Google AdWords and Analytics

Question

I am the tech lead for our e-commerce marketing channel and I am new to Google Analytics and Google AdWords.

I was asked to add to our pages a Google AdWords conversion code so we can track our Google AdWords performance. However our customers can get to our pages not only from our Google AdWords campaigns, but from e-mail marketing campaigns, direct access, etc.

My question is, does this code from Google AdWords has any special treatment to only be activated when the page hit came from a Google AdWords campaign?

I am afraid to count as Google AdWords conversions accesses that did not come from this source.

Thanks,

Answer 1

My suggestion is to use the Google Tag Manager - it is a solution that involves a debug mode, that can actually show what tag (AdWords, Analytics, ...) is triggered on what page. To learn more about preview and debug features you can visit: https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/2695660?hl=en&topic=2574304&ctx=topic

To setup the Google Tag Manager, and find all necessary information to get you started, please go to: http://www.google.com/tagmanager/

Answer 2

Generally the way it works is you setup a Google Analytics account and then put the Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) code on all pages of your website. This will give you some basic data for activities on your site, such as page views, downloads, entries, etc.

Then, you link your Adwords account to your Google Analytics account.

Then for your campaigns (ppc searches, emails, etc.) you add campaign parameters to the target URLs. These are usually automatically added if you are setting up ppc ads through google, but you may need to do it yourself for campaigns that don't have google analytics campaign tracking already baked in (e.g. creating your own emails internally).

Then, when a visitor clicks on the target URL (e.g. from a ppc search result or in the email) they will land on the page and it will have the GA campaign parameters on it and Google Analytics will record that as the visitor coming in from the campaign, and that will be linked in Adwords.

And since you have GA on all the pages of your site, you will be able to see that tied to other activities on your site, e.g. how many people who came in on xyz campaign went to xyz page, or completed xyz goal (assuming you setup goals, e.g. registration/purchase/etc)

Answer 3

2 Steps to solve your problem:

1. Link your Google Adwords and Google Analytics account
2. Enable Auto-tagging in Adwords account: How to enable auto-tagging

Auto-tagging saves you the work of manually tagging every destination URL. Moreover, you can segment your Google Analytics report by Campaign Id.

Answer 4

Adwords has its separate tracking to that available in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics uses completed goals as conversions- and this can be seen for all traffic sources such as email, organic SEO, Adwords, Social, referrals, etc.

The goals on the website can each have a separate form. (e.g. Contact us request, newsletter, or a checkout form for e-commerce.)

Each can be a separate goal, which is either an event or a page view. If forms can all redirect when completed to thank you confirmation pages- each of these is recorded as a completed goal- when the page view happens

Google Analytics will record all completed online traffic sources - including Adwords separately.

Adwords uses a tracking script inside of URL page views. This placed on each thanks you, page for recording conversions.

Using Google Tag Manager, it is also possible to use event tracking instead of page view urls. These events can then be set up as goals in Google Analytics.

The Adwords tracking tags can then be run from within Google Tag Manager using page view triggers, (instead of putting lots of different codes on the website manually. This is especially useful for companies deploying lots of tags for Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, as well as Adwords etc.

Adwords now also has free telephone tracking by attributing the telephone call to the keyword and ad that generated the lead.

Answer 5

To answer your question, no, visiting a page with the conversion code on it will NOT trigger the conversion unless the visitor clicked on an ad.

Clicking on an ad sets a special cookie which the conversion tracking code checks to make sure it's valid.

Answer 6

Whenever the conversion pixel fires, Google checks whether the user reached your page via a Google campaign.

When you create the conversion, you define how long is the conversion window - the lifetime of the conversion cookie. If the user visits a page with then conversion page and the cookie is still valid, the conversion will count.

Two more tips:

1) When you define a conversion you can choose whether each user can count for one or multiple conversions.

2) You can define conversions that will only show in AdWords, but not count as conversions when you do CPA bidding.