OV tracking question

use Web Trends and don't see source=overture

[nuspirit]

OK, I'm stupid, I'll admit that up front. I have added the ?source=overture per they're
instructions to my term listing URLs but I
still don't see the source=overture in my
logs as they said I should.
So here is the stupid part, do I have
to actually have the URLs on my server as
[foo.com...]
etc. etc. ???
Today I went thru my 200 terms and added
the letters OV to every URL, so at least I'll
be able to see that anyway.

I know that I can be quite dense about these
things. I haven't seen any 404's relating to
this issue, so I'm at a loss. BTW I have had
some of my URL's fixed up with is tracking
ext for months and have never seen the
source=overture thing in my logs, but I haven't run in to error messages either.

I have more questions about how to figure ROIs on my OV paid terms, need to figure how to track all the way to my shopping cart, but first things first.

thanks, mike

[wolfy]

I don't know if this is the problem but you would have to put a / in front of
?source=overture I mean:

[foo.com...]

May be in this way it'll work :)

wolfy

[nuspirit]

Wolfy,
I tried the / once a while back when I first submitted the modified URLs and the review editor actually removed them.

[gypsychild]

According to Overture, the correct tracking URL could be one or other of the above combinations depending - although on what or why, they don't say. Here is the info:

[overture.com...]

If you do add source=overture to your URL, one thing to bear in mind is that when someone clicks on an Overture link to your site, the whole tracking URL including source=overture shows up in the address bar. This could interfere with the impact of your site name and possibly even lead to confusion as to what your site is actually called. It's also giving Overture a nice bit of free advertising - I'd certainly like to have my web name popping up on the end of all those URLs.

[payperclickanalyst]

nuspirit,

Are you using WebTrends Live?

If so, I can tell you from experience
they discard anything after the "?" in
the referring URLS.

I have only heard of two quick fixes
without actually editing web trends
code (which is a big no, no)

1. use "#" instead of "?" - this will
work the exact same, but you do
have to go and edit all of your
lisitngs. (dropping an email to an
account manager at any of the
top PPCSE's - you can usually get
them to change it for you)

2. you can put a java script on each
page that when it is loaded it
automatically changes the query
string "?"s to "#"

... I went with #1 on these projects so I
could not even begin to point you in a
direction for input or advice for a script
to work #2.
#2.

[nuspirit]

thanks for the info payper,
I did create a special URL by adding two
letters to every URL in my listings so
I should be able to see the click thrus
from that regardless of the ? ***
whatever. Now I have to figure out
how to keep SE spiders from spidering
those pages...

[Camster]

Depending on which version of WebTrends you're running, you might be able to set-up "parameter analysis" to watch for the source=overture. You define the page to watch (index.html) and the parameter to look for (source) and webtrends will produce a report showing the visits and hits by value of the parameter. Example:

source
overture 100 visits
findwhat 20 visits

[nuspirit]

Thanks cam..
I'll give that a try.