AdWords and Upgraded URL’s
Destination URL’s, Final URL’s, Upgraded URL’s, Tracking Templates? What does all this mean? If you are an AdWords advertiser, you have received plenty of notifications about upgrading your URL’s to the new Final Destination URL by July 1st. But why all the fuss? You may be thinking, “my current URL’s seem to be doing the job just fine”. In an effort to further enhance the AdWords platform and to provide more data on the effectiveness of your ads, keywords, and bidding, Google introduced Upgraded URL’s to help manage landing pages and tracking information separately. The mandatory upgrade from the Destination URL’s to the new upgraded Final URL’s took place on July 1st for all Google AdWords users.
Now that everyone has upgraded either manually or through Google’s automatic upgrade, why was it so important? There are several advantages to the Final URL structure. With the new URL structure you can track more insights into ad performance, keep ads running while making changes with shared tracking templates and scale tracking updates across the AdWords account.
Exploring the benefits further, many advertisers will find the new Upgraded URL’s will allow them to track various pieces of information from an ad click. The ability to track the keyword that was matched to the search query that triggered the ad, the id of the geographic location of the click, and the device that was used to click the ad are just a few of the options. To learn more about the Value Tracking, visit the Google support page.
Another key benefit that many advertisers are enjoying is the ability to change the tracking URL’s without having to send their ads through re-submission and approval by Google. This new option cuts out the time the ads would be offline while pending approval. Keeping the ads running also keeps potential business flowing.
Finally, if you make frequent updates to your tracking across your account, using the shared tracking templates allows users to make updates in one place. The updates can be applied to a specific ad group, campaign, or your entire account. Changing tracking URL’s at scale is quick and won’t re-set the ad data. Setting up tracking templates is easy and more information can be found here.
So, why all the fuss? More insightful data, changing tracking URL’s at scale, and less down time for your ads….that’s why!