Using Google Analytics in conjunction with Google AdWords is a useful way to track visitor behavior beyond the click. But what about Bing/Yahoo PPC visitors? By default, Google Analytics tracks all Bing or Yahoo visitors, but does not discriminate between paid and organic visitors. If you want to track PPC visitors coming from Bing, you need to add some additional parameters to the landing page URL for the Google Analytics system to decode and track.
As an added bonus, this same technique can be used to track other advertising efforts (e.g. newsletters, site sponsorships, and banner advertising).
How to Track Bing PPC Visitors in Google Analytics
Tracking other PPC/CPM/Advertising campaigns requires setting a couple of additional CGI parameters for the landing page URL. This assumes that the GA account is already set up and that GA tracking JS code is installed on the PPC landing page and any GA Goal pages.
| CGI Parameter | Required | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| utm_source | Yes | Where did visitor come from? | utm_source=google utm_source =newsletter |
| utm_medium | Yes | Type of advertising (CPM,CPC,Banner,Site Sponsor) | utm_medium=cpc |
| utm_campaign | Yes | Campaign breakdown | utm_campaign=holiday-specials |
| utm_content | No | Ad content/value proposition | utm_content=newyears-ad2v3 |
| utm_term | No | Search Term | utm_term={keyword} |
Thus, a Google adWords ad might look like this:
http://mysite.com/googlelandingpage.html
which, when clicked, becomes:
http://mysite.com/googlelandingpage.html?gclid=223rvsdbewqr23r5299
To pass the same info in Bing, we would need to set the landing page as so:
http://mysite.com/binglandingpage.html?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=my+campaign+name&utm_term={keyword}
Note: I did not include a utm_content term in this example.
Why Aren’t These Parameters Required for Google AdWords PPC?
Google adWords incorporates all these good things into the gclid parameter, which can be automatically appended to all ads by turning “Auto-tagging” on in the adWords My account/Preferences/Tracking tab. Once set, Google adWords appends the gclid=… parameter to your landing page URL, and the Google Analytics code in turn decodes the gclid value to extract the click type, campaign, and other parameter values.
Resources:
