Cool custom report: Actual vs paid-for PPC search terms
If you have a PPC (pay-per-click) search effort happening, you may be allowing the PPC engines to loosely match your paid-for terms with various terms typed in by human searchers.
To keep abreast of what’s being matched to what (and maybe identify inappropriate matches that can be avoided by adding negative search terms, or get ideas for cheaper exact-match terms), try this report:
- Primary dimension: the paid-for term, derived from the marker parameters in the landing page URL (go here for a post about this)
- Secondary dimension: the actual term, derived from the referrer information, using the out of the box dimension “Search Phrase”
You end up with a list of all your paid-for terms, and under each term a list of the actual typed-in terms. If you have appreciable amounts of broad-match traffic, we guarantee you’ll find something astonishing or hilarious, or worthwhile at the very least.
If you’re puzzled by the primary dimension described above, you probably don’t have those marker parameters. See our topic on Yahoo PPC marker parameters to find out how to get Yahoo to supply them for you. As for the other PPC engines, Google and MSN, they don’t make it easy. You have to add the marker parameters yourself, either with explicit landing page URLs or with macros. But it’s well worth the trouble.
Related post: Getting Yahoo PPC to add its own markers to landing page URLs
