Hello! I've just started using Google Adwords and want to also use their conversion tracking so I can see which keywords are converting for me. It appears that to use conversion tracking you need to put the Google code on your thank you page, i.e. a page that indicates that a conversion's taken place. This is fine if you're a merchant as you can put that on the page after the user's performed a purchase, but no good if you're an affiliate. What I want is to treat a click on a link to the merchant I'm promoting as a conversion. That's not strictly a sale, but will still give a good indication. So - has anyone managed to set up their conversion tracking to register a click as a conversion? I've got a few ideas, though not yet managed to get it working. My ideas are: 1) Have an intermediate page with the code on that then forwards the user to the merchant. The problem with that is that I might lose sales as the user doesn't like this - I'd much prefer the link to go direct to the merchant site. 2) Open a hidden popup window with the Google javascript code on, that automaticaly closes itself after a few seconds. The problem with that is that I don't really like popups, plus they can be blocked. 3) Dynamically load the Google Javascript code I've been trying this, though not managed to get it to work. The idea is that the onclick event of a link loads the Google javascript, runs it, then you get forwarded to the merchant. Anyway - I'd be really interested to know if anyone else has managed to get it working one way or another and how they did it as I think the conversion tracking could be extremely useful. Thanks in advance!
If you are willing to count clicks as conversions, why not just link direct to the merchant and count clicks?
3 reasons not to direct link: 1) Adwords only allows 1 advert per domain. The merchant I'm promoting is Amazon and there are others promoting it so my advert may not appear. 2) Landing pages are better as you can presell the product. E.g. I give info and a price comparison at a number of shops so they can see how much cheaper it is from Amazon and are more likely to buy. 3) Quality score - I can make a landing page that gets a better quality score than the merchant's product page.
I don't know if Amazon has their own tracking....You could use their tracking for each keyword you have. For example, I use Clickbank's tracking code on my keywords, works the same as Adwords tracking.
No it doesn't, or at least not like other networks. You can set up additional tracking IDs within Amazon, but it's not practical to do that for 100 searches, phrases for instance. Monitoring and matching them up would be a nightmare. Other networks allow you to pass a tracking ID with your affiliate link, so you could pass something like the search phrase and date. That way you could then match them up to the AdWords clicks. But that's not what I was wanting as it'd be a nightmare to try and match it all up. E.g. if I wanted to see what my conversion rate was for a particular keyphrases between two dates it'd take a lot of work to try and match up reports from the networks with the clicks from AdWords. With the AdWords conversion tracking all that is held in their system and you can see the results with your usual AdWords reprots. E.g. if you get a report for an AdGroup between two dates it'll list all the usual stats for all they keywords (impressions, clicks, etc) along with the number of conversions each keyword had, the cost per conversion, etc. Much, much better than having that information held by the networks and you having to then match them up - you'd spend your whole time doing reports rather than being productive! Maybe you could do it if you were promoting 1 or 2 products with a few keyphrases, but if you want to promote many more, each with maybe a hundred keyphrases, the AdWords Conversion Tracking is essential to properly monitor the performance of the keyphrases. Anyway - I'm surprised nobody had (or gave) a solution as I'd have thought it would've been something a number of people would've come across before. Tracking the conversions of each keyphrase is an important part of maximising return on an AdWords campaign. I have now come up with a solution that works quite well. Basically, I have a redirect page that includes the tracking code on and then forwards the user straight on to the destination page. That way Google tracks the conversion (remember - I'm treating a click as a conversion even though strictly that doesn't always result in a sale - but it gives a good indication of effectiveness) and the user doesn't know. My AdWords campaigns are now tracking the conversions and I can see which keyphrases are costing the most per conversion. I'll wait for a bit more data then amend bids or remove unprofitable keywords.
Yes - I agree. This is about as close to "the money click" as us affiliates will get. Either that or laboriously setting up separate landing pages per keyword, a real pain.
Slartibartfast, that was pretty much the best advice I have heard in a long time. +rep I have also just started using extreme conversions and it's working pretty well so far.
Slartibartfast, I'm trying to do the exact same thing and found this thread. I assume you did a PHP redirect, and you had to refresh the page during the redirect. When the page refreshes do you find it hangs for a few seconds and is it off-putting to the visitor do you think? Can the visitor press the back button from say Amazon, and come back to your price comparison easily enough, without the redirect blocking them? The last concern I have is whether the redirect affects the referral headers from your site because some networks might like to see where the referrals are coming from. Your number 3 Idea sounded interesting - dynamic code load, but it seems the page needs to refresh in order to activate Javascript. Hmmm...maybe thats a possibilty too... Does your solution continue to work for you?
Hi Tiberium, My redirect page is a PHP program that takes the URL to redirect to as a parameter. The PHP redirect program then outputs an HTML page that contains the Google AdWords conversion tracking javascript code, followed immediately by javascript code to redirect to the destination URL. So it runs the Google conversion tracking, then redirects. The javascript redirect code I use is window.location.replace - that code doesn't break the back key (other code can do) and so when the user hits the back button from Amazon they're taken to the landing page and not the intermediate page. It doesn't create a noticable delay for the user as the Google javascript and my redirect are quite quick. One other belt and braces approach I took was to also add a meta refresh into the redirect page, so that after 5 seconds it redirects the user to the target URL. That's for the few people that don't have javascript, and in that case it will break the back button. But that won't happen very often. I don't know about the referral headers - I've not tested. The conversion tracking seems to work well for me - I can't tell if it's 100% accurate or 99% accurate but it's certainly good enough.
Isn't there 3rd party tracking tools that can help you logged the bidded keyword and the search keyword that triggred your ads. I use keyword radar for adwords tracking purposes on clickbank and i could track more than 1000+ keywords easily. I believe there are many good keyword trackers around, but still great idea from you!
Google provides conversion tracking and it's integrated into their reports - that has to be easier than checking Google's reports then a 3rd party's. So if you can get Google's conversion tracking working then I'd have thought that would've been the best unless the 3rd party tracking does something different/extra? Since I got it working I can easily run a report in AdWords in seconds that shows how my keywords performed, which converted and at what cost per conversion. I suppose like I said originally, this way I'm counting a click through from my landing page to the merchant as a conversion, so maybe there are 3rd party tools to help you match up actual conversions on ClickBank rather than just clicks. But I never use ClickBank and the merchant I'm currently trying out AdWords with is Amazon and they don't allow you the same freedom as other networks to include tracking code in your links, so no 3rd party software would be able to match up clicks to actual sales with Amazon.
Slartibartfast is it possible to provide us "non-coders" with this php redirect script please? would be great!
1- just create an empty text file and name it "affilliateprogram.php" page 2 - make sure windows doesnt continue to classify it as a text file 3- put NOTHING except this on the page <?php header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" ); header("Location:http://www.mydomain.com"); ?> however I am not sure if you can just stick the Analytics code in before that or not. Someone else will have to confirm
No, that wouldn't work as all that would do is redirect the user and you can't add the conversion tracking code if you want to do a 301 redirect. I'll post what I'm using here, as I've already PM'd it to a couple of people that asked: To use that, create a file called redirect.php and put that code in it, plus insert your own Google conversion tracking code where it says. Then you can call it by calling redirect.php?URL=http://www.affiliatelink.com , replacing the URL at the end with your affiliate link. The code will execute the Google conversion tracking code, then using Javascript it'll redirect the user to the affiliate URL. It won't break the back button that way. As an additional safeguard, I've put in a meta refresh that will redirect the user after 5 seconds. Anyone with Javascript enabled (the vast majority) won't need that as they'll have been redirected long before that, but it's there just in case somebody without javascript clicks the link. One word of warning - I knocked this up to cope with my requirements of redirecting to Amazon. I've noticed a potential problem with it if the URL you pass has parameters. In that case it won't work properly as the above PHP program uses the parameter 'URL' to obtain the destination URL, however that won't get the full URL if it contains its own parameters. E.g. if you were trying to get it to redirect to www.domain.com/page.php?a=1&b=2 then the PHP program above will think the URL to redirect to is www.domain.com/page.php?a=1, missing off the &b=2. That's simple to fix, but I haven't yet as it's not causing me a problem. Anyone else that wants to fix it and post an updated version here, feel free! Anyway - let me know if you see any potential problems with the code, or if you can think of any improvements.