CogBlog

One of the best features of the ROI tracking tool we built for ourselves here at COGBOX is the means to identify the true referring URL for each of our sponsored search referrals.

This allows us to evaluate the performance of the publishing partners for each network, and eliminate them from the campaign distribution if they are poor performers. Google AdWords allows you to eliminate particular sites referring adwords clicks from the distribution network for your campaign. However, they won't share with you which sites are in the distribution network to begin with.

Most analytics packages will allow you to track campaigns and view referrers (the actual URLs sending you traffic) from those campaigns. But, I personally find that the reports from a more sophisticated package provide too much information. Instead we built a very simple campaign tracking tool that pulls our referrers by campaign and presents them in a simple report.

Results are interesting. Out of 39,000 visits delivered from one campaign only 48% of the traffic came directly from Google.com. The rest came from about 500 google AdSense distribution partners. These other sites vary tremendously in quality. For instance, visits from "searchportal.information.com" converted to leads at a rate of only 0.8% vs. 4.9% for the campaign as a whole.

It's old news by now, but as it relates to my previous post, the Yahoo Search Marketing revamp has been delayed until next year. Too bad, because the system really needs an overhaul.

The official line was that they didn't want to disrupt campaigns prior to Christmas. But, I have the suspicion that they've discovered just how much work needs to be done. Even when you have a nice template like Google AdWords, it is suprisingly difficult to build a really good interface to a complex system.

My hope is that they will take the time to do it right. Not just apply some patch job to the old system and relaunch it (similar to the way Ask.com used the Looksmart system).

I'm sure the 20% one-day market-value plunge after the announcement lit a few fires.