track keyword usage at destination site

[dustin999]

I've recently established an Adwords campaign for a friend. Anyway, I'll be managing all his Adwords optimization for the most part, but I would also like to give him the ability to view keyword usage directly through his site.

Is this possible? I'm familiar with the {Keyword:widgets} syntax, but it doesn't appear to work in the URL (so I can't do a post-processing script on the site). I've tried other things like capturing HTTP_REFERER, but it looks like this common variable is blown away somehow by Google (it's blank once the destination server attempts to parse it).

Does Conversion Tracking somehow set a cookie that I can parse at the destination side? Any other creative ways to do what I need?

[keywordguru]

You can easily use a custom tracking solution. I would say adtrackz is your best bet. It is cheap enough, and it allows campaign creating on the fly, so you will save tons of time bothering with referrers and url's. They enter, they get tagged, if they buy they track as a convert.

Plain and simple:)
KG

[dustin999]

KG,

I'd really like to provide a custom solution, that is, write my own Google keyword analysis tool. The reason is, I'm considering doing this part time for a few other companies, and I'd like to provide a solution for my customers rather than paying $79 each time I set up adtrackz.

With that being said, it sounds like adtrackz does exactly what I want for Google Adwords. How does adtrackz and other similar solutions track which keyword is specified by the user on Google? Through HTTP_REFERER? Does Google set cookies in its Conversion Tracking that you can use to read the keyword? What's the secret? Or do you have to set a custom URL for each and every keyword (e.g., a CGI form GET parameter in the URL which is parsed on the destination site)? If that's the answer, that's painful, especially if you have thousands of keywords.

Any ideas? Not possible?

[keywordguru]

Yes, it is done through specific URL's so it may get tedious. If you can build an easy generator to build these url's it may not be too bad, but overall it definitely will get tedious.

There are a few trackers that do it by keyword. I would give hitslink a shot. The ecommerce portion tracks by click. I am not exactly sure how, and it isn't the most accurate, but the system overall is excellent.
KG

[dustin999]

Generating the URL is no big deal, but entering in all those URLs to Google is the hard part, unless I'm missing something? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming the fastest way to enter in all of those URLs is by using the new Google Adwords API? I haven't tried it yet, but plan on working on it this weekend.

If anyone has a better method that doesn't involve entering special URLs individually for 2000 keywords, let me know! Perhaps there's some GUI/freeware tool that interfaces with Google Adwords?

Before I heard about the new Google Adwords API, I was actually considering writing an app that walks through the website and enters keyword/URL combinations directly through the web. Ugh.