Remarketing with Google Analytics

Google

Update Your Analytics Tracking Code to Support Display Advertising

 

If you choose to enable Remarketing with Google Analytics, then the update to the Analytics tracking code involves replacing only a single line of the code. Once you have made that change, Google Analytics collects the information it normally does, as well as the DoubleClick cookie when that cookie is present. The DoubleClick cookie enables remarketing for products like AdWords on the Google Display Network.

This change is compatible with both the synchronous and asynchronous versions of the tracking code. This modification does not impact any customizations you have previously made to your code.

When you make this update to your tracking code, you also need to update your privacy policy.

To implement remarketing, replace the bold text in this example:

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxx-y']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; 

ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + 'google-analytics.com/ga.js';

var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

with the bold text in the example below:

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxx-y']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; 

ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://' : 'http://') + 'stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js';

var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

 

Precision Match and embedded match keywords

Precision Match

Advertisers can choose how to target individual keywords and URLs with 4 precision match options: Complete URL, URL without Query String, Query String only or Search Engine. For examples of each, let us assume you have the target "loan" in your target list.

Complete URL. This is our default precision match. If your target appears anywhere in internet address visited by a user, then a match will occur. Ex. www.domain.com/page.html?query_argument=whatever

URL without Query String. A match will occur only within the URL portion of an internet address. Ex. www.domain.com/page.html?query_argument=whatever

Query String Only. A match will occur only if your target appears in the query string portion of a URL.
Ex. www.domain.com/page.html?query_argument=whatever

Search Engine. Your target will only match if it was initiated as a search in a search engine.
Ex. www.searchengine.com/results.html?search_query=search string


Exclusions

Advertisers can EXCLUDE keywords or URLs from triggering in a given campaign. This can be quite useful to prevent non-profitable pops.



Example: Your destination might be www.myloans.com. Your target list my include the target "loan". You probably don�t want your destination to trigger if someone would navigate directly to www.myloans.com. Therefore, you would add www.myloans.com to your exclusion list.

Window Type

Advertisers can show their destination as a Landing Page (750x550) or as a Creative with specific width and height.

Pop Type

Advertisers can choose to have their destination shown as a Pop-Up or Pop-Under.

Embedded match is an AdWords “match type” which allows you to target variations of a keyword, without advertising against the keyword itself (really, embedded match is a combination of two different AdWords matching options, but we’ll get into more detail on that shortly). In this tutorial, you’ll learn:

• How embedded match works
• Why it's important to your search campaign
• How to use the option to reduce unnecessary spend

So, What Is Embedded Match, Anyway? 

As mentioned above, embedded match uses a combination of matching options and can be considered a hybrid of exact negative match and broad match. Google explains, "[embedded match] allows you to prevent your ad from appearing in relation to certain phrase or exact matches."

For example, let's say your business sells Apple iPod accessories, but not actual iPods. You may broad match on "iPod" to capture people looking for these accessories, but you'd want to exclude "Apple iPod" because it's not relevant to your business. In this case, "Apple iPod" would be an embedded match keyword.

Why Are Embedded Match Keywords Important To You?

Embedded Match Keywords are important because they prevent your ad from displaying for less relevant searches, thus reducing unnecessary spend and even improving AdWords click through rate (CTR). Embedded Match Keywords provide you, the search marketer, with more control over your search campaign. With this control, you can let your competitors vie for the popular keywords while you bid instead on more specific, lower priced keyword terms with better conversion rates.

Embedded match keywords allow you to continue advertising on these specific, well performing keywords, while preventing your ads from displaying for similar general queries that tend to have a lower return on investment (ROI).

How To Use AdWords Embedded Match

Despite their benefits, most marketers find themselves unable to capitalize on embedded match because of the work involved to find, examine and apply embedded match to appropriate keywords. Blogger Brad Geddes goes so far as to describe it as "the least used feature of Google AdWords." It's tedious to go over your keywords and single out certain general terms in order to apply an embedded match status, and to make things even harder, not all general terms are proper embedded match candidates.

A far better option is to group, bid on, and create ad texts for the keyword variations themselves. Luckily, that's exactly what WordStream does.

Keyword Grouping and Embedded Match Keywords

Let's first look at WordStream's Keyword Grouping Tool. This tool automatically groups keywords by relevance, so you're left with small groups of similar keywords underneath a more general term.

Embedded Keywords and The Long Tail

One of WordStream's most distinguishing properties is the ability to act as a Long Tail Keyword Tool to find and manage specific keywords with high relevance and better conversion rates. Focusing on and optimizing the long tail serves the same purpose as implementing embedded keywords--you stop bidding on the general, highly competitive and expensive keywords, and direct your time towards keywords that are more appropriate for your business. Popular keywords, great embedded keyword candidates, are easily visualized in WordStream's keyword explorer, as are long tail queries that make up the majority of search queries.

An Easy Alternative To Embedded Match Keywords

WordStream goes a step beyond embedded match, allowing you to have greater control and specificity in your campaigns which results in better campaign performance at a lower cost. Why bid at all on the general phrases that may or may not produce a qualified lead when you can bid on specific keywords that you know your website is relevant for--all at a lower cost!

If you're interested in maintaining even more control and specificity in your pay per click accounts, learn more about

Exact-Match Domain (EMD) Algo

Google EMD Update Appears To Have Had A Substantial Impact  
Monday, 01 October 2012 21:01
On Friday, Google’s Matt Cutts revealed that Google was rolling out a new algorithm update geared at reducing “low-quality” exact match domains in search results. He indicated that “the EMD algo” affects 0.6% of English-US queries “to a noticeable degree”.
Just to clear up any confusion from the start, he also said it was unrelated to the Panda and Penguin updates.
While 0.6% of English-US queries may not sound like an incredible amount of results impacted, there are already tons of people claiming to have been hit by the update.

Shared Budget in Adwords

New! Now you can replace individual campaign budgets with one large, shared budget. Here's how:

1. Create a shared budget 
Pick an amount that's large enough to cover the campaigns you'll apply it to.

2. Apply it to campaigns 
Select some campaigns that will draw from this new, shared budget. You can add more later.

Shared Budget

 

Campaign 1

 

Campaign 2

 

Campaign 3

 

 

 

 

A shared budget doesn’t take effect until you apply it to specific campaigns. You can apply a shared budget here or when you’re editing the campaign’s budget in the Settings tab.

 

 

 

 

Actual daily spendYour daily spend varies and may peak at 20% above your daily budget to help your campaign reach its potential. 

Monthly charging limit
If your daily budget is Rs.10.00 throughout the entire month, you will not be charged more than Rs.304.00 for the month (Rs.10.00 daily budget x 30.4 average days per month). 

Official Google Panda Update Version 3.9 On July 24th

Last night, at 7pm EDT, Google announced they pushed out a refresh for the Google Panda algorithm.

We had some rumors of a Panda refresh a couple weeks ago but Google said there was no such update. Truth is, looking at the forums, even as of this morning, there are very few complaints despite what I would normally see during a Panda refresh.

A Googler

• ✔

@google

New data refresh of Panda starts rolling out tonight. ~1% of search results change enough to notice. More context: goo.gl/huekf

25 Jul 12

• Reply
• Retweet
• Favorite

This time, Google said this Panda refresh impacted about 1% of the search results, which is actually pretty significant. Not as significant as 11.8% when Google first launched Panda in February 2011 or as significant as Google launching Panda in Koera and Japan with 5% but still, for a refresh, it seems significant.

So this surprises me that I don't see more complaints in the forums.

That being said, the previous Panda refresh was Panda 3.8 and about 30 days before this update. SEOs are patiently awaiting a Penguin refresh, the last and first refresh we had was on May 25th, so we are due an update there.

One last concern for me is that we are out of numbers. 3.9 and now what? :)

Here are the past Google Panda updates:

• Panda 3.9 on July 24th
• Panda 3.8 on June 25th
• Panda 3.7 on June 9th
• Panda 3.6 on April 27th
• Panda 3.5 on April 19th
• Panda 3.4 on March 23rd
• Panda 3.3 on about February 26th
• Panda 3.2 on about January 15th
• Panda 3.1 on November 18th
• Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th
• Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th
• Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th
• Panda 2.5 on September 28th
• Panda 2.4 in August
• Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd.
• Panda 2.2 on June 18th or so.
• Panda 2.1 on May 9th or so.
• Panda 2.0 on April 11th or so.
• Panda 1.0 on February 24th

13 Common Mistakes Marketers Make With Calls-to-Action Buttons

1) Overselling and Under-Delivering

Your call-to-action sets certain expectations with your visitor -- the language you use tells them what they're going to get if they redeem your offer. The thing is, sometimes calls-to-action promise the sun and the moon to ensure they capture a click, but then don't actually deliver on those high-falutin' promises.

How to Integrate Ecommerce Tracking in Analytics

General Process

The basic process for tracking ecommerce using Google Analytics can best be described by summarizing the three methods required for tracking ecommerce transactions on your site. These methods are described in the order in which you should invoke them in your shopping cart or ecommerce software.

1. Create a transaction object.
   Use the _addTrans() method to intialize a transaction object. The transaction object stores all the related information about a single transaction, such as the order ID, shipping charges, and billing address. The information in the transaction object is associated with its items by means of the order IDs for the transaction and all items, which should be the same ID.
2. Add items to the transaction.
   The _addItem() method tracks information about each individual item in the user's shopping cart and associates the item with each transaction via the orderId field. This method tracks the details about a particular item, such as SKU, price, category, and quantity.
3. Submit the transaction to the Analytics servers.
   The _trackTrans() method confirms that a purchase has occurred, and all data that has been built up in the transaction object is finalized as a transaction.

There are many ways that this information can be retrieved from the ecommerce engine. Some ecommerce engines write the purchase information to a hidden form that you can use, others keep the information in a database that you can retrieve, and others store the information in a cookie. Some of the more popular ecommerce engines that recognize Google Analytics provide their own modules to simplify order tracking for Analytics.

Guidelines

Keep in mind the following when implementing ecommerce tracking.

• The SKU code is a required parameter for every item that is added to the transaction. 
  If a transaction contains multiple items and the SKU is not supplied for every item, a GIF request is sent only for the last item added to the transaction for which a SKU is provided. In addition, if your inventory has different items with the same SKU, and a visitor purchases both of them, you will receive data for only the most recently added. For this reason, you should make sure that each item you offer has a unique SKU.
• The argument list for _addTrans() and _addItem() is matched by position. 
  While not all arguments are required, you should supply an empty placeholder for unspecified arguments to avoid errors. For example, you would add an item containing only order ID, sku, price, and quantity like this:

  _addItem("54321", "12345", "", "", "55.95", "1");

• The values for the price and total parameters do not respect any currency formatting. 
  For both parameters, the first instance of either a comma or a period indicates a fractional value. So, for example, if you provide 1,996.00 as the value for the totalparameter, it is recorded as 1.996, not as $1,996.00. Because the value is not affiliated with any currency, your ecommerce software must handle any currency conversion before you pass the data to Analytics.
• If you are implementing ecommerce tracking and using a 3rd-party shopping cart, you will likely need to configure cross-domain tracking as well. 
  See the section on "Cross Domain Tracking" for details.
• While not strictly required, it is a good idea to call _trackPageview() on your receipt page if you want to associate that particular page with the transaction data.

Complete Example

The following example illustrates a sample configuration of ecommerce tracking on a receipt page using all three methods. The use of _trackPageview() associates the transaction with the page entitled Receipt for your clothing purchase from Acme Clothing.

▾

Asynchronous Syntax (recommended)

<html>
<head>
<title>Receipt for your clothing purchase from Acme Clothing</title>
<script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
  _gaq.push(['_addTrans',
    '1234',           // order ID - required
    'Acme Clothing',  // affiliation or store name
    '11.99',          // total - required
    '1.29',           // tax
    '5',              // shipping
    'San Jose',       // city
    'California',     // state or province
    'USA'             // country
  ]);

   // add item might be called for every item in the shopping cart
   // where your ecommerce engine loops through each item in the cart and
   // prints out _addItem for each
  _gaq.push(['_addItem',
    '1234',           // order ID - required
    'DD44',           // SKU/code - required
    'T-Shirt',        // product name
    'Green Medium',   // category or variation
    '11.99',          // unit price - required
    '1'               // quantity - required
  ]);
  _gaq.push(['_trackTrans']); //submits transaction to the Analytics servers

  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();
</script>
</head>
<body>

  Thank you for your order.  You will receive an email containing all your order details.
</body>
</html>

▾

Traditional Syntax

<html>
<head>
<title>Receipt for your clothing purchase from Acme Clothing</title>
</head>
<body>

  Thank you for your order.  You will receive an email containing all your order details.

<script type="text/javascript">
  var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol ) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
  document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try{
  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxx-x");
  pageTracker._trackPageview();
  pageTracker._addTrans(
      "1234",            // order ID - required
      "Womens Apparel",  // affiliation or store name
      "11.99",           // total - required
      "1.29",            // tax
      "15.00",           // shipping
      "San Jose",        // city
      "California",      // state or province
      "USA"              // country
    );


   // add item might be called for every item in the shopping cart
   // where your ecommerce engine loops through each item in the cart and
   // prints out _addItem for each 
   pageTracker._addItem(
      "1234",           // order ID - necessary to associate item with transaction
      "DD44",           // SKU/code - required
      "T-Shirt",        // product name
      "Olive Medium",   // category or variation
      "11.99",          // unit price - required
      "1"               // quantity - required
   );

   pageTracker._trackTrans(); //submits transaction to the Analytics servers
} catch(err) {}
</script>
</body>
</html>