Mastering Google Product Feeds and Product Listing Ads – Part 3

In part one of this series we covered setting up Google product feeds and in part two we covered setting up Product Listing Ads in AdWords. In this post we will cover properly tracking product search results so you can gather the data you need to optimize your campaigns.

We promised that this post would be about optimizing product feeds, product listing ads, and product extensions…

But, we would be remiss if we didn’t first address properly tracking product search data. After all, you can’t optimize without good data.

Please forgive us for teasing you with promise of a post on optimization. Part four of this series will cover that (seriously!).

Tracking Google Product Search

The basic url parameters you use in your Merchant Center feed should mimic the parameters you use to track all advertising. If you have auto-tagging enabled in AdWords and are using Google Analytics, these parameters are already being inserted for you and will be used in your PLA and product extensions (PE).

If you aren’t using Analytics or don’t have auto-tagging enabled, you will want to make sure you include parameters such as “utm_campaign=” and “utm_adgroup=” in your destination urls so you can gather as much data as possible.

There is more information to gather with product search so you will be adding additional parameters to your product feed urls whether you’re using auto-tagging or not. We’re going to walk through the recommended additional parameters and build a sample URL pattern as we go.

Product Search Parameter

First, you will want to include a parameter in your url to indicate that this traffic is coming from product search. This will help you parse the data in your analytics so you can see how your various products perform in product search vs. the regular organic results.

This parameter will not differentiate between PLA and PE, it will only tell you that the traffic came from product search in general. Later we’ll cover a new attribute in your product feed to get this level of differentiation.

This parameter can be called whatever makes the most sense to you. You could use “result_type=product-search” or “origin=product-search”, as Google suggests. If you are using auto-tagging and don’t have additional parameters, right now your landing page url (used in the “link” product feed attribute) will look like this:

http://url.com/?origin=product-search

Keyword Parameter

One of the most important pieces of data you can gather with url parameters in your product feed is the search query. Knowing what people searched when they saw your product result will allow you to add negative keywords and revise your product descriptions and titles to get better results.

Here you want to add the specific parameter “kwd={keyword}. When you look at your analytics, {keyword} will be replaced by the search query.

With this parameter added, your landing page url will look like this:

http://url.com/?origin=product-search&kwd={keyword}

Source Parameter

Finally, you’ll want to differentiate between regular product search results (Google Shopping), PLA and PE.

To do this, you will add a third parameter to your landing page url. This parameter can be called anything that makes sense to you, but Google recommends you use “source=default_value“. Default_value will be replaced by whatever you want to see in your analytics when the traffic came from general product search results (non-PLA or PE).

Along with the source parameter, you will need to add an attribute called “adwords_redirect” to your product feed. The product feed template we’ve created has been updated with this attribute, just after the link attribute. In the adwords_redirect attribute you will put a landing page url for each specific product. The url will be the same as the url in the link attribute, plus two parameters that are coded to tell you where your traffic is coming from.

The two ValueTrack parameters that you’ll use in the url in the “adwords_redirect” attribute, in conjunction with the “source=” parameter, are {ifpla} and{ifpe}. {ifpla:value} is used to indicate the traffic came from PLA. {ifpe:value} is used to indicate the traffic came from PE. There is no special parameter needed to indicate when the traffic comes from general product search as that is handled with the default value assigned to the source parameter.

First, you will want to decide what you want to see in your urls in analytics when traffic comes from general product search, PLA, and PE. I like to keep things simple so let’s use pla for PLA, pe for PE, and general for general product search results. So, the PLA and PE parameters will be {ifpla:pla} and {ifpe:pe} (We replaced value with pe and pla.) When traffic comes from PLA, {ifpla:pla} will be replaced with pla and {ifpe:pe} will be replaced with pe in the url in your analytics.

With the source parameter added, your landing page url (link attribute) will look like this:

http://url.com/?origin=product-search&kwd={keyword}&source=general

The adwords_redirect attribute url will look like this:

http://url.com/?origin=product-search&kwd={keyword}&source={ifpla:pla}{ifpe:pe}

That’s It?

There are countless other parameters you could add to your tracking urls. But, if you are auto-tagging in AdWords, these three additional parameters will give you enough data to optimize your feeds, ads and extensions without making you go “data blind.” Make sure you have proper tracking in place if you’ve already launched your feed, or get your tracking ducks in a row if you haven’t launched yet.

If you want to launch and start collecting data, now you can. Stay tuned for part four of this series in which we’ll cover optimizing product feeds, ads, and extensions.

—

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to get more great content from BlueGlass!