Invalid Links

December 5, 2007 on 2:40 pm | In Questions and Comments | 3 Comments

Tony,

I have been checking the invalid link report on Commission Junction to make sure that all my ads are up and running.  Each day there are a number that show up as invalid.  When I login to Google Adwords and check the ads some of them have extra information added to the destination URL.

An example would be the link that I submit:

http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-2743416-10499214

When I check on the invalid links to follow up this is what they look like:

http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-2743416-10499214?_kk={keyword}&_kt=e40fbd84-e92f-4984-ae4f-0dcfa5dbf20b

Any thoughts or advice on how to stop this from happening?

Thanks

Jon A

3 Comments »

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  1. Jon,

    I’m not sure, since I haven’t used Google Analytics or other Google conversion tracking tools (they aren’t much use when you don’t own the destination site yourself), but I am guessing that is where these added variables are coming from. Log into your Google account, and check the Analytics tab to see if this is set up. If it is, turn it off. Also check conversion tracking under the Campaign Management. If anything is set up, turn it all off.

    That should stop your new ads from getting these variables added (if I have corrrectly identified the problem), but I’m not sure if it will fix existing errors.  Better check your destination URLs manually afterwards.

    Let me know if this turns out to be the problem. If not, I’ll keep digging for you.

    Tony

    Comment by Administrator — December 10, 2007 #

  2. I believe that’s the autotagging Google uses for Analytics and Conversion Tracking. It enables you to put a monetary value on different actions a user takes on your landing page and then track what happens. Lookup Autotagging in Adwords Help for how to disable. But it’s a really valuable tool for optimizing, so I’d be reluctant to disable if at all possible.

    For example, you can find out exactly what keywords the people who are clicking through your affiliate links are using and what keywords are wasting your money. You can track your ROI…etc.

    Stephanie Hsu from Google talks about how to use it on properly in a YouTube video. Try searching Google Analytics on YouTube for mucho useful info.

    Comment by liamondrop — December 12, 2007 #

  3. Liamondrop,

    Jon isn’t using a landing page, he is linking directly to the affiliate program and the google analytics code appears to be interfering with the tracking servers (though I’m not sure why they don’t just ignore the extra variables). Since he doesn’t own the landing page, he really can’t take advantage of the Google Analytics functionality.

    Tony

    Comment by Administrator — December 20, 2007 #

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