logging PFP search strings

not showing

[Gymonsear]

amateur question I know.... but confilcting answers I am getting means I need a 3rd opinion

Client currently not showing PFP visits on his Search Strings report.. at all

Some packages do not pick up PFP searchs... why?

Thanks again in advance

[cgrantski]

Have you looked in the logs to see how (or whether) these appear? That could give you a clue.

[Gymonsear]

they do not appear anywhere

[cgrantski]

Then when you say "some packages do not pick up ..." what do you mean by "packages"? I'm confused about whether you're trying to get information to show in your reports when that information isn't in the raw data. I may not be understanding what you are asking for.

[Gymonsear]

Matrixstats are the package... we cannot get them to show up Overture clicks.. what can I do?

[cgrantski]

First, in Overture, have you turned on the Overture Tracking URL feature yet? That's necessary. It's in the Admin area, the Account Set-Up page (lower right part of the screen).

When that is turned on, you will be able to identify Overture PFP visits by looking for a specific parameter on the landing page called "ovraw" which is inserted by Overture.

I think you're expecting Overture to show up in the referrer section of your reports. It won't, or it hardly ever will show up there, because hardly anybody uses the Overture site for searching. Overture will be bringing you traffic that seems to come from Yahoo and other places that are displaying search results from Overture.

All visits coming through your Overture program will have a parameter "ovraw= ..." appended to the URL of the landing page. The value of the parameter will be the keyword - for example "home.asp?ovraw=new+widgets" means that visit happened because of a search on an Overture affiliate for "new widgets" and somebody clicked on your "new widgets" ad on that other affiliate site (such as Yahoo).

The MatrixStats referrer or search engine report will probably not show this. You should talk to them about how to get a report on traffic with "ovraw" in the landing page URL. Your MatrixStats reports will show the names of the affiliates and the search terms used by them, but as I said, "Overture" as a search engine will hardly ever show up there, because nobody uses Overture itself.

For example, Overture feeds its PFP listings to Yahoo; you might see traffic coming from Yahoo in your reports, and and you won't know they are really clicks you paid for on Overture unless you have the "ovraw=" parameter on the landing page.

I hope this makes sense. If you have Overture URL Tracking turned on, open a log and search for "ovraw" and you will see what I mean.