Tracking Yahoo & Bing AdCenter Pay-Per-Click Clicks in Google Analytics
Yahoo and Bing have finally finished the transition of moving all Yahoo! Search Marketing pay-per-click accounts over to Bing’s AdCenter platform. So now if you want to buy PPC ads on Yahoo or Bing, you have to sign up for a Bing AdCenter account and you have to advertise on BOTH Yahoo and Bing whether you want to or not, which kinda sucks. And not only does Bing power Yahoo’s PPC listings, they also power the organic listings. So essentially Yahoo & Bing are now the same search engine with different interfaces and functionality.
However, even though the two PPC networks combined forces, it appears there is no way to track visitors who clicked on an ad in Yahoo and visitors who clicked on the same ad in Bing in Google Analytics. This is going to be a problem that needs to be resolved quickly. Even though there is no way to advertise ONLY on Yahoo, I still want to know stuff like if the quality of the traffic from Yahoo is absolutely terrible while the quality of the traffic from Bing is decent so I can evaluate my options. Ideally, I would like to be able to use tracking URLs such as the following:
For all Bing ads:
http://d0x.com/landing-page.php?medium=ppc&source=bing&keyword=query
For all Yahoo ads:
http://d0x.com/landing-page.php?medium=ppc&source=yahoo&keyword=query
However, as it currently stands, there is absolutely no way to segment specific ads, keywords, destination URLs for Yahoo & Bing, and what I think is even more important, there is no way to segment the visitors to track them in Google Analytics. I was happy with the performance of my Bing PPC campaigns but it remains to be seen if the merger ends up drastically changing the performance. If it does, I’ll just pour more money into Google AdWords since their platform is 100x better anyway… not to mention, Google has twice as much traffic as Bing & Yahoo combined!
Google AdWords Enhanced CPC is Announced to Increase Conversions
Google AdWords just announced a new bidding option called Enhanced CPC, which will automatically adjust your Max Cost Per Clicks for keywords that historically generate conversions. Of course, you will need Google Conversion Tracking turned on, which you should have already had on in the first place. This is certainly an intriguing bidding option, but I would definitely be cautious about using it without exhaustively testing it simply because the more you let Google’s automated system control, 99% of the time it means the less targeted and less profitable the campaign will be. So I would certainly encourage trying it out, but I would definitely keep an eye on it. The video below explains more about the Enhanced CPC option:
Keyword Elite 2.0 Review
I am getting inundated with emails, tweets, links all about the keyword research software Keyword Elite 2.0 which apparently launched today. While it may be a good product, obviously the hype is generated by affiliates trying to make money off selling the software, which should be no surprise to anybody who makes a living online. I have never used the original version so I am a bit hesitant whose reviews to believe.
The feature that catches my eye is the “Google AdWords Time Machine”, which reveals data on which competitors are bidding on which keyword in the past 6 months. The premise is that if a competitor is bidding on a specific keyword for an extended period of time, then theoretically that keyword is making money for them and you should consider bidding on that keyword yourself.
I think I’ll wait a few days before thinking about purchasing Keyword Elite 2.0, unless somebody out there can convince me that I need to buy it sooner!
Google AdWords Wrapper Tool
Here’s a handy tool for automatically generating Phrase Match and Exact Match keywords for use in your Google AdWords campaigns because if you’re only using Broad Match, may God have mercy on your soul.