Adwords does not give you all the data!
By roiblog
Best Way to See AdWords Search QueryNew Search Query Report lists mostly “other queries”
BigAdventure
#:3415362 10:56 pm on Aug. 6, 2007 (utc 0)
What’s the best tool to see every search phrase that was entered associated with an AdWords campaign that cost you a click charge? My traffic is manageable enough that I would like to see them all.
Google’s new Search Query Report shows a few and lists the majority as “other queries” What use is that?
Rehan
#:3415673 10:52 am on Aug. 7, 2007 (utc 0)
Analyze your server log files. You’ll get some information in the referer details there that is not listed in the Search Query report.
BigAdventure
#:3415817 2:14 pm on Aug. 7, 2007 (utc 0)
Thanks Rehan Is there a way to get more detail?
I have a client who is trying to run a campaign that is rather unusual with negative keywords.
Say they sell “Britney Spears Apples” but they recently got a legal spanking for using the term “Britney Spears” They want to come up for searches of “Britney Spears Apples” without actually buying that term. Instead they want to buy “Apples” and try to negative out all the other terms “green apples” “washington apples” etc.
I know that Google would allow them to buy a trademarked term…just can’t use it in their ad text. But they don’t care about Google. They don’t want to take the chance of being sued again.
So the question becomes how can I get good detail on every search phrase so I can start to negative out everything but “Britney Spears Apples”
Thanks
inasisi
#:3415832 2:28 pm on Aug. 7, 2007 (utc 0)
Check out the new Search Query Performance report More details here -
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-to-use-new-search-query-performance.html#links
onlineleben
#:3415862 2:48 pm on Aug. 7, 2007 (utc 0)
BigAdventure,
with a little PHP you can solve this quite easily: Call an include file from within your landing page. Lets call it tracker.inc
tracker.inc writes to a text file with date/time, ip-address, and referer into a logfile (testlog.txt).
Don’t forget to set write permissions for the log file.
Code for tracker.inc is here:
$timestamp=date(”Y/m/j H:i:s”);
$addr=getenv(”REMOTE_ADDR”);
$ref=getenv(”HTTP_REFERER”);
$myfile=”/testlog.txt”;
$fd=fopen($myfile,”a”);
$success=fwrite($fd, $timestamp.”�”.$addr.”�”.$ref .”\n”);
fclose($fd);
The textfile you can import into MS Excel and select all lines beginning with http:// www .google .tld/search?hl=en
Do a Text to columns conversion by using & as delimiter.
Next you get a column where the data beginns with q= and the original query.
I know, it is a little complicated, but it helps me in finding the real search phrases.
BigAdventure
#:3416829 2:11 pm on Aug. 8, 2007 (utc 0)
Thanks online But PHP is probably beyond my skill set. Doesn’t your whole page have to be in PHP to use that?
I really need something though. I just did a search query report for one campaign, and out of 32 searches, 23 are the so-called “other unique queries. Since the others were all my narrow search phrases, I would assume those “other unique queries” are probably the garbage that I need to negative keyword.
netmeg
#:3416851 2:28 pm on Aug. 8, 2007 (utc 0)
Doesn’t your whole page have to be in PHP to use that?
No, it doesn’t.
Copy it just like this into your .html page:
<%
$timestamp=date(”Y/m/j H:i:s”);
$addr=getenv(”REMOTE_ADDR”);
$ref=getenv(”HTTP_REFERER”);
$myfile=”/testlog.txt”;
$fd=fopen($myfile,”a”);
$success=fwrite($fd, $timestamp.”�”.$addr.”�”.$ref .”\n”);
fclose($fd);
%>
If you have a lot of traffic, that file could get pretty big, though.
onlineleben
#:3416859 2:34 pm on Aug. 8, 2007 (utc 0)
If you have a lot of traffic, that file could get pretty big, though
for my main site I download the file daily, forthe smaller sites on a weekly or monthly basis. After downloading, I delete them on the server and the next visitor creates the new file.
onlineleben
#:3416865 2:37 pm on Aug. 8, 2007 (utc 0)
Doesn’t your whole page have to be in PHP to use that?
No, it doesn’t.
Copy it just like this into your .html page:
Provided that PHP is running on your server and setup in such a way, that files ending with .htm or .html can execute it.
netmeg
#:3416889 3:02 pm on Aug. 8, 2007 (utc 0)
Opps, yea, I forgot that part, it’s such a default for us I forget other people aren’t necessarily set up that way.
smallcompany
#:3418072 5:07 pm on Aug. 9, 2007 (utc 0)
A Search Query Performance report does what you want. It will show you exact keywords which triggered clicks onto your ads. One fact is that many of these queries will fall under “other”. I guess that for various reasons, they cannot pull every single keyword. I am hopping to see that improving over the time.
peer_esv
#:3418866 1:48 pm on Aug. 10, 2007 (utc 0)
If you can set it up then do your own web server log analysis to get this data. We find that it is much more precise than google’s Search Query Report.
Zealot
#:3418870 1:57 pm on Aug. 10, 2007 (utc 0)
Why not use Google Analytics? You can extract the search term from the referrer with a simple regex and place it the user defined field. Provided the tight integration with adwords you’ll be able to drill down on campaigns, adgroups, keywords and even the exact search phrases for each keyword. If you opt to import adwords cost data and enable e-commerce then you can even analyse roi down to the exact search phrase.
onlineleben
#:3418873 2:02 pm on Aug. 10, 2007 (utc 0)
more precise than google’s Search Query Report
Yeah, the SQR needs a lot of improvement
do your own web server log analysis to get this data
This is the preferred way to do things, but sometimes, depending on the analytics software you use, you don’t get everything you really want or you get even too much.
I for my part use analog as an analysis tool. Although it is a little bit old fashioned when you want to configure it via a text file, it gives me the possibility to even analyze a single page over a longer period. Just exclude all pages and include the page you want to analyze.
In case you have a landing page that only receives ppc traffic and is not linked from within your site and is not listed anywhere in the SERPs, you could go this way.
I prefer my little script from above (in an enhanced version) as it also gives me the possibility to track which ad the click was coming from.
Tags: google adwords, pay per click
