Hey everyone,

I am seeing some strange tracking phenomenon and I am wondering if anyone else using AdCodes on AdWords campaigns might be seeing it too.

I haven't changed any of my ads, but it looks like all of a sudden Google Analytics stopped recording the query string associated with my AdCode completely a few days ago, and is not recording the clicks coming off my add as PPC clicks at all.

I have crossed checked with Americommerce reporting, and the visitors with the AdCode are getting to me, and the total clicks are roughly the same. So, it is showing the traffic, just not showing the AdCode query string as a page, nor associating those clicks with my PPC campaign. It mistakenly shows at that traffic as Google organic instead of Google PPC.

Naturally, I started with the assumption that this up to something completely Google Analytics related, but I have other sites on which I am using similar query string reporting, and there is no change with Google Analytics reports on those sites. The query strings are being recording, and they are showing as PPC traffic. It is too early to be sure, but it feels to me like something related to Americommerce AdCodes.

There is one more oddity adding to this mystery... about the same time Google Analytics stopped recognizing my AdCodes and recording those clicks as PPC traffic, the page /default.aspx began to show up highly trafficked in the daily reports, and it never has before. That page is never show as a live address on my site, everything points to the root /. Very strange.

If anyone else is using AdCodes on AdWords campaigns and Google Analytics, I would love to hear if you are seeing something similar.

Thanks!

Rob

Just wanted you to know we are looking into this for you, you may want to make a support ticket for it for better tracking.  I believe we recently added a redirect on a= and af= urls to go to the root url so that your page rank goes up.  See Google and others see a url with a=bla and without the adcode as 2 seperate urls and only 1 will be listed but the pagerank is split up somewhat between them.  Plus this keeps Google and others from permanantly indexing the a= and af= urls and instead tells them to index the real url.  Its really bad if an af= affiliate gets indexed by a search engine, because it gives false traffic and sales reporting for that affiliate.  Adcodes are similar.

All that being said, we are working on a solution to this, currently we are guessing it will have to be a setting to turn on/off that redirection?  Any other ideas?  Ideally Google tracking would be savvy enough to track the original url with the a= on it.

I wonder if a 'redirecting in 5 seconds' page would be more tracking friendly?  The urls would likely still get indexed that way though.

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Ed Sturrock
Co-Founder, VP of Product Management

Currently we added this redirect as a rule in our new User Defined Traffic Rules and Analytics.  We added it as an admin rule but are considering making it a user based rule so you can override and remove the redirect.  At which case you would have the duplicate content issues it is there to reduce, however those have not been a large issue on adcodes in the past, really only important on affiliate codes since they translate into commission payouts.

Still looking for an idea to still do the redirect AND have google pick up on it though...

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Ed Sturrock
Co-Founder, VP of Product Management

Hi Ed,

Thanks for getting back to me with the info and explanation!

Last night I removed the AdCode on the AdWords campaign and sure enough this morning Google Analytics began tracking as it had before. And then I dug into the Americommerce reports and saw the AdCode Redirect info on the user visits beginning on the afternoon of the 29th, and also saw that "acsupport" had logged on just prior, so I started to piece things together.

In truth, while I would love to be able to track ROI inside the Americmmerce Admin tool, right now its not a huge issue for me to remove AdCodes from my ads. And as you describe the SEO and page rank implications of the query string, that certainly seems the way to go.

Under the same SEO and page rank logic as you mention above, doesn't the redirect solution create the same problem as the query strings since the redirect is sending those clicks to "/default.aspx" and Google is tracking that page, and my "/" root page, as discreet pages? I am not sure if Google would split the page rank between those two, but I do know it is tracking them separately. Would it be possible for you solve this by redirecting to "/" instead of to ##REQUESTPAGE## ?  This would make tracking easier in Analytics in any case.

For now though, I don't want to risk splitting page rank. And since I don't currently run an affiliate program, I will turn it off the query strings for now.

I can see how this issue would be hugely problematic for those that are running affiliate programs though, as they can't remove the query strings since they must track the orders inside Americommerce.

Is it possible for you to track off an HTTP referrer, rather than a query string? This might work for folks with affiliate programs where traffic coming from a certain URL will always be from the affiliate, and you don't have to worry about distinguishing between CPC and organic as you do with the search engines?  

I will go ahead and drop in a support ticket so to keep looped in on the status.

Thanks again!
Rob

This problem affects us significantly too... we use adcode aprameters at the end of all of our Adwords urls so we can use them to display certain content on the site... with the redirection after a user comes in w/ an adcode, our Adwords conversion tracking doesnt work, we can only rely on Google analytics, which is not ideal for ROI calculations. Our sysadmin knows more about this issue, ill ask him to chime in on Monday when we are back at the office.

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Article on Me & Americommerce

Our sysadmin tried to comment on this thread but his post was flagged for moderation. Regardless, since AC changed how the redirection works, we can no longer track conversions in ADowrds or Analytics... for any visit that comes in via an adcode.

When we tried to run a report on adcodes we saw it full of odd info (no visits but orders, adcodes taht dont exist or make sense, etc)

we essentailly have no idea how well any of our advertising did on December

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Article on Me & Americommerce

Due to the feedback we have received, we have reinstituted permanant adcode links, they will no longer redirect.  This is exactly like it was pre December 2008.  Although we see some negatives to not redirecting to the real root URL, we see more negative results by Google Analytics not being able to track these visits properly.  As such, everyone will just need to be careful that url's that get indexed with an adcode on them could get split pagerank in Google, so only use adcodes in Emails, PPC campaigns and such, and avoid using them on indexed pages that a search engine would pick up.  On a scale of 1-10, I would give this an SEO importance of 2 or 3, because bottom line the visitor is still coming to your site even with the adcode and there will never be enough of the 'adcoded' urls to dramatically effect your pagerank.

So thank everyone for their feedback, sometimes you have a  good idea that just doesn't mesh well with other systems and need to go back to the basics to ensure compatibility.

Affiliate links, we are still redirecting...nobody wants their affiliate link to get indexed by a search engine!  If you disagree do let me know.

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Ed Sturrock
Co-Founder, VP of Product Management

Awesome Ed, we noticed the change go through yesterday and can now track our ppc (adwords and shopping comparison) campaings which were 99% of what we use adcodes for.

 

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Article on Me & Americommerce

Hi Ed,

I just reemployed the AdCodes and they are working great and tracking fine in Google Analytics. Thanks so much for all the explanations and for hearing our concerns and quickly reverting when it made sense. Americommerce's willingness to be so responsive is one of the many reasons I think you guys are the best solution available.

Thanks again!

Robert