AdWords tracking

I try to find out how many visitors come to a site from Google Adwords.

In case of an hit from AdWords, the log file shows entries like:

amr-dmr-67fb.mxs.adsl.euronet.nl - - [16/Nov/2005:20:01:19 +0100] "GET /
HTTP/1.1" 200 35199
"http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-38,GGLG:en&q=victron"
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705;
..NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

but I can't see any difference with entries from 'normal' searches like:

amr-dmr-67fb.mxs.adsl.euronet.nl - - [16/Nov/2005:20:14:55 +0100] "GET
/index.php HTTP/1.1" 200 35208
"http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-38,GGLG:en&q=victron+aanbieding"
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705;
..NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

Do I overlook something???

--
Nico Schuyt
http://www.nicoschuyt.nl/

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 21:15:29 +0100, Nico Schuyt <nschuyt (AT) hotmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

I try to find out how many visitors come to a site from Google Adwords.

In case of an hit from AdWords, the log file shows entries like:

(...)

but I can't see any difference with entries from 'normal' searches like:

(...)

Do I overlook something???

No. AFAIK they are identical. Note that referer string is information
about the page displayed, not about the link followed on the page.

Use some other URL as a landing page for AdWords clients.

I have added &from=google1 as a parameter to differentiate between
AdWords and organic searches, followed by 301 redirect to not risk
duplicate content penalty.

Best,
Borek
--
http://www.chembuddy.com - chemical calculators for labs and education
BATE - program for pH calculations
CASC - Concentration and Solution Calculator
pH lectures - guide to hand pH calculation with examples

Borek wrote:

Nico Schuyt wrote:

I try to find out how many visitors come to a site from Google
Adwords. ...
but I can't see any difference with entries from 'normal' searches
like: Do I overlook something???

No. AFAIK they are identical. Note that referer string is information
about the page displayed, not about the link followed on the page.
Use some other URL as a landing page for AdWords clients.
I have added &from=google1 as a parameter to differentiate between
AdWords and organic searches, followed by 301 redirect to not risk
duplicate content penalty.

Good idea, but where/how did you make the 301 redirect? In .htaccess?

--
Nico Schuyt
http://www.nicoschuyt.nl/

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 21:47:03 +0100, Nico Schuyt <nschuyt (AT) hotmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

I try to find out how many visitors come to a site from Google
Adwords. ...
but I can't see any difference with entries from 'normal' searches
like: Do I overlook something???

No. AFAIK they are identical. Note that referer string is information
about the page displayed, not about the link followed on the page.
Use some other URL as a landing page for AdWords clients.
I have added &from=google1 as a parameter to differentiate between
AdWords and organic searches, followed by 301 redirect to not risk
duplicate content penalty.

Good idea, but where/how did you make the 301 redirect? In .htaccess?

My site is in php so it was header("Location: ".$new_url,true,301);
but you should be able to use mod_rewrite for the same thing. Don't
ask how. I mean - don't ask _me_ how The only drawback of using
home.pl as host is lack of the mod_rewrite so I don't know this animal.

Best,
Borek
--
http://www.chembuddy.com - chemical calculators for labs and education
BATE - program for pH calculations
CASC - Concentration and Solution Calculator
pH lectures - guide to hand pH calculation with examples

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 21:40:59 +0100, Borek wrote:

I have added &from=google1 as a parameter to differentiate between
AdWords and organic searches, followed by 301 redirect to not risk
duplicate content penalty.

Borek: Please explain... what is the "duplicate content penalty"?

Pete

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 23:28:29 +0100, Pete <nobody (AT) nowhere (DOT) com> wrote:

I have added &from=google1 as a parameter to differentiate between
AdWords and organic searches, followed by 301 redirect to not risk
duplicate content penalty.

Borek: Please explain... what is the "duplicate content penalty"?

If there are two pages with identical content Google chooses one
of them as the original and treats it the normal way, while the
other is punished and not shown in organic search results. The
problem is, due to some peculiarities in G algo way too often
page punished is (or at least was) the original page.

To avoid the problem you should not display identical content
for different URLs. Some argue that it is inevitable in some
situations and G is not very rigorous. But even if - better
safe then sorry.

Best,
Borek
--
http://www.chembuddy.com - chemical calculators for labs and education
BATE - program for pH calculations
CASC - Concentration and Solution Calculator
pH lectures - guide to hand pH calculation with examples

Borek wrote:

To avoid the problem you should not display identical content
for different URLs. Some argue that it is inevitable in some
situations and G is not very rigorous. But even if - better
safe then sorry.

That worries me: I sometimes use an argument like "?menu=xxx" to show or
hide a sub-menu by applying CSS (e.g. display:none) to the page. Do you
think that's a risc?

--
Nico Schuyt
http://www.nicoschuyt.nl/

Borek wrote:

Nico Schuyt wrote:

... where/how did you make the 301 redirect? In .htaccess?

My site is in php so it was header("Location: ".$new_url,true,301);

Thanks again! Never knew you could do that with header()

--
Nico Schuyt
http://www.nicoschuyt.nl/

"Nico Schuyt" <nschuyt (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Borek wrote:
Nico Schuyt wrote:

... where/how did you make the 301 redirect? In .htaccess?

My site is in php so it was header("Location: ".$new_url,true,301);

Thanks again! Never knew you could do that with header()

Make sure that $new_url is an absolute one, e.g.
http://example.com/foo/bar (and not /foo/bar, or ../bar)

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
or have them custom made
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/

John Bokma wrote:

"Nico Schuyt" wrote:
Borek wrote:
Nico Schuyt wrote:

... where/how did you make the 301 redirect? In .htaccess?

My site is in php so it was header("Location: ".$new_url,true,301);

Thanks again! Never knew you could do that with header()

Make sure that $new_url is an absolute one, e.g.
http://example.com/foo/bar (and not /foo/bar, or ../bar)

Thanks John!

--
Nico Schuyt
http://www.nicoschuyt.nl/