Google disappoints us because it does not give us match type information, i.e. broad, exact, phrase, etc. Or the Ad Group or Campaign name. You either go without these or you populate them yourself when you specify the destination URLs to AdWords.

The dynamic values available in Google are:

{keyword}
This returns the keyword that triggered the display of the ad. In other words, the keyword or term that you’re paying for. Remember, it’s not going to tell you about broad/exact/phrase matching, so it’s slightly ambiguous unless you set up the destination URLs to contain this information, hard-coded.

{creative}
This populates your parameter with a 9-character ID for the version of the ad copy that was displayed to the searcher. This is potentially important if you are using variations of your ad copy. If you’re not, it’ll always be the same, at least for a given Ad Group. You can decipher the 9-character string using information obtained in reports directly from your Google AdWords account. You have to run an “ad text” report and check the “ad ID” box.

{ifContent:C}{ifSearch:S}
This will populate the parameter with a C if the click came from Google’s Content Network, and an S if it came from the Search Network.
{ifContent:Contentnetwork}{ifSearch:Searchnetwork}
This is a variation. It will put a value of “Contentnetwork” if the click came from Google’s Content Network, and “Searchnetwork” if it came from the Search Network. You have control over what gets into the parameter value by changing what’s after the semicolon(:)

{placement}
This will return the web site where the ad was displayed, if and only if you are running a site-targeted type of campaign.

So …. The destination URL you specify for the Ad Group you call “Ad Group A” in the Google AdWords PPC program could be:

http://yoursite.com/yourpage.jsp?product=1235&color=blue&PPCprogram=GoogleAdWords&GoogleNetworkType={ifContent:C}{ifSearch:S}&AdGroup=A&kw={keyword}&adID={creative}&SiteTargetingSiteName={placement}

And, if you choose to specify a different destination URL for each separate matchtype in AdWords’ setup, it can be, for a keyword you are setting up for an Exact Match:

http://yoursite.com/yourpage.jsp?product=1235&color=blue&PPCprogram=GoogleAdWords&GoogleNetworkType={ifContent:C}{ifSearch:S}&AdGroup=A&kw={keyword}&adID={creative}&SiteTargetingSiteName={placement}&MatchType=Exact

John

So how about Google? Come on, spill it!

Thanks,

Chris

MSN, for starters. It’s not as easy as Yahoo, but it’s not hard. MSN will insert the right information if you put the following strings into URL parameters when you create your destination URLs.

Here’s the full list of dynamic keywords available in adCenter:

{Keyword}
{MatchType}
{QueryString}
{OrderItemID}
{AdID}

So, you can create this destination URL:

http://yoursite.com/yourpage.jsp?product=1235&color=blue

And you can append to it:

&KW={Keyword}&matchtype={MatchType}&querywas={QueryString}&adID={AdID}

If your destination URL has no parameters in the original, such as:

http://yoursite.com/yourpage.jsp

Then your appended string has to start with a question mark, not an ampersand:

?PPCProgram=MSN&KW={Keyword}&matchtype={MatchType}&querywas={QueryString}&adID={AdID}

Either way, your destination URL ends up with one question mark and as many ampersands as needed, such as:

http://yoursite.com/yourpage.jsp?product=1235&color=blue&PPCProgram=MSN&KW={Keyword}&matchtype={MatchType}&querywas={QueryString}&adID={AdID}

http://yoursite.com/yourpage.jsp?PPCProgram=MSN&KW={Keyword}&matchtype={MatchType}&querywas={QueryString}&adID={AdID}

You can use Excel or Microsoft Ad Center’s ad manager or even Word to do the appending. In Excel it’s called “concatenate.”

In the above, note that the parameter names (KW,matchtype,querywa,adID) can be anything you want, such as keyword,match,originalquery,ad.