How do you know they are? Where do I find that information, or am I missing something obvious?
Also, there appears to be a distinction between "search" results and "content" results. Again, I have no idea where you're looking. Can you direct me? I'd love to figure out how to improve results.
Any help in navigating this great tool (with the steep and treacherous learning curve) is welcomed!
Great forum, too.
I2
users are talking about not wanting their Adwords ads to show up on AdSense pages.
How do you know they are?
[...]
Also, there appears to be a distinction between "search" results and "content" results. Again, I have no idea where you're looking.
Those two things you mention are basically the same - only from different point of views.
You use AdWords to PLACE OWN advertisings, which are mainly shown in the search engine result pages (SERPS) of Google. For each click on one of these ads, you PAY money.
You use AdSense to SERVE advertisings placed by OTHERS. These ads show up on your own pages. If someone clicks on one of these ads, you GET money.
The ads which are SHOWN in AdSense on your site, are PLACED in AdWords by somebody other than you. The very same ad might be shown BOTH in the Google results AND on your page.
If someone clicks the ad in the Google result page, it's a "search result" (as you call it). If someone clicks on the very same ad, which is served via AdSsens on your private homepage, it's a "content result" since the ad is shown in someone else's content (yours, for example).
Clear now?
I understand the difference between Adwords and AdSense, and that SERPS are "search" results and AdSense are "content" results.
My question is this: I create Adwords ads. They (presumably) get served up on Google searches (SERPS) *and* on AdSense members' content pages. How do I know which clicks are coming from where? And how do I know which site served up the ad that got the click?
In some of the "wishlist/suggestion" threads, people are wanting a way to PREVENT their ads from going to one or the other. They say, for example, an ad doesn't work on Google, but gets lots of "content" clicks (or vice versa). How do they know that? Is there a way to find out that information?
Maybe my ads are working in one area but not in another. I'd love to be able to know.
All replies are appreciated!
I2
There is also no separation between the partner sites and Google searches. The CTR in the ad stats shows for both type of searches (Google & partner sites). However, the "Status" indicates the status of your KW in the Google searches and this "status" shows whether your ad are working or not on Google.
I've seen people on this forum (cline, and others) say that their ads do well on content sites, but not on Google (or vice versa). How can they tell? Where do they look? By what method do they determine that? That's what I'm asking.
Thanks!
I2
in the reporting, it will list how many content clicks/impressions you received, and I believe you can customize a report to show the content advertising.
but you can't see specifics - otherwise you could cut google out and deal directly with the publishers.
you won't be able to see that the clicks are coming from joes-widget-example.com - you will see referrers like page2.googlesyndication.com in your logs.
Ah, this is what I'm getting at. So, in my logs I see that googlesyndication.com is the referrer. Are you saying that all these clicks are from ads served up as "content" on AdSense sites?
If so, what do the clicks from the ads served up on Google searches show up in my logs as?
I2
If so, what do the clicks from the ads served up on Google searches show up in my logs as?
The referrer is google.com (or whatever national Google they are coming from).
However, you have all the tools in your hand to make them show up more prominent in your logs. Google itself suggests, that you add an additional referrer-line to your own ads. Example:
URL shown in the ad box itself:
www.widgets.comwww.widgets.com/specialdeal1.html?referrer=AdWordsCampaign7Instead of "referrer" you can use any variable you want. For example "campaign" might be a good name too.
Now your hits get the referrer "google.com" along with the search phrase, and in the requested URL you also get your campaign code.
If so, what do the clicks from the ads served up on Google searches show up in my logs as?
The referrer is google.com (or whatever national Google they are coming from).
Are you sure about this? If it's true, then I would have no way to determine which clicks are coming from Adwords ads that show up beside Google searches versus the "normal" results from the search itself.
For example, if you search for "widgets", the site comes up in the search results AND the Adwords ad pops up next to it. If they all show up in my log pages as from google.com, how do I know which is which?
URL shown in the ad box itself: www.widgets.com
Actual URL assigned to that specific ad:
www.widgets.com/specialdeal1.html?referrer=AdWordsCampaign7
That doesn't really work, though, for what I'm trying to discern. That tells me which ad was clicked on, but it doesn't tell me where (Google search vs. Adsense) the ad showed up.
Thanks for the ongoing help.
I2
Actually it DOES show where the ad's are served. I'm surprised myself, but I just checked the logs:
x.y.z.a - - [24/Mar/2004:17:17:27 +0100] "GET /****.html?[b]referrer=google8[/b] HTTP/1.1" 200 23919 "http://pagead2.[b]googlesy
ndication.com[/b]/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-****xx&random=yyyyy&lmt=zzzzz&format=160x600_as&output=html&channel=xxxx&url=http%3A%2F%2F[b]www.****.yy%2Fhtml%2F[/b]&color_bg=DCE4ED&color_text=000000&color_link=000033&co
lor_url=003366&color_border=A5B2BB" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" "-"Notice the bold parts:
- referrer=google8 is my campaign info
- googlesyndication.com is the actual http-referrer
- and the last bold part shows the URL where the ad was served
x.y.z.a - - [27/Mar/2004:17:55:34 +0100] "GET /****.html?[b]referrer=google8[/b] HTTP/1.1" 200 23919 "[b]http://www.google.com/search?q=searchstring[/b]"Again, the bold areas:
- referrer=google8 is my campaign identification
- http-referrer is google.com plus the querystring
But there's no way I have time to sift through those logs hunting for that kind of detail. Surely there's a tool available, or (better yet) a feature on Google Adwords to help analyze this data?
Seems like that would be the whole point of Adwords in the first place -- to see what works where, and to fine tune its relevancy?
I2
But, please explain, HOW would it help you to know WHERE your content-ads are shown?
For my purposes, it suffices to know what keywords a person has entered in the SERPS where my ads show up. My amount of SERPS vs. content-ads is more or less 98:2
But maybe I just don't get what you're after? Mind to explain a bit more?
But, please explain, HOW would it help you to know WHERE your content-ads are shown?
Firstly, I don't care to know where the content ads are shown. You're assuming I want to know this, but I'm not sure where you got this assumption.
All I want to know is where individual keyword clicks are coming from.
I'll try another example:
Let's say I use the keywords "car" and "engine".
Users searching Google for "car" click on my ad.
Users seeing the same ad on Adsense sites don't.
Users searching Google for "engine" never click my ad.
Users seeing the same ad on Adsense sites do.
How do I know who's clicking on what?
The CTR in the CP of Adwords shows the CTR for both Google searches AND Adsense impressions.
Maybe I want to stop serving to Adsense ads (because no one clicks on them and it's destroying my CTR). Maybe I want to make SURE I'm serving to Adsense ads (because they have a huge ROI).
When I evaluate the effectiveness of the keyword "car", I need to know "yes, it's effective when people search for it, but no, it's not effective on content sites". (I could then turn off the content or search partners options in Adwords.)
But if I can't determine where the clicks are coming from, it's largely a big blind guess.
I've learned from this thread that content site links are from googlesyndication.com and searches are from google.com, but that still doesn't tell me which keywords are coming in (unless I sift through the logs by hand, apparently).
All I want is a simple and effective way to see this data, so that I can adjust keywords, CPCs and where I serve the ads.
I really hope this makes sense because I don't know how else to ask it. Thanks for your ongoing help.
I2
Stay tuned and enjoy the sunny Sunday (at least here iit is).
Found a promising thread where WW-members try to create an AdSense statistics script. Haven't completely read it so far - but maybe it's helpful...
It's a great thread (I'm up to page 8), but it's from the Adsense user's perspective, and tracking what's clicked on from their site.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's applicable to the Adwords user who wants to figure out which keywords work in which places. At least not without some mods that are way over my head.
Thanks for continuing the help, despite earlier frustrations... it's all appreciated.
I2
