Here’s a great tip for anyone wanting to get better keyword information on their Google Adwords ‘Pay Per Click’ campaigns, using Google Analytics.

The problem it deals with is that ‘out of the box’, Google Analytics doesn’t tell you exactly which keywords people have typed in when they see, and click on, your Google Adwords advertisement.

“Why does that matter?” I hear you ask. “Surely if people are seeing our ads and clicking through to our website, Adwords is doing its job. Right?”

Wrong.

Particularly if you’re using ‘broad match’ keyword matching, google can (and does) match your keywords to pretty much anything that it thinks is even vaguely relevant. What this means is that you’ll be blowing your precious advertising budget on visits to your site from people whose needs may not be all that relevent to the goods or services that your company offers.

Here’s part of a report on a campaign we set up a while ago for Cicada client First Line:

Click here for a bigger image

What this shows is that people searching for a range of information relating to telephones and telecoms in oxford saw First Line’s paid advert for Business Telecoms. And for whatever reason, those people then clicked on the ad.

The cost of that click would then have been debited from First Line’s account with Google. And it’s highly unlikely that that someone searching for the Oxford Malmaison hotel, or the Oxford Belfry hotel for that matter, would have a real and pressing need for SME telecoms services.

The point is that without the bit of magic I’m about to show you, the words in the brackets in the Traffic Sources report (above) don’t appear. All we’d know is that our ‘telecoms services’ paid-for keyword was resulting in some click-throughs to the First Line website.

Now we know that by defining ‘british’, ‘number’, ‘hotel’, and ‘jobs’,  as negative keywords, our advertisement won’t appear to people looking for such things. And through an on-going process of refinement, you can focus the campaigns so that the ads only appear to truly relevent searches.

So here’s the magic trick, which I originally found on the Semvironment website. Thanks guys!

1. Go to the top level of your Google Analytics account. If you’re already in Analytics but not sure which level you’re at, click the Google Analytics logo at the top left corner of your browser to go back to the top level.
2. Now click on the Account Name that you want to work on. This should take you to a page that has the words ‘Add Website Profile’, ‘User Manager’ and ‘Filter Manager’ across the bottom. This is the Website Profiles page.
3. There are number of columns on the Website Profiles page and on the right hand side, under ‘Actions’ you’ll see an ‘Edit button’. Click this and you should go through to the Profile Settings page.
4. Scroll down the Profile Settings page and you’ll come to a section called ‘Filters Applied to Profile’. Click on ‘Add Filter’.

What are Google Analytics filters?

Google Analytics filters allow you to select specific visits or visitors on your website and either show only them, exclude them from your reports, or change the way they show up in your reports.

The following filters allow you to change the way the visits show up in your report, revealing the valuable ‘actual keywords used’. Here we go:

Custom filter 1

1. Give the filter a name. Choose something easy to identify at a later stage such as ‘Details Filter 01′
2. Set ‘Filter type’ to ‘Custom filter’
3. Set the radio button below this to ‘Advanced’
4. Next to ‘Field A -> Extract A’ choose ‘Referral’ from the available list. Then in the blank space on the right hand side, paste this string: (\?|&)(q|p)=([^&]*)
5. Next to ‘Field B -> Extract B’ choose ‘Campaign Medium’ from the available list. Then in the blank space on the right hand side, paste this string: cpc|ppc
6. Next to ‘Output To -> Constructor’ choose ‘Custom Field 1′ from the available list. Then in the blank space on the right hand side, paste this string: $A3
7. Set ‘Field A Required’ to ‘Yes’
8. Set ‘Field B Required’ to ‘Yes’
9. Set ‘Override Output Field’ to ‘Yes’
10. Set ‘Case Sensitive’ to ‘No’

It should end up looking like this:

Click here for a bigger image

Remember to click ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom!

Custom filter 2

1. Give the filter a name. Something easy to identify later, such as ‘Details Filter 02′
2. Set ‘Filter Type’ to ‘Custom Filter’
3. Set the radio button below this to ‘Advanced’
4. Next to ‘Field A-> Extract A’ choose ‘Custom Field 1′ from the available list. Then in the blank space on the right hand side, paste this string: (.*)
5. Next to ‘Field B -> Extract B’ choose ‘Campaign Term’ fromo the available list. Then in the blank space on the right hand side, paste this string: (.*)
6. Next to ‘Output to -> Constructor’ choose ‘Campaign Term’ from the available list. Then in the blank space on the right hand side, paste this string: $B1, ($A1)
7. Set ‘Field A Required’ to ‘Yes’
8. Set ‘Field B Required’ to ‘Yes’
9. Set Override Output Field’ to ‘Yes’
10. Set ‘Case Sensitive’ to ‘No’

It should end up looking like this:

Click here for a bigger image

Remember to click ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom!

You should now be back on the Profile Settings page. Make sure the filterts appear inthe correct order, with ‘Custom Filter 01′ appearing before ‘Custom Filter 02′.

You will now need to wait for a day for the data to be processed through the filter. The next time you look at Analytics, check out the Traffic Sources > Keywords reports.

Let us know what you think!

Written by Ned Wells
Tags: Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Pay Per Click Advertising

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Google Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.