Give Your Paid Search Tracking Some Cookies & Milk
There are several different companies offering paid search tracking. Also, most of the paid search engines offer free tracking for your website, but how reliable are these stats?
In short, depending on your business cycle, these stats may be very unreliable. Why is it based on your business cycle? Cookies!
When someone clicks on your paid search ad a cookie is placed with that customer. If the customer clicks on the ad, goes to your site, buys your green widget for $29.99, it will show as a conversion and sale for $29.99. Now the next customer clicks on your ad, goes to your site, and does not buy today. He buys tomorrow, next Saturday, next month, 60 days from now. This sale will not show coming through paid search unless the tracking systems cookies are set that far out. Your stats will show a click, but no sale.
Google’s conversion tracking sets a 30 day cookie. If a majority of your customers buy in 45 days, your tracking will show your paid search campaign is not working for you because the sales will not show 31+ days past the time the click took place. You need to make sure your tracking system meets your business cycles demands. If not, you may be wasting your time.
Google tracking 30 day cookie
Yahoo tracking 30 day cookie
MSN tracking 30 day cookie
Many of the other more sophisticated and higher cost systems, like Yahoo Marketing Console, Atlas Search, and Coremetrics go up to a 60 or 90 day cookie.
Article written by Al Scillitani
In short, depending on your business cycle, these stats may be very unreliable. Why is it based on your business cycle? Cookies!
When someone clicks on your paid search ad a cookie is placed with that customer. If the customer clicks on the ad, goes to your site, buys your green widget for $29.99, it will show as a conversion and sale for $29.99. Now the next customer clicks on your ad, goes to your site, and does not buy today. He buys tomorrow, next Saturday, next month, 60 days from now. This sale will not show coming through paid search unless the tracking systems cookies are set that far out. Your stats will show a click, but no sale.
Google’s conversion tracking sets a 30 day cookie. If a majority of your customers buy in 45 days, your tracking will show your paid search campaign is not working for you because the sales will not show 31+ days past the time the click took place. You need to make sure your tracking system meets your business cycles demands. If not, you may be wasting your time.
Google tracking 30 day cookie
Yahoo tracking 30 day cookie
MSN tracking 30 day cookie
Many of the other more sophisticated and higher cost systems, like Yahoo Marketing Console, Atlas Search, and Coremetrics go up to a 60 or 90 day cookie.
Article written by Al Scillitani
posted by Al Scillitani at 12:43 PM
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