What phrases did my adwords customers enter

I want to view the actual keyphrases that visitors who came to my site from adwords entered. So for example, if I have bid on the broad matched phrase:

business funiture

I may get clicks from users who entered:

low cost business furniture
used business furniture
oak business furniture
etc.

But as far as I can see, running a report in Google only shows me that I received 3 click throughs for the phrase: business furniture

What is the best way for me to see which terms were actually typed in so that I can enter specific bids for those more detailed phrases, look at optimizing ny site, etc.

Thanks

 

Best way to do this is through analysing your web-logs

If you're running a dynamic/scripted landing page, you'll be able to extract the search term from the referrer:

(assuming PHP)

$referer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$matches = array();
preg_match('/q=(.+?)&/', $referer, $matches);
if (isset($matches[1]))
{
	$search_term = ucwords(strtolower(urldecode($matches[1])));
}

Code (markup):

What you do with this is up to you, but if you've sent across the matching keyword with the URL

e.g. http://www.adwordmiracles.co.uk/index.php?kw={keyword}

then you'll be able to extract that too and post into a database or something similar.

if (isset($_GET['kw']))
{
	$keyword = ucwords(strtolower(urldecode($_GET['kw'])));
}

Code (markup):

If you need further help, just yell

Regards
Howard

 

Build onsite tracking. This example will be in ASP:

Set up a database (I use SQL, you can use Access), put in 3 tables
table 1: tabKeywords
col 1: id
col 2: Keyword
col 3: DestinationURL
Put your kewords in there along with the page you want each keyword to drive to. Example:
1 blue widgets http://www.mysite.com/bluewidgets.asp

table 2: tabClicks
col 1: id
col 2: keywordID
col 3: DateTimeOfClick (autopopulate with getdate())
col 4: Referer
col 5: Provider

table 3: tabActions
col 1: id
col 2: clickID
col 3: DateTimeOfAction(autopopulate with getdate())
col 4: SaleAmout

Now build a page to send
send.asp

construct your PPC links like:
http://www.mysite.com/send.asp?kid=1&p=g

kid = the id of the keyword
p = provider (g=google, y=yahoo, m=msn, a=ask, etc)

on the send page
when a click arrives, parse to get the kw and p values:
qKID = request.querystring("kid")
qProvider = request.querystring("p")

Get the referer info:
sReferer = request.servervariables("HTTP_REFERER")

Insert the click info into the click table; remember, the DateTimeOfClick is autopopulated
INSERT in tabCLicks (keywordID, Referer, Provider) VALUES ("&qKID&", '"&sReferer&"', '"&qProvider&"')

Get the id of the click info record you just inserted:
SELECT TOP 1 id from tabCLicks ORDER BY id DESC
rsClickID = rs("id")

Put the click id into a cookie
Response.Cookies("clickID") = rsClickID

Put the click id into a session (in case cookies are diabled)
Session("clickID") = rsClickID

Get the destination page based on the keyword
SELECT DestinationURL from tabKeywords where id = "&qKID&""
rsDestinationURL = rs("DestinationURL")

Send to the destination URL
Response.Redirect(rsDestinationURL)

On your order confirmation page:
read the click id from the cookie or session
vClickID = ""
vClickID = request.cookies("clickID")
If vClick ID = "" then vClickID = Session("clickID")

Set up some some way to pass along the sale amount, I set a session variable on final checkout page the grab it on the confirmation page:
vAmount = Session("SaleAmount")

Put the clickID and the sale amount into the tabActions table
INSERT INTO tabActions (clickID, SaleAmount) VALUES ("&vClickID&", "&vAmount&")

Now you have a database with:
The keyword clicked
date and time of click
what provider sent the click
the referer string of the click (which will also include the actual search term used)
date and time of sale if the clicker bought something
amount of sale

I'm sure you can figure out how to use this info to your advantage.

Anyone want something like this set up, contact me-

 

Very cool ...

... but be careful with the redirection because it's against Google Adwords rules of engagement to redirect the user when they arrive at the landing page (though to be honest I've done it several times without any hassle)

Howard

 

wow man, thanks to the thread. Bookmarking it.

 

Hi Howard -

It' sonly against terms if you redirect to a page unrelated to the keyword/ad. Even then you can usually get away with it for a while before they tirn off the ad. But then , why would you put an ad up for widgets only to redirect to the gidgets page? And Google specifically makes allowances for tracking URLs

 

Because bids on widgets costs $0.10 and clicks on gidgets adsense provides $0.50 per click through?

But seriously though, yeah you're absolutely right. And thinking about it there's so many tracking tools that utilise redirection that of course it happens.

Cheers
H