http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/screenref/16897.html

Google Analytics works best with paid search when Auto-Tagging is enabled (see later article on gclid and click fraud for more details). However, some clients can’t enable auto-tagging - it interferes with their web stores.

Auto-tagging provides no insight into the click. All data about the click is owned and managed by Google, and the advertiser has no direct access to that data, except via Google Analytics. I find it ethically challenging when business data is controlled by the organisation that affects your profitiability. It’s just not a wise way to run.

Google Analytics doesn’t always report a visitor count that matches the click volume. In order to investigate, and if you want to claim click fraud refunds, you’ll need web server log files. If the log files only show a gclid you have less information on which to base decisions.

For example, because we use multiple sets of tags, we could investigate one client and discover that some fraction of their customer base repeatedly clicks on adverts over a period of hours - apparently while doing market research. While this costs our client, it is not click fraud. GA and autotagging do not reveal this relationship.

Different search engines have different macro substitution mechanisms. You need to discover what each will let you do. For no obvious reasons, this data is often treated like a closely guarded commercial secret, instead of a tool for advertisers that potentially increases profitable use of the channel. We rarely use Ask.com - the volume in most markets is too small to justify the management attention (Pareto rule - the 80:20 rule) and when we do, we don’t do detailed tagging. The costs of investigating poor ROAS can damage the overall ROAS so much that the resource becomes uneconomic. It is usually more important to track end-to-end conversion than specific keywords and search queries, on low volume/low price search engines.

So far as Google AdWords goes, “term={keyword}” and “kw={keyword}” are equally valid. However the web analytics package may treat them differently (or ignore them both). As above, each search engine has different tagging/tracking system - look at Overture for a radically different approach.

Cheers, JeremyC.

I find the article really deep and informative. Very good stuff.

First question. You paragraphs about the attempts to differentiate Adword and natural click with severals recommendations, why do we need to do that when Analytic do report them separately in Traffic Source?

2nd question. term={keyword} is equivalent to kw={keyword}? I tried to tag on Ask.com ads with kw={keyword}, Ask.com interface immediately pointed out that I must use {keyword:default}… I tried kw={keyword:default} it will not accept until I change to term= instead of kw=? Does the term= or kw= a standard macro for all PPC platforms?

thanks