Concerns over Adwords & Overture Conversions

[kjs50]

Hello,

I was thinking of putting up the adwords and google code to track conversions, but I am wary of them knowing my sales metrics and if they do anything with that information in the future that could harm me (notice my sales for certain words and encourage other competitors to use those, etc..) Has anyone considered this and believe there is no harm in using the conversion trackers.

I currently create a cookie for the user when they come in to the site through javascript and record the code when they purchase something. So I have the information, just takes a lot of manual work to associate it to campaigns and calculate conversions.

[seobloke]

I wouldn't worry about it. Google are No. 1 as they never play unethical games with anyone data, and have mastered the art of analysing search data in order to improve its search algorithm and services. Google will never advise your competitors on what you are doing or how well your campaigns are running.

This should really be the least of your concerns.

Concentrate on driving traffic to your website and analysing your conversion rates. Competition is good!

However, if you are still not convinced, use a good third party conversion tracking/website statistical analysis tool, many are freely available.

Hope this helps.

[edited by: Woz at 11:49 pm (utc) on Nov. 6, 2004]
[edit reason] no self promos please, see TOS#13 [/edit]

[kjs50]

thanks for the info. i used to use indextools but the cost was too much. ended up about 200 a month for the traffic i had.

i found a cool utility, surfstats, that uses a combination of javascript cookies and server logs. i have a couple issues that i'm working with them on in order to read my logs so hopefully that will work out.

i'd like to use google as well so i can get some verification of the results as well between the different analyzers.

any idea on how long visitorlogs will be free? looks interesting.