Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Lately I’ve been getting asked by Google AdWords clients for help with Google Analytics and the need seems to be increasing rapidly. More and more of my ppc advertising clients are wanting information about their site, bounce rate, exit pages, revenue and more (Google Analytics is a free tracking program offered by Google). I’m not a Google Analytics expert by any means, but I do know the basics of how to create an account, how to implement the code, how to setup goals (which is critical for tracking conversions) and how to analyze results.

Google Analytics provides great information, but one issue that can arise is when Google Analytics transaction numbers and the Google AdWords conversion tracking numbers don’t jive. I know that different packages are not going to track exactly the same, but most of the time, they are close enough that it’s not a big deal. However, a big issue arises when you have an e-commerce site and a decent percentage of people don’t order on their first visit, but come back and order at a later date.

Here’s the problem: Google AdWords tracks “first touch” – if someone searches on a term, clicks on your ad and comes to your site, does not order at that moment, but comes back a week later, AdWords will log the conversion back that first date and attribute the sale to AdWords. Analytics on the other hand tracks “last touch.” In our same scenario, if someone were to search, click an ad, visit the site and leave, then come back a week later, Analytics would attribute that search to organic or other, unless they did a search and clicked on an ad again. Not a big deal if a majority of visitors order on the first visit, but if you have a large amount of people who order at a later date, this can be present a huge problem.

I have two clients who have this issue. For one of them, 40% of visitors don’t order on their first visit, and the other is 50%. And you guessed it, there’s a 40% and 50% difference in AdWords conversions and Analytics transactions. They can’t get a true picture of their PPC ROI with Google Analytics because they only see the revenue for anyone who ordered the first time they visited the site.

The big question is why is that? You would think that, both being Google products, they would track the same way, or at least have an option to track that way, but they don’t. Frustrating for both me and my clients!

But, I’ll explain how to get around this dilemma in my next Blog.

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Yahoo! Search Partner Alert

As I was reviewing the analytics data for our own JumpFly PPC advertising accounts, I noticed a significant increase in visitors from various sources that previously did not account for much traffic. Analytics data informed me that users from these specific sites were staying for just 0-5 seconds, while users coming from most traffic sources typically stay at JumpFly for several minutes. Some of these increasingly significant traffic providers included websites like ToSeeka.com, CouponMountain.com and FindStuff.com. Hmmm. Now I needed to determine what was responsible for making my ads appear at these websites. A little research revealed that these sites and other offenders were all Yahoo! search syndication partners. A-hah!

Currently Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) customers are automatically advertising on these partner websites and others too, without the option of turning off the search partner network. However, thankfully YSM advertisers do have the ability to block domains where they do not want their ads to appear, and blocking applies to both Sponsored Search and Content Match. I quickly blocked these offenders at YSM and my ads were removed from their websites within minutes. Having analytics in place was critical for me to identify where less valuable traffic was originating. Do you know where your website traffic is coming from? If not, it is free and fairly easy to implement Google Analytics.  Additional analytics tools are also available from various reputable providers. Analytics tools are great for many reasons, which may be further explored in a future blog.

Click here for detailed instructions on how to eliminate your PPC ads from appearing on undesired URLs at YSM.

Let’s take a closer look at Yahoo!’s search network. A recent survey reviewed by Aaron Wall at SEObook.com indicates that Yahoo!’s syndication network is the largest, representing 55% of traffic provided by YSM. This research also revealed that the average Yahoo! advertiser appeared on 1,196 websites where Yahoo! search ads were being served. In contrast, Google’s syndication network reached an average of 431 sites per advertiser and accounted for 41% of Google AdWords traffic. In both cases, syndication partners represent a large portion of overall traffic and clearly warrant the need to be monitored.

Do yourself a favor and implement some form of analytics tool to help better manage your PPC accounts.