GuitarZan - 3:29 am on Jun 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Hey,

Your going to laugh, but I have never tracked anything in AdWords, other than the stats they give me. In my defence, I deal only in Affiliate Products straight to merchant. I am going to branch out now, and ad a landing site into the mix, so naturally I want to start tracking properly.

So I am going to start this off by asking what will I need to do proper tracking? What are the tools? Is it just a service? A program? Or Multiple things. I am testing a tracking service right now, where I log into their website, and the stats are held there. I am a little confused at what I should be doing.

I don't want to use the AdWords tracking feature, as I have one that seems to be ok right now. Here are some other things I would like to know:

- Right now I am testing this tracking service. I only have 1 AdGroup running in my whole account. The AdGroup has 2 Ads, both of which the clicks are tracked. So I am only getting traffic from AdWords, from these 2 ads. Something is strange is happening though... Google AdWords will say that I have 16 clicks for the day, while the program says I only have 14 uniques. I then go into the KeyWord Report which is supposed to tell you what KeyWords were typed in to find you, and there are only 9. I don't know why Google is saying 1 figure, while my tracking service is saying another, and giving me an even lower count on KeyWords.

- What are the main things to track? Should I be tracking which Ad actually produces a better ROI? What is the most effecient way to organize this tracking system?

I know this is a lot to answer, but it will definitely help me, and I am sure a lot of other people as well.

Thanks,

C.K.