How to setup URL tracking for Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter in Google Analytics

Here is what you must do in order to run a report similar to the image above in Google Analytics that shows you the performance of each of your PPC networks. During my research I ran across a number of blog posts that explained how to do this but what I found was that most of them contained out-dated information. So keep that in mind when you’re doing your research. Always look for the post date to ensure you’re getting the best information. I’ll do my best to keep this post up-to-date as well.

First, traffic from Google AdWords will be tagged correctly, assuming you’ve turned on Tracking. It’s located under My Account – Preferences – Tracking (in the new interface). Check this now and make sure it’s set to ON.

Second, to enable URL tracking for Yahoo Search Marketing in Google Analytics you’ll have to do some tweaking. First, turn off Tracking URLs. That’s right, I said turn them OFF. To do this, visit Administration – Tracking URLs. We’re turning them off because we’re going to tag the URLs ourselves. Next, you’ll want to pull up the Google Analytics URL Builder.

Go ahead and insert your Website URL, which is the landing page you wish to use. For Campaign Source you should use ‘yahoo’, under Campaign Medium use ‘cpc’ for Campaign Term – and here is where it gets tricky – you should use ‘{OVKEY}’. This will trigger Yahoo to automatically replace that string with the keyword which triggered your ad for that click. Under Campaign Content I put the name of the ad group although you can put whatever you want or leave it blank. Yahoo Search Marketing does not have a dynamic trigger for the ad group name. Under Campaign Name again I use the name of the campaign in YSM as they do not have a dynamic trigger for the campaign name either. Finally, click Generate URL then copy & paste this into the Destination URL field when you create an ad in YSM as seen below.

Now we’re going to setup URL tracking for Microsoft adCenter in Google Analytics.  The process here is very similar to what you have to do for Yahoo Search Marketing. The difference here is the string used to capture the keyword in Campaign Term. For Microsoft adCenter you must use ‘{OrderItemId}’. Follow the same steps outlined above. The URL Builder should look like this:

And here is where you paste your Destination URL in Microsoft adCenter.

NOTES:

Editing each of your ads manually will be quite a chore. I highly recommend using something like the Microsoft adCenter Desktop tool for adCenter. And, if you’ve spent enough money with Yahoo Search Marketing you should be able to upload a CSV of your campaign. Use Excel to paste in your URLs and save yourself a lot of time.

Also, keep this in mind; even though the string for Yahoo is {OVKEY} and for adCenter it’s {OrderItemId} you will not see them exactly like that once the Google Analytics URL Builder generates the URL. What’s happening here is the tool re-write those symbols into URL friendly characters so { becomes %7B. THIS WILL BREAK YOUR TAGGING. You must change those back to { and } for these tags to work properly.

Good luck tagging your URLs and please comment below if you have any questions. Thanks for reading!

References:

Tracking URLs in Yahoo Search Marketing

Tracking URLs in Microsoft adCenter

Google Analytics URL Builder

Microsoft adCenter Desktop

April 2010 UPDATE:

I have developed a new application that does all of this automatically. Simply upload your campaign as a CSV file, specify your destination URL and you’re done! Give it a try, its’ free: Campaignsync.