.
January 11th, 2009 at 8:56 am
John,
This staff works perfectly! Unfortunately, by using your method I’m doing free of charge keyword research for my merchant/affiliate manager.
How do I hide my profitable keywords data from my merchant/affiliate manager and do the same tracking?
January 12th, 2009 at 7:22 am
@ Lacho,
If you are placing your keywords directly into the tracking URL, than yes – anyone with access to your Yahoo destination URLs will see your keywords. However, you may try simply going with the {OVKEY} option, which will hide your actual keywords “pre-click.”
Hope that helps!
January 19th, 2009 at 11:16 am
[...] The Secret of Tracking Yahoo! Keyword Data in Google Analytics John Lee, PPC Hero | 4/3/08 [...]
January 21st, 2009 at 11:38 am
Hi John,
A most excellent post.
I essentially just want to track my Yahoo CPC campaigns in Google analytics. I dont care about Yahoo analytics so surely I just need download the entire yahoo keywords, use a bit of excel trickery to build the urls (in the google url builder way) and just re upload these into Yahoo right?
A
January 21st, 2009 at 12:43 pm
@ HighlanderX,
You’re right – this has everything to do with downloading and updating your URLs and re-uploading them into Yahoo… for purposes of reporting in Google Analytics!
January 23rd, 2009 at 7:49 am
thanks for the response, and the upload format is absolute yuck! one thing i found was that yahoo cuts off custom urls after a number of characters which is interesting so we’re now getting the urls rewritten and 301′d to in order to do a workaround, any alternative suggestions/workarounds?
February 18th, 2009 at 5:57 am
Thanks for the great tips on tracking yahoo ppc data in google analytics. I was struggling to track goal path for the precious conversions happening on my site through yahoo.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Thanks John,
{OVKEY} solution rocks! saves me tons of time and efforts.
Tried enabling Yahoo tracking urls also to enable campaign id, ad group id …However since it transfers IDs only ..not sure if it captured in GA as campaign/ ad group Name ? not seen so far.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:53 am
@ Sumit,
Unfortunately, if you create your URL tags w/ either {OVADID} or {OVCAMPGID}, it’s just going to show up as a number.
Instead, you should actually write in the names of your campaigns and ad groups (or tag at the ad text level, and insert ad text names!).
February 26th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
John,
A couple of quick questions for you:
1. Do I need to customize my URL’s at the keyword level for this to work? Or, can I use the tracking URL as my text ad destination?
2. If I have “Tracking URL’s” turned on in my account, isn’t it going to append another set of parameters in addition to my customized URL?
Thanks in advance.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
@ Amad,
Good questions.
1. You can customize URLs at keyword level if you want, but if you update at the ad group level – you can use the {OVKEY} parameter w/ utm_term= to pass the keyword into Analytics.
2. With tracking URLs turned on, this is what passes the {OVKEY} parameters through – and it will not interfere with your Analytics/utm tagging.
Let me know if that answers your questions!
February 26th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
“1. You can customize URLs at keyword level if you want, but if you update at the ad group level – you can use the {OVKEY} parameter w/ utm_term= to pass the keyword into Analytics.”
Would I be able to use OVRAW instead of OVKEY at the adgroup level?
Thanks again.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:26 am
@ Amad,
Yes. But be warned, that will be search queries – NOT keywords from your account. So depending on what data you want to utilize in Analytics, it’s your choice.
I’m actually working on figuring out an Analytics filter that will allow you to do both simultaneously. Results TBA. : )
February 27th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Awesome! Thanks for all the input John. Now I gotta wait for all those URL’s to get approved. : )
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
This is probably a foolish question but is there a difference between using ‘?’ or ‘&’ as the first separator in the tracking?
http://www.example.com?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc
vs.
http://www.example.com&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc
May 5th, 2009 at 2:48 am
thanks for this feature ! I’m going to try it !
May 21st, 2009 at 6:29 am
Hi,
I’ve tried to add this to my YSM account at the ad level using the google url builder.
I have track URLs enabled in YSM and ‘Standard’ set.
The only problem is I only see {ovkey} in my GA reporting? What am i doing wrong?
Sample URL at Ad Level
http://www.beacon-dodsworth.co.uk/products/mapping-software/health-market.html?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=%7BOVKEY%7D&utm_content=identify%2Band%20analyse%20health%20issues&utm_campaign=Prospex%2BHealth%20market
Help would be greatly appreciated.
Matt.
May 21st, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Hey,
1) User upper case – OVKEY
2) Also good to keep in mind that url builder will remove {} signs, so build your url and than append utm_term={OVKEY}
June 18th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
What a great article. Thank you….. Now i gotta figure out how to actually implement it in real time.
Thanks
June 19th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Just get Yahoo to do it, thats what we do! By the way, put underscores for the spaces in the keywords, otherwise you’ll upset the import process and it wont upload.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:57 am
Does GA pick up revenue metrics when using this url? If not is there a way to capture this data in GA?
July 1st, 2009 at 1:28 pm
@Jason, no GA doesn’t pick up revenue. Revenue tracking is a separate set of code that contains dynamic values to calculate sales and items purchased. You can go to GA and in the help section type in ‘revenue tracking’ and the instructions will come up. thanks!