Why would AdWords use the destination url from an ad instead of the keyword when the keyword has a destination url?  This is messing with my web analytics tracking.

The only time I see that is for the display network. Sometimes, Google will use a keyword URL if they are really certain that keyword is the reason an ad was displayed; but usually they use the ad copy URL as rarely is a single keyword the reason an ad was displayed for content.<div>Are you seeing this in search or content campaigns?</div>

Yeah, in search.  I’m digging into the analytics and it’s not coming from the ad it’s definitely the keyword.  Google is stripping out some of my query string parameters for some unknown reason.  Every run into this?

Examples query strings:

<b>with missing parameters (‘g=’, ‘m=’):</b>
r=m01100&refnum=googlemv&c=G/MOVING/US&k=moving companies&ad=6589814476&gclid=CJCH7r3z_aYCFUGo4AodrDYTag

<b>correct query string from same keyword:</b>
r=m01100&refnum=googlemv&c=G/MOVING/US&<b>g=E/moving companies&m=exact</b>&k=moving companies&ad=6589814476&gclid=CJzukbX5_KYCFQjd4AodQx_GaQ

Not sure what to do about this?!

Thanks,

Chad

The only time I can recall running into some of these issues were with search partners. I’ve had issues at times where the search partner stripped off strings, or AOL was encrypting referring URLs so that my analytics systems were having issues collecting any data (sometimes even the referring engine was unknown). Outside of that instance, and of course, display network issues, I can’t recall other times that my URLs were losing parameters.

It’s coming from a Google search:

<b>Referrer (from weblogs): </b>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=568&q=moving+companies&btnG=Google+Search

Unfortunately, I’m in the UK right now so Google.com searches do not want to show me US results for ads. I can see organic results for the states; but the ads are all UK. <div>However, parameter stripping shouldn’t be happening on a Google search. Here’s another possibility. Do your server logs show a single referrer or a double referrer (note: some logs are configured to only show the first source, and not the second one). In that case, Google might not be the true referrer.</div><div>i.e. sometimes you’ll see a referrer: <span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; “>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=568&q=moving+companies&btnG=Google+Search</span><span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; “>?anothersite.com/adsense+proxy+search/etcdat. </span></div><div><span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; “><span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; line-height: normal; font-size: medium; “>I have seen issues when it’s technically not content, it’s search being done via search partners or custom search engines. Usually, there’s a pub ID in the referring URL though; but again, not always.</span></span></div><div><span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; “><span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; line-height: normal; font-size: medium; “>Also, do you happen to rank organically, and Google has indexed part of your tracking URL and that’s what’s being displayed in the organic results?</span></span></div><div><span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; “><span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; line-height: normal; font-size: medium; “>Just trying to think of the realm of possibilities to see if any one of them is true.</span></span></div>

It’s neither of the issues you mentioned.  Still waiting for any of my 4 Google reps to respond to my emails.  Maybe they can shed some light on this?  I’ll keep you posted.  Thanks for the help being so responsive!  I know you are out of the country.

-Chad

When I get back to the states, I’ll take a look through the results and see if there’s something odd going on. Normally, I’d proxy into the results to see what’s happening – but I don’t have my regular computer with me so don’t have all my fun spoofing tools.  If you hear back from your reps first; would enjoy hearing what they have to say.

<div>Latest from Google:</div><div>”I was just looking in to this with the tech team.  They looked at the example from your weblog you provided and determined that this is an organic click, not an AdWords click.”</div><div>My response:</div><div>”It doesn’t look like an organic click because the “gclid’s” are all different. “</div><div>What do you think, Brad?</div><div>
</div>

I’m going to have to look at a few SERPs where this is happening. It’s possible that this is a CES, scraper, or something else that has indexed the URLs and that’s where the clicks are coming from.
<div>If you look at an AdWords URL (excluding the actual advertiser’s) you see things like: </div><div>http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=CL0EjqnxnTYzDBsS8hAfd8JAtm4S47QH7n4bRFPvF9JMBEAEoCFCG1NKF______8BYLu-roPQCsgBAakC6VnzmMYMuz6qBB9P0EKsCgZfvsPoVxmYUKeVjkQGOwDfvEY1qM7a4DMw&num=4&sig=AGiWqtwN3Xb4LescTAeQdJqI2JXA5-ZhNg&adurl=http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/clk%3B203317566%3B26439471%3Bi%3F
</div><div>Then the advertiser’s destination URL comes after the above string (which varies by ad). The additional AdWords info  is added to the URL until after the redirect goes through the doubleclick server and expands the URL. Therefore, if someone were to scrape that URL, then every click would look have different AdWords info on it.</div><div>Also, since the URL string does contain Google and Doubleclick; this could becoming from a completely different site and the server things Google’s the referrer because of the expanded URL.</div>

<div align=”left”>Finally Google told me what’s going on; its site links that are causing the issue.  When a searcher clicks on a site link it use the site link url not he keyword url.  I should have known this.

I will have to use the {copy:[name]} ValueTrack parameter to get the right tracking: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=190706

Thanks for all the help.
</div>

Chad,<div>Interesting. How does that valuetrack parameter show in Google Analytics? </div><div>I’ve been using GAs URL builder tool to track sitelinks so I can see them in their own campaign. Haven’t tried to track down how these look inside GA yet if you use the valuetrack parameter. I’ve never seen Google use ‘origin’ in a URL before.</div>

I’m not doing anything special with them in GA…guess I could tell them apart with the destination url (I changed the order of the parameters in the query string. Besides that they look just like the keyword dest url).

I like your idea of tracking them to show up as their own campaign.