Overview: Web Server Logs
Overview: Tracking URLs

Overview: Web Server Logs

Web server logs are files created by a web server that record clicks from your web site’s visitors, including those from your Yahoo! Search Marketing ads. Athough formats can differ, web server logs record the web site on which your ad was clicked, and the pages users visited within your site. When combined with tracking URLs and conversion data, you can analyze your web server logs to see how well individual traffic sources are converting for you.

Many web servers have different methods for how web server logs are set up. Please check with your provider to find out how to access your web server logs. If you use your web server logs to identify Sponsored Search traffic, you might see something like the example below, with the bold text showing the URL of the site where your ad was clicked:

216.145.57.229 - - [05/Mar/2002:12:07:04 -0800] "GET /examples/ HTTP/1.1" 200 1274 "http://example.com/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)" "example.com"

Since web server logs record the web site on which your ad was clicked, you can use them to identify your referring traffic, including Yahoo Publisher Network sites where Content Match ads are displayed. When web users click on a Content Match ad, they are taken to the advertiser’s site. The advertiser’s web server log will record the site’s URL as a longer snippet of text, something similar to the example below:

http://ypn-js.overture.com/d/search/p/ypn/jsads/?Partner=1731275039&type>=41&adwd=728&adht=90&ctxtUrl= http%3A//example.com/&bc=FFFFFF&cc=F>FF>FFF&lc=0000FF&tc=000000&uc=999999&du=1&cb=1186011639668.

In this example, the Yahoo! Publisher Network URL — ypn-js.overture.com — indicates merely that your ad was clicked on at one of our Yahoo! Publisher Network sites, while example.com reflects the actual site where your ad was clicked. Keep in mind that the web server log reads some punctuation in the URL as special characters – for example, a colon translates as “%3A” – so the addresses may not look right at first.

Overview: Tracking URLs

Tracking URLs, combined with web server logs are an excellent method for tracking your results:

• They’re free.
• They’re easy to activate.
• They’re designed to provide detailed information to advertisers who analyze their web server logs or third-party tracking solutions.

A tracking URL is a bit of extra text at the end of the normal URL that indicates where the visitor came from. For example:

Regular URL	http://www.electronics-planet.com/television
Tracking URL	http://www.electronics-planet.com/television?OVRAW=buy%20plasma %20television&OVKEY=plasma%20television&OVMTC=advanced

More facts about tracking URLs:

• Using tracking URLs is one of the most common techniques to associate where visitors came from with what they do on your site.
• Tracking URLs can be typed in manually, or you can use Yahoo!’s tracking URLs feature, which provides URLs dynamically generated by the Yahoo! Search Marketing system.
• Setting up tracking URLs alone will not enable you to track behavior and actions; you must also configure your tracking system to monitor and report on these URLs.

Benefits

Implementing tracking URLs and understanding your source of traffic will allow you to:

• Better allocate your budget.
• Improve your advertising results.
• Understand where your media dollars are going.

How It Works

To enable tracking URLs:

1. Log into your account.
2. From the Administration tab, select “Tracking URLs.”
3. Clicking the “Tracking URLs On” button.
4. Your URLs will be appended with information that allows you to determine traffic by keyword, match type and raw search query.
• Source tracking: The mere presence of a tracking URL signifies that the visitor came as a result of your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign.
• Raw search query tracking: The first element of the tracking URL denotes the raw search query, i.e., exactly what the user typed in the search box. The %20 characters signify a space between the words around the %20; for example, “buy plasma television” will look as follows: “buy%20plasma%20television.”
• Keyword tracking: The second element of the tracking URL denotes the bidded keyword associated with the raw search query.
• Product and match type tracking: The third element of the tracking URL denotes the match type of the listing that was clicked on by the searcher. This enables you to understand how many visitors are coming from the Standard and Advanced match types, as well as Content Match for any given keyword.

Tracking URLs may not work for the following reasons:

• Conflict with existing URLs: Your URL may already contain one of the default parameter labels we use.
• URL length: Adding tracking URLs to your existing URLs may exceed the URL length your system can handle.
• Formatting: Your URL may require non-standard formatting to work with your system. For example, your system may require a “#” instead of a “?” to indicate the start of the search query string.