Destination URL

What Are Destination URL?

Destination URL – The URL address for the page you’re sending traffic from your PPC ads.  This is allowed to be different from the display URL, although it has to direct users to the same domain as what is in the display URL.

A Destination URL is simply the address of your webpage people reach when they click one of your ads. The way it’s worked until now is that a Google ad and keyword tracking relied on the Destination URL, which was made up of the landing page URL and tracking parameters.

If you wanted to adjust your tracking for any reason, you had to update the Destination URL, which sent your ads back to editorial review. Your ads would stop running during this review and whatever information was tied to the old URL was lost.

What Did Google Change?

This upgrade basically splits the Destination URL into two parts – you can now enter the landing page portion of the URL and the tracking information separately. It’s so much easier and more convenient!  Changing your tracking parameters at any level except the ad level doesn’t trigger a review, your ads don’t have to stop running, and you can update your tracking at the account, campaign or ad group level without seeing your ad stats go down the drain.

You’ll Only See a Final URL Option – Destination to be Retired

The landing page field was where you could choose to set a Destination URL – but that option is retiring and you’ll no longer see it there. THE final URL will be the only landing page option you’ll see.

Final URLs will need to match the domain of your display URL or your ad may be disapproved. According to Google, your final URL can still contain redirects within that domain.

Now, you’ll use URL options to manage your tracking and redirect information.

With this change, you’ll be able to specify URL options at the account, campaign, ad group, ad, keyword, auto-target, and sitelink level.

You can optionally use a tracking template to bring together your tracking and landing page information if you’re specifying additional tracking parameters or redirects.

The tracking template creates a new address people will click through to go to your site.

New Value Track Parameters Include Location Tracking

Value Track appends tracking values to your ad’s landing page URLs and records certain details about the ad, which you can then review in Google Analytics or third-party analytics software. It helps advertisers better understand where ads get the most traffic, and which ads or keywords get the most clicks.

Now, Value Track itself is not new, but much has been added with this URL upgrade, including a location-tracking parameter:

See the full list of Value Track parameters from Google.

Say Goodbye to the {copy} Value Track Parameter

One more change as part of this upgrade: The {copy} ValueTrack parameter is being deprecated and will not be supported by Upgraded URLs.

If you were using it, you can either create a new tracking template and custom parameter, or just a custom parameter. Learn more about those two options here.

Conclusion

Is your company in need of help? MV3 Marketing Agency has numerous Marketing experts ready to assist you. Contact MV3 Marketing to jump-start your business.

 

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