Google Analytics Cannot Track Yahoo Paid Search Clicks

Is it by default or am I doing something wrong?

[KFish]

I am using Google Analytics. However I see that GA is NOT able to track Paid clicks from Yahoo. 50% of my site’s traffic is from Yahoo paid ads but GA says 100% from organic traffic from Google, Yahoo etc.

Is it true that GA cannot track Yahoo or any other search engines’ paid results?

It does track organic results though.

[zangatling]

Fascinating question. I wondered the same thing. 50% from Yahoo? That's quite a bit. Hope you find an answer to this.

[Philosopher]

GA CAN track yahoo PPC campaigns, however, unlike with Adwords traffic, you have to tag your Yahoo PPC links.

[google.com...]

I wish GA would just incorporate the tags that Yahoo uses natively as it would be MUCH easier.

[cgrantski]

Heh, if you were Google, making all your money off AdWords and making no money on Analytics, would you offer support for your competitor's version of AdWords?

[zangatling]

Hey, thanks for the answer Philosopher. That topic looks a little involved, which makes sense in light of cgrantski's reply here.

[mblyman]

We've tagged all our yahoo paid ads with the tags and it didn't take too long and now we see the results broken out by cpc vs. organic. We did the same for MSN.

Very helpful and worthwhile to do so

[KFish]

Thanks Philosopher. Huh you gave me a lot of work to do. :-)

Now I need to run the URL Builder and copy paste the generated URLs in hundreds of my ads.

Any software out there?

Just one more question:

If I don’t put the “Campaign Term” (to identify the paid keywords) in the URL Builder then I may not be able to track the keywords, though GA will show clicks from paid ads. Am I right?

If yes, do I really need to create one unique URL for each of my keywords?

I think, I have a mammoth task ahead of me.

if you were Google, making all your money off AdWords and making no money on Analytics, would you offer support for your competitor's version of AdWords?

cgrantski with due respect, I think there is some advantage to Google in offering free analytics. They can “know” keywords that come for cheap and are effective and then through their keyword suggestion tool offer the same to Adwords advertisers. This way those keywords become competitive and competitors start bidding higher in turn making more money for Google.

So it doesn’t matter whether you get traffic from AdWords or any other source. Google is more eager than you to track all your traffic – and especially those that convert well.

My dear nothing comes for free in this world. ;-)