Hi, Should I turn on or off the Search Partners for my Google Adwords campaign? Do you think the clicks from Search partners convert well?
I have Search Partners enabled, and in general I'm getting better results with Search Partners. Test it out
Hi, Do you promote your own products or affiliate products using Google Adwords? I am an affiliate that is trying to drive traffic using Google Adwords to my blog that contain affiliate links. How do you track whether clicks are converting into sales?
Yes I would have search partners turned on. You can monitor the results for the search partners network separately.
I would first sort out Google Search and once you have nailed a campaign, then move on to Search Partners. Walk before you can run, so to speak. Then give it a week or 2 and you'll soon know whether Search Partners is worth it or not. I tested it and in my case, Google Search alone worked better, so I spent more of my budget on more campaigns instead. But SP might work for you.
Make sure you have conversion tracking enabled (tools > conversion tracking) and then you dont have to guess the stats will tell you whether the search partners convert well or not!
I create 2 campaigns for each and set diff bid levels for Google Search and Google + partner sites. This allows for you test really quickly rather than wait 2 weeks. The diff bid levels is set so that your campaigns don't 'bleed' over each other.
If you do that, Google will randomly trigger one of the Google Search keywords in one of the campaigns. It would be much easier if you could have a campaign to be Search Partners only, but Google seem very hesitant to do that.
It would not randomly trigger b/c my bids are lower for search partners vs google search. So for the search partner campaign to trigger on google.com it'll have to have a better QS than google search campaign.
Hi, As I am an affiliate, the merchant does not allow the placing of snippet code in its sales page. Hence, I can't think of any other way of tracking clicks to sales conversion.
Muchacho is right. Test and optimize your campaign on the Google network only at first. One reason is that if you start with the search partners on and they happen to perform worse, they'll make it look as if your campaign as a whole is not doing well. Often, the search partners have lower click rates but not necessarily lower conversion rates. As with anything else in PPC, test, test, test. You'll get different answers from different people. Test it for your own situation. He's also right about having two campaigns, one Google only and one both Google and the search partners. You cannot force Adwords to display your ads more often on the campaign with the partners. Not saying it chooses one at random but there's equal chances it will choose one over the other, no matter how you set it up. At least, that's my understanding and experience of how the system works. If you have data to back it up, I'd like to see it as I never set up a campaign this way. I also don't see the point. If the search partners are doing as well as Google, why bother? The reason I believe they don't allow a search partner campaign is that quality score is calculated on data that Google has. It doesn't have access to their partners' full data. So in order to figure out QS, they must force you to use the Google search engine. It doesn't help afmark because, as an affiliate marketer, he has no way to track conversions.
Like Lucid says, please could you show the data to back this up. It's certainly not worked like that in the past.
Even if you can't put a tracking image on the thank you page, you should be able to do some form of tracking. With CJ you can append the keyword to the id, and when you get sales you can track it back. I'm not sure if this will allow you to distinguish between google and the search partners, but its definitely better than nothing.
I don't know know if all affiliate merchants allow passing parameters with your link. I'm guessing not all do. What you want to do however is track not only the keyword, which is easy. You also need to track the keyword's match type as well as the ad. You would not be able to track if it was from Google or a search partner. All this is tedious to set up but to echo Muchacho, it is absolutely essential.