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Original Message Follows:
------------------------
We are discovering our adwords URLs
in the Google natural search results.
We see them on keyword searches and
even more of them when we do a keyword
search with site:ourdomain.com"
We know this because of the tracking
code source=google_sponsor in the
URLs. There URLS with this tracking
code are not published on any
websites, they are only used in our
Adword ads. So how come they are
appearing in the natural search
results? This makes it impossible for
us to distinguish paid click-thrus
versus non-paid click thrus.
-----Original Message-----
From: AdWords Support [mailto:adwords-support@google.com]
Thank you for your email. I have reviewed your email and have done some testing using the 'site:' function. It appears that when you search our system will recognize the keyword you are searching and 'site:yourdomain.com' as a call to the system to search for anything relevant to the keyword in that specific domain. Therefore, some URLs that you have created for your sponsored links will appear. If people click on our natural search results, you will not be charged for that click, however, you will be charged for the clicks to your adwords ads.
I hope this alleviates some of your concern regarding this issue.
Please feel free to email us at adwords-support@google.com if you have additional questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Kenji
The Google AdWords Team
Response:
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Kenji,
These same listing also appear when not using the 'site:' function. As you may or may not realize, many advertisers seek to determine the Return on Investment (ROI) for their advertising expenditures. The only accurate to do this is to track the source of each visitor all the way through to the completion of a purchase. This is done by embedding a tracking code in the URLs used in the advertisements. If Google is listing URLs from the Adword system in both paid listings and on natural search listings, this makes it impossible to distinguish which visitors arrived by clicking on the paid URL versus the non-paid URL. I think this is a significant isssue for any competent advertiser however I suspect I am one of very few that has discovered this. Please advise as to how we can solve this problem.
stay tuned for their response...
As you may or may not realize, many advertisers seek to determine the Return on Investment (ROI) for their advertising expenditures. The only accurate to do this is to track the source of each visitor all the way through to the completion of a purchase.
But... if placing an AdWords ad does result in that url listed in the "natural results" (and I've never noticed this -- thanks for pointing it out), I wouldn't want any visits that come from that not to be counted in calculated ROI of the AdWords buy. Those visits happened only because of that AdWords placement, so any sales made from them resulted from that ad -- regardless of where on the SERP the listing appeared.
For example, say I'm paying $1 per click for a particular ad. I get 10 clicks from AdWords and 5 from listings "mistakenly" appearing in natural results. I get one sale from one of those five, and one sale from one of the 10 AdWords ads. My AdWords purchase then has resulted in two sales in return for my $10 expense ($1 per click for the ten AdWords clicks), not one. To ignore that sale that came from natural results would skew the calculation of ROI.
Google is effectively leaving money on the table by doing this.
