Google AdWords Learning Center - Tracking Your Advertising Campaigns

To track different kinds of advertising you'll need to use campaign tracking variables. Campaign tracking variables are identifiers which you attach to the hyperlinks leading to your website. They enable you to uniquely identify all of your hyperlinks, and view reports on the activity on your website generated by those links.

For example, if you include links to your website in an email newsletter, you can attach variables at the end of each link. When a user clicks on a link, your reports will show you on which link he clicked, as well as which newsletter contained that link.

The example hyperlink below has the following campaign tracking variables attached in bold ( you'll learn how each of these variables is used in the next section):

Source = SE1
Medium = CPC
Term = tshirt
Content = ad_version_1
Campaign = Google_T-Shirts

http://www.example.com/?utm_source=SE1&utm_medium=CPC&utm_term=tshirt&utm_content=ad_version_1&utm_campaign=Google_T-Shirts

Including campaign variables in your hyperlinks is called tagging your links. Properly tagging your links will ensure that your reports include useful information about your marketing efforts.

Google Analytics makes it easy to track your AdWords referrals effortlessly using the auto-tagging feature. Auto-tagging is enabled by default when you link your AdWords and Analytics accounts. To turn auto-tagging on or off at any time, update the checkbox in your Account Preferences from your AdWords My Account tab. Using auto-tagging allows you to bypass the steps to tag the URLs of your AdWords advertisements.

You can tag your links with one or more of the following campaign variables. :

Name
Source
Medium
Content
Term

Name : With this variable you can track the different advertising campaigns or product promotions that your business creates. An example of this would be a sporting goods store tracking the effectiveness of their "Spring Ski Sale" advertising campaign. With AdWords auto-tagging, the Name variable is the name given to the originating AdWords Campaign.

Source : Visitors to your website must come from somewhere. That is, each referral to a website has an origin, or Source . Examples of sources are the Google search engine, an email newsletter, or a referring web site. There may be several Sources for each campaign. For example, the "Spring Ski Sale" is advertised in both an email newsletter and a banner ad. In this case, both "newsletter" and "banner ad" would be possible Sources. For AdWords auto-tagged accounts, the Source variable is "Google."

Medium : The Medium helps to qualify the source. Together, the Source and Medium provide specific information about the origin of a referral. For example, if the Source is "Google," the medium might be "CPC," indicating a sponsored link. Or, the Medium might be "organic," indicating a link in the unpaid search results. In the case of a "newsletter" Source, examples of Medium include "email" and "print." For AdWords auto-tagged accounts, the medium variable is "CPC."

Content : The Content variable indicates the version of an ad on which a visitor clicked. Labeling your content versions allows you to determine which one is most effective at attracting profitable leads. For example, if you had two versions of a banner ad, you could use the Content variable to identify which one is bringing more visits to your site. For AdWords auto-tagged accounts, the Content variable is the first line of the originating advertisement's ad text.

Term : The Term is a keyword or phrase that matches what a user types into a search engine. For example, a link in a cost-per-click (CPC) ad would be tagged with the Term that triggered the ad. In our example, the Term might be "spring weather skis." For AdWords auto-tagged accounts, the Term variable is the keyword that triggered the originating advertisement.

There are several reports that allow you to view traffic from tagged initiatives (links which you have tagged with campaign variables).

The All Traffic Sources report (in the Traffic Sources section) shows all the traffic that comes to your site including traffic from tagged links. By default, it sorts the traffic by Source and Medium together, but you can use the 'Show' pulldown menu to organize the traffic by Source or Medium. Your tagged sources and mediums will be included in this list.

To see your traffic sorted according to Content, use the Ad Versions report (in the Traffic Sources section). Your tagged Content variables will be listed in the table.

To see your tagged campaigns, look at the Campaigns report (in the Traffic Sources section). This report will typically list your AdWords campaigns, your tagged campaigns, and "(not set)" traffic that is not associated with any campaign.

To see how well your paid keywords for a particular search engine are performing, navigate to Search Engines and select the search engine that you are interested in. Next, select "paid" within the 'Show' menu. A report for the search engine will appear and the terms (keywords) with which you tagged your campaigns will be listed in the table.