Better software to manage listings?

[Zylle]

I'm looking for a program that does a better job at showing reports then google.

Such as I'd like to see top words in my 30 campaigns with good click rates etc.

Does anyone make a program like this?

Or how about to shut off all my listings at a certain time and turn them on at another.

We've found traffic is useless from about 10pm to about 6am pst.

Thanks

[Dan0]

Google Adwords isn't exactly software-friendly. I haven't even seen anyone who "claimed" to have software that worked with it.

[martekbiz]

There is no software available, to my knowledge, that allows Reporting of Google Adword Campaigns.

It would be very very hard to do as currently Adwords offers no possible way to "download/export" data.

Personally, I find this a very big pain in the ass as my client expect summary and analytical reporting from us and with Adwords its completely manual entry/reporting.

Very time consuming for us here.

Anyone care to share their tips/prodecures for how they prepare their reports to clients on Adwords Campaigns?

Thanks.

Aaron

[Dan0]

There are a lot of ad tracking packages. You will want one that allows multiple tracking codes if possible, so you can track by campaign as well as by keywords.

[martekbiz]

Originally posted by Dan0
There are a lot of ad tracking packages. You will want one that allows multiple tracking codes if possible, so you can track by campaign as well as by keywords.

Ahh.. as far as the tracking goes that is not a problem. We have software we developed for Search Engine ROI which takes into account PPC tracking and that of "regular" SE referrals.

However, the costs per click through, etc that is displayed in the ADword Campaign Manager on the Google site is the grass roots part of the reporting which I am looking for. To be able to tell me client.. look - for this keyword ad campaign there were 150 referrals and compared to the tracking stats we see only 2 orders were placed from this ad - the cost isn't worth it.

See what I mean? The grass roots Campaign reporting would be much easier if we could download the data from Adwords.

Aaron

[Dan0]

I heard that! I have to do that stuff by hand, too. Google seems to hate anything automated, except their own search engine of course. :p

[martekbiz]

Originally posted by Dan0
I heard that! I have to do that stuff by hand, too. Google seems to hate anything automated, except their own search engine of course. :p

I am honestly surprised that a company like the calibre of Google would not allow for this simple feature.

I would think their bottom line would icnrease if it was easier for business to download reporting data for their own analysis to determine how to better optimize/make use of their Google Campaigns.

*shrugs*

Aaron

[danielp]

The good news is Google has added the facility to download a tsv (tab separated values) file of your campaigns.

This will make analysing and reporting on the stats so much easier.

Good things come to those who wait!

[JohnC]

To be able to tell me client.. look - for this keyword ad campaign there were 150 referrals and compared to the tracking stats we see only 2 orders were placed from this ad - the cost isn't worth it.
We wanted to do the very same thing and after a good bit of research we have an answer. It's a combination of a couple of different technologies.

First, we implemented a traffic "source code" system for our advertising. Standard operations tool, but you might be suprised at how many people dont do it.

Then we hit the log analyzer market hard. Looking for some very specific functionality. Our new log analyzer had to be able to track keywords used to find the site, be able to report exit pages, and parse the reporting by custom parameters (ie: our "source code").

WebTrends wanted lots of $$$ to ad the custom parameter reporting, but luckily we found NetTracker. It met all three of our requirements right out of the box. Before you start thinking about it, let me make it clear I do not work for NetTracker, I am just a satisfied customer. Once I set up the parameters to track my "source codes" in NetTracker, I was able to write or re-write any report to include a brake down by traffic source.

I have a report that looks for traffic which came in through AdWords (via the source code), shows me which keywords were used to find the page my ad showed up on, track the users through their visit to my site and lets me know when one has exited via my "receipt" page. With some additional coding specific to my merchant software, I will eventually be able to include "amount of sale" and "items bought" in my report.

Executive Summary: I have a report that shows which specific keywords produced sales with Google AdWords.

www.webtrends.com
www.nettracker.com

I hope this helps someone.

[amica_webmaster]

Originally posted by Zylle
We've found traffic is useless from about 10pm to about 6am pst.

How do you track this?

Meta

[martekbiz]

Originally posted by JohnC
We wanted to do the very same thing and after a good bit of research we have an answer. It's a combination of a couple of different technologies.

First, we implemented a traffic "source code" system for our advertising. Standard operations tool, but you might be suprised at how many people dont do it.

Then we hit the log analyzer market hard. Looking for some very specific functionality. Our new log analyzer had to be able to track keywords used to find the site, be able to report exit pages, and parse the reporting by custom parameters (ie: our "source code").

WebTrends wanted lots of $$$ to ad the custom parameter reporting, but luckily we found NetTracker. It met all three of our requirements right out of the box. Before you start thinking about it, let me make it clear I do not work for NetTracker, I am just a satisfied customer. Once I set up the parameters to track my "source codes" in NetTracker, I was able to write or re-write any report to include a brake down by traffic source.

I have a report that looks for traffic which came in through AdWords (via the source code), shows me which keywords were used to find the page my ad showed up on, track the users through their visit to my site and lets me know when one has exited via my "receipt" page. With some additional coding specific to my merchant software, I will eventually be able to include "amount of sale" and "items bought" in my report.

Executive Summary: I have a report that shows which specific keywords produced sales with Google AdWords.

www.webtrends.com
www.nettracker.com

I hope this helps someone.

NetTracker seems wonderful but unless its for your OWN online business I do not see any value for Internet Marketing firms.

The price tag for a firm that manages multiple domains is simply waaaay to high.

Just my thoughts.

A

[Web Diversity]

If you use tracking technology an Excel spreadsheet and power posting all of the things you want to happen are easy to put in place.

We can allocate the sales to keywords, if it's an exact match or a phrase match. If it is a phrase match then we can find the actual search term used and not the one that Google allocates the click to.

Because of the discounting factor I don't think you will ever be able to track the true cost of each click against the sale, but we use the average for the group to give us an overall CPC.

[martekbiz]

Originally posted by Web Diversity
If you use tracking technology an Excel spreadsheet and power posting all of the things you want to happen are easy to put in place.

We can allocate the sales to keywords, if it's an exact match or a phrase match. If it is a phrase match then we can find the actual search term used and not the one that Google allocates the click to.

Because of the discounting factor I don't think you will ever be able to track the true cost of each click against the sale, but we use the average for the group to give us an overall CPC.

Care to elaborate a bit further as to what you mean? I'm interested in hearing more on this - if you're willing to share your secrets that is.

Thanks.

A

[Web Diversity]

I'm interested in hearing more on this - if you're willing to share your secrets that is.

Aaron,

This is definately one of the secrets that makes a massive difference. All I would say is that you will definately be able to work it out for yourself, we worked hard to get it to work for us, you probably won't need to work nearly as hard.

Google have written a page on power posting and how it works.

We use a dedicated URL for each of the keywords in a campaign, which then makes life a little easier, we can even produce nice graphs for clients from the tracking tool showing the keywords that have worked. We've always been able to do it with Overture and Espotting and probably always could with Google (in other words nothing has changed at their end, we just understand it a whole lot better now).

I'm not going to give too much away, but just trust me that this can be done.