December 9, 2009
Tracking Google Adwords SiteLinks
What are Adwords Sitelinks?
A few days ago, Google rolled out the Adwords Sitelinks feature, allowing PPC advertisers to display site links right in their ads (it was available the beginning of November, but only to certain advertisers). Unlike organic Google Sitelinks - over which webmasters have little to no control -Adwords Sitelinks are not only an opt-in feature, they're chosen specifically by the advertiser. They don't necessarily always show: Adwords Sitelinks only display for the 'single top-ranked ad for a given user search.'
Why would it behoove an advertiser to supply more links in their pay-per-click ads? For starters, instead of showing one destination URL, with Adwords Sitelinks an ad can display a total of FIVE destination URLs. While it might seem you should offer visitors the 'best' URL for a keyword, there are times when - even in a PPC ad - the destination URL is the home page. For example, a search for a company name or even a branded search would be a good time to show multiple URLs to a visitor.
How do I Track Adwords Sitelinks?
Since this is such a new addition to the Google Adwords platform, it isn't even very prevalent - yet. On Monday we had a conference call with our Google Adwords rep, and happened to ask how on earth to track the additional destination URLs. Turns out they haven't integrated that into the automatic analytics tracking, but there IS a manual way to go about tracking Adwords Sitelinks.
Within "Networks, devices and extensions" you'll see the 'Ad extensions' option. For each ad, you can add up to (10) site links. (If you add 10, Adwords will rotate the links just as they rotate multiple ads within an ad group - they do place additional emphasis on the 'top 4' slots, and give less attention to the links in descending order after that.) You have complete control over what to call the links (anchor text) as well as denote destination URLs.
In order to track these links, you must add a unique query parameter to identify each one. For Adwords query parameters, it makes sense to call out the identifier with a 'sitelinks' reference, such as mysite.com/page?sitelinks=identifier. In the Minnesota School of Business example above, for each of the separate links (we'll use the 4 listed), possible identifying query parameters could be:
While you can certainly call out (10) separate URLs to rotate within an ad - or across multiple ads - there's also an option to track multiple anchor text links to the same destination URL. Using the same principle as above - appending a query parameter - you can call out identifiers for the different links which point to the same destination URL, like this:
What if Destination URLs Already Utilize Parameters?
For those sites which already utilize parameters, you might be thinking "how do I call out those links in Adwords?" You can append multiple parameters. The original parameter is called out with a '?' and any subsequent parameters are denoted with '&'.
For instance, if a URL was mysite.com/degrees?id=123 you would append the additional parameter for Adwords to create mysite.com/degrees?id=123&sitelink=degree-programs.
Armed with this knowledge, we set out to test Adwords Sitelinks to see how they affect overall click-throughs and how visitors use the additional relevancy in the links. Thus far, with only a few days' worth of analytics, it seems those additional (4) destination URLs are receiving approximately 10% of the clicks within ads. Keep in mind this is a very new feature, so it could be visitors aren't used to seeing those sitelinks within Adwords ads.
A few days ago, Google rolled out the Adwords Sitelinks feature, allowing PPC advertisers to display site links right in their ads (it was available the beginning of November, but only to certain advertisers). Unlike organic Google Sitelinks - over which webmasters have little to no control -Adwords Sitelinks are not only an opt-in feature, they're chosen specifically by the advertiser. They don't necessarily always show: Adwords Sitelinks only display for the 'single top-ranked ad for a given user search.'
Why would it behoove an advertiser to supply more links in their pay-per-click ads? For starters, instead of showing one destination URL, with Adwords Sitelinks an ad can display a total of FIVE destination URLs. While it might seem you should offer visitors the 'best' URL for a keyword, there are times when - even in a PPC ad - the destination URL is the home page. For example, a search for a company name or even a branded search would be a good time to show multiple URLs to a visitor.
How do I Track Adwords Sitelinks?
Since this is such a new addition to the Google Adwords platform, it isn't even very prevalent - yet. On Monday we had a conference call with our Google Adwords rep, and happened to ask how on earth to track the additional destination URLs. Turns out they haven't integrated that into the automatic analytics tracking, but there IS a manual way to go about tracking Adwords Sitelinks.
Within "Networks, devices and extensions" you'll see the 'Ad extensions' option. For each ad, you can add up to (10) site links. (If you add 10, Adwords will rotate the links just as they rotate multiple ads within an ad group - they do place additional emphasis on the 'top 4' slots, and give less attention to the links in descending order after that.) You have complete control over what to call the links (anchor text) as well as denote destination URLs.
In order to track these links, you must add a unique query parameter to identify each one. For Adwords query parameters, it makes sense to call out the identifier with a 'sitelinks' reference, such as mysite.com/page?sitelinks=identifier. In the Minnesota School of Business example above, for each of the separate links (we'll use the 4 listed), possible identifying query parameters could be:
While you can certainly call out (10) separate URLs to rotate within an ad - or across multiple ads - there's also an option to track multiple anchor text links to the same destination URL. Using the same principle as above - appending a query parameter - you can call out identifiers for the different links which point to the same destination URL, like this:
What if Destination URLs Already Utilize Parameters?
For those sites which already utilize parameters, you might be thinking "how do I call out those links in Adwords?" You can append multiple parameters. The original parameter is called out with a '?' and any subsequent parameters are denoted with '&'.
For instance, if a URL was mysite.com/degrees?id=123 you would append the additional parameter for Adwords to create mysite.com/degrees?id=123&sitelink=degree-programs.
Armed with this knowledge, we set out to test Adwords Sitelinks to see how they affect overall click-throughs and how visitors use the additional relevancy in the links. Thus far, with only a few days' worth of analytics, it seems those additional (4) destination URLs are receiving approximately 10% of the clicks within ads. Keep in mind this is a very new feature, so it could be visitors aren't used to seeing those sitelinks within Adwords ads.
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