Part 2 of 2: Use dynamic tracking to improve campaign results
Last week we took a look at dynamic tracking features in the LookSmart AdCenter that help you identify which search terms visitors are using to get to the ads that take them to your site. By asking the Ad Server to insert the user's search term and other data into your Destination URL, you can get insights into what your visitors were searching for when they made the decision to visit your site.
I've modified my Destination URLs, now what?
If you follow the instructions in our previous post, you will have modified your Destination URLs to include some or all of these dynamic tracking features. Now, what do you do next?
Each time someone clicks on your ad and visits your web site, your web server will make a note of which
Destination URL they visited in your
If your Destination URL looked like this:
http://www.example.com/mysite.html?keyword={keyword: too_long}&query={query: too_long}
Then a line from your web log might look like this:
127.0.0.1 - myserver [10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700] "GET /mysite.html?keyword=car+insurance&query=I+want+to+buy+car+insurance HTTP/1.1" 200 2326
Now, you know that your bid for the broad match keyword car insurance was clicked on by someone who actually searched using the terms I want to buy car insurance. You could now go back into your campaign and add a smart match bid for the keyword I want to buy car insurance at a different price than you paid for just "car insurance". You could even create a separate ad that was geared towards users who typed that phrase.
Finding Negative Keywords
Incidentally, your web logs will also show you search terms you definitely do not want to buy. For example, if you were hoping to attract a visitor who might buy car insurance from you and you id on the word "cars", but the user searched for "cars animated movie", you could add "animated movie" as a Negative Keyword to your ad.
By adding Negative Keywords, the Ad Server will not show your ad when those words are found in the user's search text. This allows you to buy a popular search term like "car" but not pay for clicks from visitors who are searching for an unrelated topic that includes the word cars.
Web logs, really?
So, digging around in your web site's web server logs probably doesn't sound like your idea of fun. For those of you who have access to that data and like to do a bit of programming, this can be a lot easier than to do than you think. But, for the rest of us, we need something called web analytics.
Web analytics services
Web analytics services take all of the pain and suffering out of sifting through web server logs to find user's search terms. They will usually process your logs for you or simply provide you easy-to-read reports from a separate web site. Web analytics services may also tell interpret your web logs to tell you things like which pages your visitors looked at, what countries they came from, even what kinds of web browsers they are using.
For our purposes, web analytics services help us find the long tail we've been looking for. Your web analytics service can give you a report of all the search terms users were using when they clicked on your ad. And, once you know those terms, you can customize your ads and/or your bidding strategy to account for the different ways people search.
The specifics of how to set up web analytics is way beyond the scope of what we can cover in a blog. However, we've included some examples of how to use dynamic tracking with conversion tracking (a special kind of web analytics service that also tells you how much money you are making on your web site) in our LookSmart AdCenter Online Help Guide. Look for the sections on click tracking and dynamic substitution parameters.
If you need help figuring out how to use the these dynamic tracking features, LookSmart can help. Please feel free to contact us by e-mail or call 877-512-LOOK (5665) for assistance.
Allen Hammock
Product Marketing Manager
allen.hammock@looksmart.net
