Hails everyone! We are working on a script that will check from where visitors come to our site. there will be two types of users: 1. those who came from Google Organic Search results 2. those who clicked our paid ads (AdWords) We have to track those two groups separately. So my question is: What is the difference between organic and paid Google links? I have checked both and found that organic results always start with: http://www.google.com/url? while all sponsored links start with: http://www.google.com/aclk?. is this reliable enough difference that never changes and that we can use? Thanks in advance!
both are good dear.... but most of user do click on organic link so with the help of organic rank you will get more traffic compare than Adword link.
I think in google analytics you can easily check where the visitors are coming from, and merge the adwords account with your google analytics account & set auto tagging on, this way you will be able to know where the visitors are coming from...
I am NOT interested in Google Analytics since we are making our own software. Thank you for the advice anyway
I am sorry - You didn't understand my question. I mean quite literally: what is the difference between organic and paid Google HYPERLINKS ... I mean CODE. So far I have found only one difference- all Organic hyperlinks start with: http://www.google.com/url? and all AdWords hyperlinks start with http://www.google.com/aclk? any other difference?
Google's code can change overnight, then change back; it is most unreliable. To track your Adwords links (and all your other links) put in a parameter such as http://mysite.com?pd=adwords Then you track the requested URI rather than the referrer. Bompa
Yes there is lots of differences. Organic is alwyas better and it helps you to earn money. Adwords is used advertisement.
Organic Google Links are the result of your indexed website. These links are stored in Google database. Sponsored links are paid links that you buy from Google.
I agree with Bompa here. Google can change their code and linking structure anytime, so you can't rely on it. You need to find some other method to differentiate organic and paid traffic.
The OP reiterates the nature of the question, and still people ignore it and think he doesn't know the difference between organic and Adwords! So, to those people who actually know what an HTTP Referrer is... is this the concensus still: the ?aclk might work for now, but should be deemed unreliable, and one has to use a unique parameter in the querystring of the destination URL to reliably pick up the referrer as Adwords using software? What my company wants to do is display one phone number for general website visits, and another phone number for AdWords, so we can track phone-only conversions that Google Conversion Tracking would miss.