Setting up a URL template to track ValueTrack parameters

Google recently announced a new URL format for Adwords called “Upgraded URLs” (0 points for naming creativity).

Yes, changes from Google makes everyone nervous but, never fear! This is actually going to be pretty dang useful. Upgraded URLs allow you to:

• Manage your tracking URLs in one place by using shared tracking templates. Any changes you make can apply to the entire account, campaign, or ad group.
• When you make updates to tracking URLs now, your ads will keep running and your ad data will be preserved. Before, your ad would stop and go through the review process and your ad data would start over. (That sucked).
• These URL templates also accept ValueTrack parameters, which give you a lot more tracking capabilities over UTM parameters.
• Also, if you use ValueTrack parameters, you can also keep auto-tagging on in Google Analytics.

To set up a URL template with ValueTrack parameters at the campaign level, there are two main things you need to do:

First, create a Tracking Template URL

1) Go to “Campaigns” > click the campaign you want

2) Click the “Settings” tab

3) Scroll to the bottom an click “Campaign URL options advanced”

4) Where it says “Tracking Template” click “edit” and enter in your URL, which might look something like this:

{lpurl}?&campaignid={campaignid}&adgroupid={adgroupid}&network={network}&creative={creative}&keyword={keyword}

This takes your landing page URL (the “lpurl” parameter) and appends the campaignid, adgroupid, network, creative and keyword parameters for every ad you create automatically.

5) Click “save”.

Then, you need to upgrade your URLs to Google’s new format. (They are going to automatically do this for everyone later this year)

1) Click the “Ads” tab for the campaign you want to upgrade

2) Select all the ads by clicking the checkbox in the top left hand corner

3) Click “Edit” > “Upgrade destination URLs”

4) Click “Make Changes”

You’re done. Boom.

If you want to learn a little more about URL templates and ValueTrack parameters, here’s Google’s explanation:

---

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Subscribe