Grabbing variables from AdWords visitors

What information can you collect?

[Jeremy_H]

Hello,

I'm creating a PHP page that people who click on my AdWords Ads will land on.

Are there any variables I can collect from these users using PHP requests?

Would I start with the referring URL? Is there anything else I can get?

Thanks

[StupidScript]

1) You can get anything their browser and your log files allow you to get, including their IP address, date/time, request, status of the request delivery, size of the file requested, referrer and user-agent string. But that's normal for a web server log file.

2) You can also append information to the Destination URL that can help you. The standard suggestion is "?source=google", but you can go further than that. Here's an example:
"?source=google&keyw=fudge+brownies&campaign=bakery+goods" etc.

You could also develop a schema to code your Destination URLs to pass unique identifiers for every term in all of your campaigns, which helps a lot in determining ROI.

I've also used a "serialized" value to encode similar data. You can use PHP's

serialize()

function before creating your Destination URLs in AdWords and

unserialize()

when they get to your site to analyse the string.

Other than the stuff your server logs or what you build into the Destination URL, don't expect Google or Yahoo to send along anything ... except your bill.