How To Create A Tracking Url For A Landing Page

Create a shopping campaign

Manage landing page URLs for product groups

Next: Use a bulksheet to manage product groups

Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising use different techniques for generating landing page URLs and tracking URLs for product groups.

Google Ads: Generating URLs for product groups

To generate a landing page URL for a product group, Google Ads applies a Final URL Suffix to the URL defined in the 'adwords redirect' attribute of your inventory feed. If the inventory feed doesn't provide the 'adwords redirect' attribute, Google Ads uses the URL in the 'link' or 'mobile link' attribute.

To generate a tracking URL, Search Ads 360 combines its clickserver URL with any additional tracking URLs or parameters in a URL template and traffics the result to a Google Ads tracking template.

When a customer clicks your shopping ad, Google Ads sends the customer directly to the landing page URL while simultaneously sending a request to the URL in the tracking template.

Microsoft Advertising: Generating URLs for product groups

In a Microsoft Advertising account, Search Ads 360 combines its clickserver URL with any additional tracking URLs or parameters in a URL template and traffics the result to a Microsoft Advertising tracking template.

When a customer clicks your shopping ad, Microsoft Advertising applies the URL defined in the 'link' attribute of your inventory feed to the tracking URL and sends a request to the resulting URL.

Product group templates are copied to child product groups

If you specify a URL template for a specific product group (instead of inheriting the URL template from a higher level), when the product group is subdivided (either manually by you or automatically by an adaptive shopping campaign):

The new child product groups start out with a copy of the parent's URL template. You can keep the URL template as-is, or edit or remove the template in the child product groups as needed.
You can no longer edit or remove the URL template for the parent product group.

For example:

URL templates are inherited

For a product group named "Electronics", you specify this URL template:
https://tracker.com/?url={escapedlpurl}
When the "Stereos" and "Cameras" product groups are created, they initially inherit the URL template from the parent "Electronics" product group.
Note that at this point, the URL template for "Electronics" can no longer be edited or removed.
You can edit the URL templates in any of the child product groups. For example, to pass a specific product ID to your third-party tracking service, you add the &sid=1234567 parameter to URL template for "Cameras."

Using a template to escape URLs

If you use a third-party tracking service, or if you have a chain of redirects on your site, you may need to escape the URL specified in your inventory feed. In this case change the engine account's URL template, or create a lower-level template, that specifies one of the following:

{lpurl} - Escapes the landing page URL
{escapedlpurl} - (Google Ads only) Also escapes the landing page URL. Learn more about the differences between{escapedlpurl} and{lpurl} in Google Ads accounts.
{lpurl+2} - Escapes the landing page URL twice
{lpurl+3} - Escapes the landing page URL three times

Note that other Google Ads ValueTrack parameters such as{escapedlpurl+2} are not available for Google Ads product groups managed by Search Ads 360.

In Microsoft Advertising shopping campaigns, you can also use the following placeholder instead of the others listed above:

{lpurlpath} - (Microsoft Advertising only) The URL path without the site's domain
For example, if you specify http://example.com/shoes in your inventory feed, only shoes will be returned. Use this placeholder if you need to change or correct the domain specified in the inventory feed. For example, you can specify the following landing page URL for a Microsoft Advertising product group:
http://www.examples.com/{lpurlpath}

Adding URL parameters

To perform additional tracking on your product groups, you can append the following types of parameters to the URL templates or Final URL Suffix used by your product groups:

Google Ads ValueTrack parameters (Google Ads campaigns only).
Microsoft Advertising dynamic parameters (Microsoft Advertising campaigns only).
Static parameters that refer to your own marketing campaigns, product codes, or other internal tracking information that you want to add to the landing page.
Static parameters with values that are inserted by Search Ads 360 custom parameters or macros you can append.

In Google Ads accounts, use a Final URL Suffix to specify URL parameters that your landing pages require. Learn more about specifying URL parameters.

Examples

Google Ads account

Here's the data you start with:

'adwords redirect' attribute of your inventory feed: https://example.com?pid=1234
Final URL Suffix: c={_dscampaign}
URL template: https://tracker.com?source=google&url={escapedlpurl}%26c%3D%[*Campaign*]

Here's how Search Ads 360 and Google Ads use the data in a shopping campaign named "Hoopers shoes":

Search Ads 360 does the following:
1. Traffics the{_dscampaign=Hoopers+shoes} custom parameter to Google Ads.
2. Traffics the Final URL Suffix to Google Ads.
3. Combines its clickserver URL with the URL template and traffics the result to a Google Ads tracking template.
When a customer clicks your shopping ad, Google combines the Final URL Suffix with the URL from the inventory feed and sends the customer to this URL:
https://example.com?pid=1234&c=Hoopers+shoes
Google also sends a request to the URL in the tracking template:
http://clickserve.dartsearch.net/link/click?lid=123456789&ds_s_kwgid=987654321
...
&ds_dest_url=https://tracker.com?source=google &url=https%3A%2F%2Fgoogle.com%2Fasnc%2FdGVzdA

Microsoft Advertising account

Here's the data you start with:

'link' attribute of your inventory feed: https://example.com?pid=1234
URL template: https://tracker.com?source=bing&url={escapedlpurl}%26c%3D%[*Campaign*]

Here's how Search Ads 360 and Microsoft Advertising use the data in a shopping campaign named "Hoopers shoes":

Search Ads 360 combines its clickserver URL with the URL template and traffics the result to a Microsoft Advertising tracking template.
When Microsoft Advertising serves an ad for the product group, it applies the URL from the inventory feed to the URL in the tracking template:
http://clickserve.dartsearch.net/link/click?lid=123456789&ds_s_kwgid=987654321
...
&ds_dest_url=https://tracker.com?source=bing & url=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%3Fpid%3D1234%26c%3D[*Campaign*]
When Search Ads 360 receives the request, it uses the data in the clickserver URL to attribute the click to a product group. It also substitutes the campaign name for the [*Campaign*] macro. Then Search Ads 360 redirects the click to the URL specified in theds_dest_url parameter, which in this example is an additional third-party tracker:
https://tracker.com?source=bing &url=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%3Fpid%3D1234%26c%3DHoopers+Shoes

Next: Use a bulksheet to manage product groups

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?