AdWords Clicks & Webtrends

[pmkpmk]

Hi,

I'm looking for a way to have a statistics on my AdWords Clickthroughs in Webtrends LogAnalyzer 8.

There is a feature called "Advertising views", but this seems only to be aimed for ad-banners stored on your website and shown on other websites.

I followed the Google Adwords guidelines and made the clickthrough-URL like this:

www.mydomain.com/mypage.html?referrer=google7

But it seems Webtrends LA mistakes this "referrer=google7" with the regular referrer statement.

Anyhow, I can't seem to generate a statistics where only these AdWords referrers are shown.

Any help? Does it make any sense what I write?

[cgrantski]

I believe that log analyzers of any brand really won't confuse the referrer field of a log with a parameter that happens to be called "referrer". I'm guessing that you set up something, such as a visit filter, and filtered on referrer rather than a parameter called referrer.

I don't know if Log Analyzer has the Parameter Analysis function, but if it does, you can get a simple count of AdWords visits if you specify that this parameter should be tabulated there.

If you want more than that, you could set up a whole profile that's filtered to include only visits where the entry page has a parameter named "referrer" and a parameter value of "google7."

[Hannu]

Log Analyzer can do the parameter analysis.

I would use a combination of cgrantski's two suggestions. Use the paramter analysis in your general reporting AND make a profile/report that only contains AdWords traffic to do focused monitoring of AdWords, i.e. ROI, behaviour patterns etc.

[Friend]

I have had a similar question in this post:

hxxp://www.webmasterworld.com/forum39/2184.htm

Jetboy is telling me that the?referrer=google is just a dynamic parameter that may or may not show up in your stats prog. If you aren't seeing the page listed as /mypage.html?referrer=google7 then maybe the webtrends isn't tracking it. I haven't tested my stats prog yet but I want to do the same thing with Google's Adwords.

[Hannu]

...?referrer=google is just a dynamic parameter that may or may not show up in your stats prog. If you aren't seeing the page listed as /mypage.html?referrer=google7 then maybe the webtrends isn't tracking it.

First of all, the parameter will always be recorded in the logfile, and WebTrends will recognise it if it's set up to do so.

To make sure that WebTrends treat requests for the same file with different paramters individually you have to do the following:

Options > Document File Extensions and Types > Edit

Select the file type in question (here HTML), choose "Always". Now WebTrends will show requests for eg. mypage.html?referrer=google7 and mypage.html?referrer=whatever as different documents.

(You have to reanalyze the profile for the change to take effect.)

[pmkpmk]

Thanks Hannu, that was exactly what I was looking for.

In Webtrends LogAnalyzer 8, the settings are:

Options -> File Types -> Page File Types -> Edit -> Query String Truncation -> Show Query String

[Hannu]

You're welcome. Glad it worked :-)

/Hannu

[cgrantski]

This item seemed finished but I have to question whether pmk's setting was the right one. PMK, I think what you did will just cause the params to display in reports like Top Pages rather than do what I think you really want. With "display parameters" on, page.asp?referrer=abc and page.asp?referrer=xyz will appear as two different items in the top pages report. That gets pretty confusing to look at, and I don't think it's what you want (?) - most people would prefer that the Top Pages report shows page.asp only once. Then, PMK, you can use Parameter Analysis to produce a completely separate report that lists the views of each variation of the page.asp page, showing number of views of each of the referrer= values one at a time.

I'm trying to say that the "display parameters" checkbox causes the parameters to be displayed in all reports (as opposed to not being displayed). "Truncate parameters" does not prevent parameters from being analyzed in the Parameter Analysis reports. It just prevents them from being displayed in certain reports other than Param Analysis.

So I think you want to keep "truncate parameters" as the setting for that page type, but create a Parameter Analysis report to get what you want.

[pmkpmk]

It was a rather busy week, so I hadn't had time yet to actually VIEW a report since I changed the parameter setting.

What I actually WANT is a sub-report (or if all else fails a completely new report) showing the top-AdWords-entry pages along with a navigation-path-analysis and a new-vs-returning-visitor analysis for the campaigns.

Also a comparison for AdWords vs. regular search results would be nice.

I get most of what I want from the AdWords-stat-pages itself, but I want to have it all combined with the normal log data.

[cgrantski]

Ohhhh - well then. Easiest would be a whole new profile (i.e. new set of reports) that makes WebTrends include just those visits whose entry page included the parameter "referrer=google". And, for contrast, you could make a second filter that's exactly the same, but set up as an "exclude" filter.

I tried to concoct settings for getting what you want without making a new profile, but it got a little crazy when time came to explain it.

[pmkpmk]

I appreciate the effort. Once I'm back in the office on Tuesday I'll have a look at the stats and report back.

[pmkpmk]

Now search me - I see NO result whatsoever! I'm slightly puzzled. I though I had it re-analyzed again, but will do so again just to be sure.

[pmkpmk]

Still nothing. Strange.

[cgrantski]

This is after doing what?

[pmkpmk]

After doing:

Options -> File Types -> Page File Types -> Edit -> Query String Truncation -> Show Query String