January 13, 2006

The only way for you to see which advertising media are actually returning your investment is to tag your ads. It's an extremely simple process with Google Analytics, once you're prepared with the basic knowledge on how to categorize your various campaigns.

First, understand that you only tag what you need to tag. Don't confuse yourself, or add unnecessary work. For example, if you need to track a Google AdWords account that is linked with your Google Analytics account, you don't need to tag your AdWords URLs at all. Google Analytics does it automatically. Other paid marketing campaigns like banners, and unpaid media like email campaigns should definitely be tagged.

You can't tag organic results (of course), and depending on how you want to measure any affiliate program you're enrolled in, it's not necessary to tag them either. Search engine traffic will automatically register in Google Analytics, along with keyword metrics. Your referrals for all other sites are also counted, and will be displayed automatically under referral reports.

Use only the tags that you need. In keeping with the above sentiment of avoiding wasteful labor, you don't need to go all-out with tagging variables either. There are five campaign variables, and all can be used with a variety of advertising media. The table below describes each variable. You can hold your mouse over the variable name for more information:

	Banner Ad	Email Newsletter	CPC
Source	foodtv	newsletter0601	ysm
Medium	banner	email	cpc
Campaign	Restaurant	ThaiBitesNews	Restaurant
Term			thai+restaurant
Content	foodtv_120x240	newsletter0601a	thai_a

You certainly don't need to use every single one of these, though. The ones you'll want to become intimately familiar with are Source, Medium, Campaign, and if you're tracking paid keywords, Term. When you're trying to find out which ad creative is performing best, Content can be a great addition to the mix, as well.

Use our handy Google Analytics Destination URL Builder. Is all of this a little too complex for you? No problem. Check out our Google Analytics Destination URL Builder and let us do the work for you. Plug in your variables, click a button, and we'll generate your tagged link. Simply cut and paste into your ad.

Interested in learning more about Google Analytics?
Attend our LIVE Google Analytics Seminars for Success training in Chicago, IL Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 and Thursday, September 17th, 2009 or get the latest tips and tricks sent to you via our free, twice-monthly Google Analytics newsletter.

Posted by Michael Harrison, Analytics and Optimization Specialist at 11:46 AM

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Hi,

I was wondering, if you use Google AdWords and track them with Google Analytics, is there ever a reason to manually tag these ads?

Thanks!

- Greg Moore

Posted by: Greg Moore at February 23, 2007 11:22 AM

If you need to track a Google AdWords account that is linked with your Google Analytics account, you don't need to tag your AdWords URLs at all. Google Analytics does it automatically.

Posted by: Timothy at February 23, 2007 4:48 PM

if you do "go all out", and tag galore... does this give you more time for tracking than without tagging?

Posted by: dan at October 12, 2007 4:26 PM

If you are sending people to an intermediary page will the tagged link travel through to the final URL?

For example, we are sending people to a informational page, but the shopping cart is located on a different domain.

Any help would be appreciated.

Christiana

Posted by: Christiana at March 20, 2008 6:39 PM

@Christiana: Unless you set up the intermediary page to redirect the visitor along with the utm parameters, the tracking will not make it through. Also, moving visitors from your site to the shopping cart domain will require use of special linking functions built into Google Analytics.

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at March 21, 2008 11:14 AM

This looks like a good idea, but I have no idea what to do with this generated tag. If I understand correctly, you can use this to see if an email or newsletter sends someone to one of your website pages. Is that correct? If so, how would you do that?

Posted by: Gil at April 10, 2008 12:52 PM

@Gil: You just take the URL that is generated and use it for a link within your email. So, for instance, if you have a link in your email to take visitors to your homepage, you change the URL from just http://www.mysite.com/ to the URL that was generated by the builder.

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at April 10, 2008 1:07 PM

I noticed that the filter fields included something called "campaign code" with along with the other parameters (campaign source, campaign medium, etc.) I can not find anything that mentions "campaign code" anywhere. Is that a different tracking parameter? If so what is it used for?

Posted by: Gael at May 22, 2008 10:28 AM

@Gael: According to the help entry on what information is stored within filter fields, the Campaign Code is:

"The campaign code, defined by the tagged request query, can be used to refer to a campaign lookup table, or chart of referring codes used to define variables in place of multiple request query tags."

Essentially, this variable refers to a campaign lookup table, where you can match up IDs with specific source/medium/campaign combinations and add smaller tags to your URLs. Those of you who used GA back in the Urchin On-Demand days will recall that this was something you could use to convert:

www.mysite.com?utm_source=test&utm_medium=test&utm_campaign=test

Into:

www.mysite.com?utm_id=1443

What Google doesn't mention in that helpfile is that this feature is not yet supported, so don't worry too much about it for the time being. We'll let you know if and when you can start using it again.

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at May 22, 2008 10:49 AM

In our adwords account there is 2 Seperate Adword Clients set up for one client. NonBrand and Brand
Is there a way to link these to 1 Analytics Account?

Thanks

Posted by: jolene at June 27, 2008 12:57 PM

@Jolene: If you're saying that your AdWords login brings you to two unique AdWords accounts, then you might be using an AdWords My Client Center (MCC). MCCs cannot be linked to Analytics accounts.

If, however, you are referring to two different AdWords campaigns (NonBrand and Brand campaigns), then you can link the single AdWords account to the Analytics account.

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at July 2, 2008 10:48 AM

Is this still applicable for the latest GA code?

Posted by: Blake at August 12, 2008 10:30 PM

@Blake: Sure is.

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at August 13, 2008 11:45 AM

Hi Mike -

We tagged our banner ads about a week ago with code generated with the Google Analytics URL tool on the GA site, but so far GA does not show any data when we look under the campaign, medium, or source terms. We even did a bunch of click-throughs to make sure we had some activity on them - still nothing.

Any ideas about what might be causing this lack of data?

thanks - misterp

Posted by: misterp at September 24, 2008 7:56 AM

@Misterp: Sometimes a redirect on the landing page will strip out the tracking parameters. When you did your clickthroughs, did you notice that the utm parameters were still in place in the browser's location field once the page had loaded?

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at September 24, 2008 11:52 AM

Mike - Yes, the utm parameters are still in place - nothing is stripped out.
Any other thoughts?
thanks - misterp

Posted by: misterp at October 7, 2008 3:48 PM

Does using this link format reduce the effect of linking for search optimization?

Because the parameters on the links won't match the url that is currently indexed, I am wondering if using this link for inbound link building to boost ranking on the search engines will work. But I would like to know that the traffic comes from my efforts so I can decide to continue or not.

Posted by: Lou Anne at October 9, 2008 4:39 PM

@Misterp: Nothing else. Just make sure that the Google Analytics Tracking Code is present on the landing page. Beyond that, I'd have to look at the page in question to tell.

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at October 14, 2008 10:39 AM

@Lou Anne: You should be using the utm parameters on inbound traffic from advertisements and emails. Anything that gets crawled and indexed by search engine spiders will rarely contain the tracking parameters.

That being said, if you are engaged with link building with other sites that will influence Page Rank and the Google search index, you may wish to leave out the utm parameters. Google Analytics will automatically report on referrals to your site, which is enough in most cases.

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at October 14, 2008 10:51 AM

We understand the URL builder but find it an absolute pain to cut/paste for each and every keyword we offer. Is there a global variable we can use to parse the actual keyword typed for a PPC campaign? If this can be done then we would only need to add one universal string to all our destination urls in a campaign.

We do have "ROI Actual Keyword Typed" script added to our profiles. Will this parse the actual keyword typed for PPC campaigns if we omit the "term variable" from the destination url. This is what we had in mind: http://www.mysite.com?utm_source=msn&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=adcenter If not any other suggestions to simplify this project across multiple PPC venues?

Posted by: Larry at October 25, 2008 4:22 PM

@Larry: Depending on the CPC vendor, there might be a global variable that passes the keyword. All of them work differently.

You can exclude the utm_term parameter and trust to the Exact Keyword Tracking script, but this means that you can't segment by "Term" in Google Analytics. It also makes bid term to exact keyword comparisons impossible.

Try using a spreadsheet to build your destination URLs.

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at October 29, 2008 9:44 AM

Michael, I'm sorry if I need to be spoon-fed but I simply can't find where to see those clickthroughs.

This is the URL I'm trying to click: http://www.wubi.dk/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=testnyhedsbrev

I've tested that I'm on an IP that I didn't filter.

I would imagine that I would be able to find this click somewhere in the "Content" section. However it's not in the full report showing the URL or when viewed by page Title.

What am I missing?

Thanks,
Mikael

Posted by: Mikael at October 30, 2008 3:23 PM

@Mikael: These tags will never show up in the Top Content report, actually. You'll need to go to Traffic Sources. The source and medium will both display in All Traffic Sources, and the campaign will display in Campaigns. Good luck!

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at October 30, 2008 3:42 PM

Hi Michael, thank you very much. I still can't find it in the list of Traffic Sources but I can see it in Campaigns and that is what I needed. ;)

Regards,
Mikael

Posted by: Mikael at October 31, 2008 12:57 AM

Strike that last remark. I found it in the Traffic Sources also. Thanks again.

Regards,
Mikael

Posted by: Mikael at October 31, 2008 12:59 AM

@Mikael: Awesome! Let me know if you have any other questions!

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at November 3, 2008 3:14 PM

We are going to beta test our site, password protected, with 100 users. Can we tag them so that when we go live we can separate the beta test data from the live web traffic that will be generated following the beta test?

Posted by: Don Rizzo at November 24, 2008 10:48 AM

@Don: Sure, you could certainly do that.

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at December 17, 2008 3:50 PM

okay so i want to track a banner ad that is running on another site. so i used the google code generator and I embeded the link into the ad. The ad is currently live and i can click on it and it works. The UTM parameters are there. but the links are not showing up on GA. Can you shed any light on this?

Posted by: paul at January 27, 2009 5:06 PM

@paul: Unfortunately, there's not a lot to go on here. Check your cookies after you click and see if they're filled in with the utm parameters. Other than that, may I suggest a Google Analytics support plan? :)

Posted by: Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech at January 29, 2009 2:09 PM

Michael, why are source, medium, and campaign all mandatory fields on the Google Analytics Destination URL Builder?

For something simple like my email signature line, I would think utm_source=email should be sufficient.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Joe Hage

Posted by: Joe Hage at February 4, 2009 12:13 AM

It seems if you add link tracking to a URL with an anchor (ex: http://www.nafcu.org//Content/NavigationMenu/Events_Education/CEOs_Conference/2009_CEOs_Conference.htm#speakers) that the anchor point will be lost and you will simply go to the top of the page instead of the point on the page you'd like to go to. Is there a way around this, or does it not work with anchor links?

Posted by: Kirstin at February 26, 2009 9:11 AM

I have a client with a campaign on a TV website. The TV station has given us Google Ad Manager reports for click throughs from links/ads/e-mails which show around 2000 click throughs. When the client pulls up Google Analytics, they only show a handfull of click throughs from this TV website. The client doesn't know who to believe.

Posted by: Jeanne at March 4, 2009 12:42 PM

Kristen -- a little late but if you're still trying to figure out the anchor, I believe if you put it AFTER the querystring parameters, it will work. for example mysite.com/conference.htm?utm_source=ysm&ut_medium=cpc#speakers... that should do it. Hope this helps.

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