I've been searching for a solution to this, which I thought would be trivial, and seems pretty much impossible.
Here's the situation: I set up an AdWords campaign, ad groups and ads. I point them to www.mysite.com
Once visitors arrive to my site through one of my ads, I want to know which exact ad they clicked on (and campaign, as apparently the ad id isn't globally unqiue). Is this possible?
I first tried by enabling Destination URL auto-tagging, but seems like the gclid parameter is pretty much useless.
Then I looked at the UTMZ cookie, but it seems like at most (correct me if this isn't the case), you get the campaign number (is this even the ID in AdWords?) and the keywords searched or the ad's keywords, one of those. Not anything I can uniquely identify the ad by, right?
Finally, I looked at ValueTrack, although again correct me if I'm wrong, but this would mean manually changing the destination URL of each of my ads in AdWords, right? Even doing this, I'm not sure I can get something that lets me uniquely identify the clicked ad. Is {creative} what I want? It's described in the docs as the "unique ID of the creative", does that mean this includes the Campaign.Id and the AdGroupAd.Id?
Thanks!
There is a way to do what you want using tracking templates.
Navigating to auto-tracking and tracking template settings:
Log in to Adwords, and click "Campaigns".
Click "Shared Library" in the bottom left corner.
Under "Shared Library", click "URL options".
You'll now get these options:
These options are set for the entire account. I think it is possible to override the tracking template for individual campaigns, ad groups and ads. Here is what they mean:
Auto-tagging
Auto-tagging means that when a user clicks on an ad, they will go a URL with the gclid parameter appended, for example http://yourwebsite.com/?gclid=example. This value is useful for some things, such as for offline conversions, so your website should save it.
Tracking template
Tracking template means that when a user clicks on an ad, they will be directed to this URL. Interestingly, it does not have to be your website, as long as the URL redirects to your website. For instance, you could set it up to look like this:
http://trackingcompany.com/?url={lpurl}&campaignid={campaignid}
{lpurl} and {campaignid} are placeholders which AdWords recognises and knows how to handle. So, for example, if a user clicks on an ad, they could go to:
http://trackingcompany.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fyourwebsite.com&campaignid=543987
trackingcompany.com must redirect the user now to http://yourwebsite.com, otherwise, it is in violation of AdWords policy and your ads could be rejected.
Now, here's the clever bit that I didn't realise because all of this is badly documented: you don't have to use a third-party tracking company to get access to things like campaign id. You can just reuse your own website! Just set your tracking URL to something like this:
{lpurl}?campaignid={campaignid}
You see that? {lpurl} will get replaced with the landing page, which is your website! So the user in our example would go to this URL upon clicking an ad:
http://yourwebsite.com?campaignid=543987
It's not clear to me whether example.com must now redirect to the landing page URL without those parameters, or not.
I can't find documentation on these placeholders anywhere, but these are the ones that I've found work:
{lpurl} landing page URL
{campaignid} campaign ID
{adgroupid} ad group ID
{creative} creative or ad ID
{keyword} keyword
Auto-tagging and tracking template together
If you enable both auto-tagging and a tracking template, then AdWords would behave as it normally does with a tracking template, appending a gclid query parameter.
Addendum: ignoring these new query parameters in Google Analytics:
If you use Google Analytics, you probably want to ignore these query parameters, merging hits with these parameters with hits that don't have them. You can do that by setting the "Exclude URL Query Parameters" option to aw_campaignid,aw_adgroupid,aw_creative,aw_keyword. You can't apply this retroactively, so do this before making any AdWords changes.
As far as I know there is no value track for campaign or ad group ID. You could just append something to the end of each ad's destination URL based on the campaign & ad group, but that is a bit of a chore.
If you link your Google Analytics & AdWords accounts and use auto-tagging in AdWords you can get the information you want in GA through the AdWords report (shows campaign, ad group, keyword etc). GA is able to use the gclid to retrieve data from AdWords, and I think you can then use the GA API to get the campaign data back out if you want it.
You could:
turn off auto-tagging
pull the entire account into an excel file
insert a new column for each desired output variable (Campaign, ad id [like Headline?])
trim, lower, and find/remove spaces from the target columns (so something like: campaignname, compressedheadline)
then concatenate that column with your destination URLs and a UTM string like this:
?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_content=compressedheadline&utm_campaign=campaignname
use this function and replace with the appropriate columns
=concatenate([dest url column],"?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_content=",[compressedheadline column],"&utm_campaign=",[campaignname column])
if the functions for the parts between the quotes break the formula, paste them into their own cells and then reference the cells in the concatenate function.
Drag this formula down the entire account,
Copy / Paste Special / Paste Values of the new Destination URLs over the old Destination URLs.
Remove unnecessary columns that have been created between Campaign, Ad Group, Headline, Description Line 1, Description Line 2, Display URL and your new Destination URL.
Then highlight just the Campaign, Ad Group, Headline, Description Line 1, Description Line 2, Display URL and your new Destination URL and you can paste this into the AdWords Editor under "add/update multiple ads.
You can get this data from the CLICK_PERFORMANCE_REPORT - The only downside to this, is that this report can only be run for 1 day. so if you needed a month worth of data - you would have to run about 30 reports -
The ad Id is the "CreativeId" - you can get the campaignId and Adgroup ID as well from this report - there is 1 row for each click - (GCLID) these are unique.
see this link for more info on what fields are available
https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/reports#click
Related
I have a Google spreadsheet comprising of several worksheets and I am trying to publish the worksheets individually on separate webpages, preferably using embed. This is to provide access to users within a Google Workspace domain. The first published worksheet works fine and is duly visible to users allowed to view the Google Sites webpage. Subsequent worksheets are also published successfully but the previously published worksheets are no longer accessible. I get the following message:
"*You need permission to access this published document.
You are signed in as #.org.uk, but you don't have permission to access this published document. You may need to sign in as a different user. "
The above email address is an editor of the spreadsheet as well as being able to edit/view the Google Sites. I have tried everything by only using Incognito windows only, logging out of all accounts, checked settings, etc: I am always unable to publish more than one worksheet from the same spreadsheet at a time.
What am I doing wrong???
PS-1:
Following iansedan suggestion I have anonymised and simplified the spreadsheet. There are 2 tabs I want to publish to web: Group T and Group S.
I publish Group T to the web: works as expected in the browser (Chrome).
I publish Group S to the web and view it in another tab in the browser (Chrome)
It duly shows the published version of Group S but when I click on the other tab (to view the Group T which was OK before) I get the following message:
"You need permission to access this published document.
You are signed in as [my workspace email address], but you don't have permission to access this published document. You may need to sign in as a different user."
This is the link to the spreadsheet. I'm afraid I don't know how to share this better, the only way I could find is if you try to access the spreadsheet I will get a notification and will add your email address so you can view/edit it.
PS-2 Additional info
The respective links for the published are as follows:
Group T This one comes up with the "You need permission to access this published document." message
Group S This one shows the published worksheet correctly (as it was the last published!).
It looks like a caching mechanism somewhere is causing the issue but I have no idea where and how to prevent it! I've cleared the cache in the browser...
To publish individual sheets of a spreadsheet, use the Published Content and Settings button instead of the Publish button.
Uncheck the All Document checkbox and select the Group T and Group S sheets. After that click Escape and Start Publishing.
I had the same problem.
What youre doing is pausing one publication to start another one. Then, the first one is canceled.
Basically, there are two fields on the web publishing tab: one above another.
On the upper one, you chosse wich part of your sheet you will publish. That is, here if Jonh need to see "X", you select "X" and take note of the link to send to John.
On the lower one, you confirm all parts of the sheet that are being published at til that time. In other words, there will be more than one part in this fild. That is, if you havd alredy done the process to John (X), Anna (Y) and Floyd (Z), you will visualize X, Y and Z
Got it?
I've created form in google sheet, so that multiple users can add data, modify & delete.
However, it is not working properly when multiple users are working on it simultaneously.
For an example, two people are working on the sheet. User A and User B. If user A is typing something user B is also able to see and user B will be able to enter the detail, but it will change the details which are being entered by user A. Technically same sheet is opened for both the users and details keeps on changing what users are changing.
Ideally, if user A is entering some details user B should not be able to see it and form should be blank or unique for user B, so that both the data won't clash. I want it to be like the way google form is there wherein form will be blank when any user is opening it. (I have tried google form for my work, but as there are too many drop downs google form takes time to load and work gets slow that the reason I am trying to find the option in google sheet).
google sheet link
Above is the google sheet which you can open and check the form and coding. Also, please test it with a different id to test for multiple users.
Let me know if there is any workaround for this. Also, let me know if you need any other details.
Answer:
This just isn't possible. Sheets is meant to be a collaborative tool; what's edited by one person will always show up for others. You need to use a different tool, for example like a Google form for data entry, but having data not being edited in other open versions is just not workaroundable.
I am trying to set up a google analytics goal for my site. I want to monitor the number of completed checkouts, however without purchasing a product (there are a number of reasons why I am unable to do this), I am unable to find out what the URL would be.
Example: www.myshop.bigcartel.com/CheckoutComplete.html
I would like to know the actual value for '/CheckoutComplete.html'
When Analytics is enabled in the Big Cartel admin, a page view event is sent for the /order URL. The full URL is different for every order, but if you setup your goal as just /order you should be good to go.
I am working w/ the Event Brite API and I have a need that I am trying to figure out the best approach for. Right now, I have an event that people will be registering for. At the final step of the registration process, I need to ask them some questions that are specific to my event. Sadly, these questions are data-driven from my website, so I am unable to use the packaged surveys w/ Event Bright.
In a perfect world, I would use the basic flow detailed in the Website Workflow of the EB documentation, ending upon the "3rd Party Next Steps" step (redirect method).
http://developer.eventbrite.com/doc/workflows/
Upon landing on that page, I would like to be able to access the order data that we just created in order to update my database and to send emails to each person who purchased a seat. This email would contain the information needed to kick off the survey portion of my registration process.
Is this possible in the current API? Does the redirect post any data back to the 3rd party site? I saw a few SO posts that gave a few keywords that could be included in the redirect URL (is there a comprehensive list?). If so, is there a way to use that data to look up order information for that order only?
Right now, my only other alternative is to set up a polling service that would pull EB API data, check for new values, and then kick off the process on intervals. This would be pretty noisy for all parties involved, create delay for my attendees, and I would like to avoid it if possible. Thoughts?
Thanks!
Here are the full set of parameters which we support after an attendee places an order:
http://yoursite.com/?eid=$event_id&attid=$attendee_id&oid=$order_id
It's possible that order_id and attendee_id would not be a numeric value, in which case it would return a value of "unknown." You'll always have the event_id though.
If you want to get order-specific data after redirecting an attendee to your site, you can using the event_list_attendees method, along with the modified_after parameter. You'll still have to look through the result set for the new order_id, but the result set will be much smaller and easier to navigate. You can get more information here: http://developer.eventbrite.com/doc/events/event_list_attendees/
You can pass the order_id in your redirect URL in order to solve this.
When you define a redirect URL, Evenbrite will automatically swap in the order_id value in place of the string "$order_id".
http://your3rdpartywebsite.com/welcome_back/?order_id=$order_id
or:
http://your3rdpartywebsite.com/welcome_back/$order_id/
When the user completes their transaction, they will be redirected to your external site, as shown here: /http://developer.eventbrite.com/doc/workflows/
When your post-transaction landing page is loaded, grab the order_id from the request URL, and call the event_list_attendees API method to find the order information in the response.
I am developing a web app which displays sales from local stores around the United States. The sales and stores listed vary by location. Is there a RESTful URL scheme for describing this information while avoiding duplicate content?
Specifically, the app needs to list local stores, and list items sold at a particular store. Zip (postal) codes seem a convenient way to refer to location, so consider this scheme:
/stores/zip - list stores near zip, with links to particular stores
/store/name/lat+long - list items at a particular store
There is a problem. The page at /store/name/lat+long needs to link back to the list of stores, but which zip code should it choose? Say it chooses the zip code closest to the lat+long coordinate. A user might arrive at a particular store page from a link on /stores/zipA yet the store page could refer them back to a slightly different list, /stores/zipB.
We could solve that problem by carrying the zip code information forward. So the list at /stores/zip, could link to /store/name/lat+long/zip. This is not logical, however, because all information needed to identify a store is provided by the lat+long coordinate; the zip code is redundant. In fact the same page content would have duplicate URLs.
Another solution would be to save the last-viewed zip code as a cookie, but that's not RESTful. Is there a solution?
Add that information as an optional query parameter.
/stores/name/lat+long?search=zip
The /stores/name/lat+long represents the resource uniquely, while the optional query parameter provides the extra information you need for your breadcrumb back to their original search.
If you have links that come from somewhere other than a search for that zip code, then you could just leave the query parameter off. When the query parameter is missing, default to linking back to the closest zip code, or leaving the breadcrumb link off entirely.
Another option would be to just let the browser history do this for you, by using JavaScript to navigate the user to the previous page in their history:
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