Tag Archives: ad_clicks

AdWords click measurement improvements and migration

Earlier this month, the following improvements were made available to all users:
  • Setting finalUrlSuffix at the customer, campaign, ad group, ad, and extension level in all AdWords accounts. Previously, this feature was only available in test accounts.
  • Specifying up to eight custom parameters. Previously, the maximum number of custom parameters was three.
As announced earlier this year, starting October 30, 2018, parallel tracking will be required for all AdWords accounts. With the above features in place, the AdWords API now supports all the features needed to migrate your accounts to parallel tracking, so we encourage you to get started on the migration as soon as possible. The detailed AdWords API guide and accompanying implementation checklist will walk you through the required changes.

If you have questions or need help with the migration, please email us at [email protected].
- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team

Referrer changes for ad clicks

We are updating the referrer of ad clicks to improve security and system reliability for users searching on Google. Starting within October, the referrer for many ad clicks will only contain the Google domain from which the click occurred (domains like https://www.google.com or https://www.google.ca). This means that we will no longer be communicating specific paths such as “google.com/aclk” or “googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk.”

While the referrer will no longer differentiate Google’s organic search clicks from ad clicks, and in some cases may be absent entirely, there are still multiple strategies to track the origin of your clicks. Recommended strategies include: This change is a continuation of our general user security efforts. Users are safer when sites use HTTPS instead of HTTP, which is why we encourage the use of HTTPS. In fact, in August 2014 we began to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.

By default, browsers do not pass a referrer from HTTPS sites to HTTP sites. To minimize advertiser disruption, we implemented a custom ads solution back when the Google search page migration to HTTPS took place. Now, many modern web browsers provide better control over referrer behavior via the meta referrer tag. This development is an improvement over our previously-implemented custom ads solution both in terms of reliability and latency.

Posted by Christopher Souvey, Senior Software Engineer, AdWords