Adwords tracking is called conversion tracking by Google. It is one of the many tools they offer to help make your Adwords account successful.
Adwords tracking helps the website owner track the number of conversions their ad prompts, and therefore helps them determine how effective the Adwords campaign and keywords are being for them.
In order to get the Adwords conversion tracking on your site, you’ll need to put the code on your site that will allow that tool to analyze the data generated at the site..
Each time a user clicks on your advertisment, the Adwords tracking tool puts a cookie on the user’s computer or the user’s cellphone. If that user goes on through to a conversion page (in other words, if they actually make a purchase), that cookie goes to your webpage and makes a note.
Every time there is a match, or a clicker becomes a purchaser, then Google makes a record of that conversion for you.
Google’s cookies expire after 30 days, and all Google cookies that track conversions are handles by a separate server from their other transactions, so your users’ data is safe.
Adwords tracking is an excellent way to analyze your traffic and determine your ROI (return on investment). In fact, without this tracking, it’s very difficult to measure how your investment is paying off.
It’s possible to have up to thirty discrete types of conversions tracked by Adwords. You have access to different reports when you have an Adwords account, and you can use those reports to collect a variety of different types of data.
On the Reports tab on your Adwords account, you are able to click on the Add or Remove Columns section, then select Conversion Columns.
Once there, you are able to delineate which kinds of conversions and what date you want to include in the reports you search. You can save the report template, if you’ll be wanting the same information repeatedly.
These conversion numbers are not a determinate in your Google quality score, but Adwords conversion tracking does provide data to the Conversion Optimizer campaigns to determine which ads are garnering high enough bids to show up.
Once you go to the tracking area and define a conversion event you want recorded or tracked, Google creates a piece of code in JavaScript for you to paste onto whatever page you are trying to track.
Then that code creates a URL that will send the defined limitations of your search back to Google, and shows you the statistics you’ve requested on your own webpage. This only happens if you chose that option when creating your conversion pages.
There is no cost to users for the Adwords tracking function, although there are third party vendors who also create tracking software.
You may find that Google’s program does not give you all the information you’d like, and you choose to reach outside their content for another statistics tracking program.
Either way you go, Adwords tracking is an important part of analyzing and optimizing your Adwords campaign.