Dear Google… Some AdWords & Analytics Features We Need… Part 1

Every now and again, I write down something I would really like Google to improve upon. As a regular user of Google AdWords and Google Analytics, I always seem to come across “fixes” that I would love to see Google make. Rather than sitting on them, I thought I would post them to this humble little blog and hope that one day in the not to distant future, some of them might be acted upon.1. Changing between profiles in Google Analytics.

1. Accessing Accounts from Google Analytics
I manage roughly 40 PPC campaigns though my MCC. Almost every one of them has Google Analytics running on the account. Every so often, I’m mucking about in an analytics profile and want to check another account’s Analytics data. Instead of jumping to the account through the drop down menu at the top of my screen (like the one in my MCC) I have to go back into my MCC client list, select the client, select the Analytics tab, profile and finally the data I want to see.

Trivial? Possibly, but this is my wish list not yours!

So, my first wish is to allow those with MCC access the ability to navigate between their accounts analytics data with ease.

2. Invoice Reporting

It would be great if I could schedule an invoice to be sent to me (or better yet, my clients accounting department) every time Google charges a credit card. They have a good reporting center already, how hard would it be to add a report generating feature in the Billing Summary page.

3. Multiple Conversion Codes

For some accounts, there are multiple conversion opportunities that should be tracked differently. Lets face it, a product purchase is more valuable to an account than a newsletter sign up. Granted, multiple goals can be set up using Google Analytics however having multiple conversion metrics would go a long way to helping optimize campaigns and keywords long term.

4. More than 4 Analytics Goals

Having the ability to track more than 4 goals in Google Analytics would help… a lot!

5. Adding the Sites I WANT in Site Targeted Campaigns

Running a content network campaign is a great way to find lower cost clicks on relevant sites. A best practice is then to take the sites which have produced good traffic and conversions and place them into a site targeted campaign. The problem? All to often, the system won’t allow me to add the site I wanted… and was available in my content network campaign (I might add). The solution? Calling my Google Rep and asking them to create a site pack is the current option - but why use up your valuable Google employee resources? Just allow me to add the sites I want!

Sorry for the rant…

Please feel free to add any features you would like to see in the comments (the link will be followed :) )

Tracking EXACT PPC Keywords with Google Analytics

First, my apologies for not posting. There was a death in my family and the majority of my time was spent with loved ones as well as trying to stay on top of client work. January and February have been particularly busy with new contracts and clients over at my Toronto internet marketing firm, Spark Internet Marketing.

For those using Google Analytics and wanting to get an edge on your PPC competition, this filter and script is a must. This filter and java script file allows you to pull in the EXACT keyword string used by people coming to your website through PPC ads. As you might now, you are able to see this data from Organic searches but PPC traffic was another story. If you were advertising using broad match for the term Barbados resort but a user typed in beach resort in Barbados you ad would show. In Google Analytics, you would see a visitor attributed to the term Barbados resort in your PPC traffic stats. This filter pulls that data in and displays it in the user defined field.

I was using an old filter posted by a great PPC resource, and newly named Semvironment, but unfortunately it seemed to stop reporting data on January 15th. I then came across a similar tool over at ROI Revolution. The only drawback was it didn’t work with the new version of Google Analytics. Thanks to Michael and his team, they just posted a new version of their filter and script that works with Google’s new code.

In the coming days, I will post how I use this filter to help optimize my accounts.