How Would This Affect Google Adwords Tracking/Payment

I'm not quite sure what you are saying.

If you click (a normal click) on an Adwords after doing a search in Google, you will be taken directly to the landing page specified by the advertiser. If you copy that URL from your browser's URL bar, I don't see how you can tell it was from clicking on an Adwords ad.

However, if you do a right-click on the ad and then a Copy Link Location, which is what I think you are saying, the string in your clipboard will look something like:

http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=zXvYSbD-maQGqBBZP0AIJvKRdejYvVKeQzB&sig=AGiWJ4nE92g5pA&q=h ttp://www.domain.com/some-page


I never did this before so I tried it. I copied the URL of one of my ads in the way mentioned above and inserted into my browser URL bar. It did bring me to my page and my guess is that a click cost will be incurred once my stats get updated.

So, I would NOT do this to the poor advertiser. Then again, maybe Google has some way to know that the click did not come from its search engine. But somehow I doubt it.

If however you cut everything and use only the URL, the http://www.domain.com/some-page part in my example, I don't see a problem. You are using the landing page URL.

> Does it mess with your tracking?

It has the potential to. Your Adwords stats would probably show a lot of "searches" on the keyword, possibly a very high CTR approaching 100%, I'm guessing one impression counted, one click for each click on that link. That would make me think "WTF?" if I saw that. Impressions would probably show a disproportinate amount in one position.

Of course, it may all go unnoticed if the article is not widely distributed and few people click on the link.

Another thing that increases is the number of impressions and clicks for the specific ad shown. If that code contains that information, which it likely does, the advertiser could see clicks incurred on ads which may not even be active any more. Same for paused or deleted keywords, groups or campaigns. Now that would be a real "WTF?" moment.

I also find it in bad form to click on ads when you have no intention of buying. You could get the landing page URL by using my trick but actually clicking on it, as an advertiser, I frown upon that.

My Adwords stats updated quickly and I can give more details from my little experiment. Luckily, it only cost me $0.30

The keyword I used had no impressions before the test. My stats then showed 2 clicks and only one impression for a 200% CTR! Makes sense since I did a search to copy the URL from the ad (first impression). I then copied the URL into my browser for the second impression. And obviously, when I landing on my page, a click was counted.

The total cost for both clicks was 30 cents. Apart from the weird looking CTR, everything else looks normal. Can't tell if it affected the position stats as it shows 1.0 and the ad was showing in that position. My guess is that the tracking code contains that information so you could see stats showing, like I suspected in my previous post, a 100% CTR on one ad and keyword and showing an even x.0 position, which would be bizarre to see. Position reporting over many impressions are almost never x.0 but a fraction of a position.

Both clicks were recorded for the same ad. There was only one other impression before the experiment so the ad's CTR is now 66.66%

If I didn't know this, I would assume that ad is much better than the others I'm testing. So, yes, it does mess (to use a polite term) my tracking and testing.

I've seen this 200% CTR occasionally before. Never could figure out how that could be. Now I have a possible answer. Of course, I catch this if I happen to check updated stats early in the day. Once there are more impressions and the CTR goes below 100%, you got no way to tell.

The next question is whether Google can reimburse at least one of those clicks, it may do this automatically but that is not in my experience. I also don't know from this if the position stats would show 1.0 all the time but I suspect that the original ad's position would be used.

I also don't know what would happen to stats if I pause or delete the keyword, ad or group. My very educated guess is that the tracking code contains that information and that one could all of sudden see stats accumulated on such paused or deleted elements.

Thanks for your response. The link would always look something like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/page?gclid=3...kw=the-keyword

I would just delete the ? and everything after it and it would take me to the same page, so that's what I'd publish. However, I'm not sure that other editors know about this, so I'm going to mention it to the group.

Thanks!

Love,
Shannon

I assume your writer lifts that after clicking on the ad and that's the full URL being displayed in the browser, although curiously I never noticed anything like that before if that's the case.

I believe the gclid= parameter is one automatically added by Google for advertisers using Analytics. The 9-digit value would have some significance to Analytics reporting, it could be the ID for each unique visitor, not sure. The kw= parameter is obviously the keyword used in the search.

So, yes, no need to keep that stuff in there as I assume it would mess up the stats just as my little experiment did. Stats are a marketer's lifeblood and you want them as accurate as possible.