Why Using a Google Analytics AdWords Report is Imperative

If you run an online business of any type you are probably familiar with Google AdWords. But are you familiar with using it within Google Analytics instead of just in AdWords alone?

Here are the reasons why using a Google Analystics AdWords Report is so imperative:

Campaigns: This report (not to be confused with the Google Analytics Campaigns report, which can also be found under Acquisition, and contains data from any Campaigns you have tagged) is limited to only AdWords campaign data. The core stats include cost data from AdWords, as well as Analytics specific data such as visits, new visits, bounce rate, pages per visit, and conversion rates. Click through to break the data down into more detail and add secondary dimensions in to break out the campaigns by another piece of information such as ad group, target keyword, ad content, or destination URL. Ad Slot and Ad Slot position could be useful here as they will tell you which campaigns do well with lower positions or which need work to improve positions. There are limited extra dimensions here, as the focus is traffic and advertising, but another useful one is Mobile Device Category, which can help you understand the impact your ads are having on tablets and mobile phones.

Bid Adjustments: As an AdWords user, you should be familiar with bid adjustments to promote your ads more or less depending on device, location, and time of day. Taking the analysis into Google Analytics can help you understand the full picture of each different adjustment broken down by interaction and revenue performance, making this report very useful for making bid decisions based on data. Using revenue data will be important for any ecommerce sites as the data starts to show you a picture of which ads and adjustments are giving you the best return. It could help you identify a successful time of day or location that you can give more focus on in order to tap into the good return and increase your success further.

AdWords Keywords: This report is relatively self-explanatory: it shows you the target keywords in your account. But it's how you use this report that makes it special. There are also options to segment the data based on Desktop, Mobile, or Tablet visits, making it even easier to segment data than ever before. Additionally, Advanced Segment functionality is available in these reports, to help you analyze different user segments or visit patterns against each other.

Matched Search Queries: If you're an experienced AdWords user then you're very likely to be familiar with reviewing the Search Queries report. In AdWords it's under the Keywords tab, click Details, then under Search Terms click All). In Analytics, here it is bold as brass! It shows you the actual words typed in by the user, rather than only the keywords you have chosen to target as the standard reports show. This is very insightful and rather than just using AdWords metrics and intuition to decide whether or not it might be a valuable target for your account, you can combine the queries used with engagement and revenue to spot those which will lead to the best return on investment. Another use of this report is to see what sort of terminology is common amongst your website users, perhaps you refer to your products in a slightly different way to them, or there are new terms starting to be used that you would benefit from implementing on your website to make it more relevant.

Day Parts: Here, AdWords data is broken down by hour of the day (a.k.a., a day part), allowing you to review when your peak times are. Use this to help you spread your budget out most effectively throughout the day, remembering that weekends and other countries will need to be reviewed separately to gain even more benefit.

Destination URLs: This report breaks down the data based on which pages of your site you targeted in your ads. Spotting lows within the data here can highlight problems that the URLs might have, from not being relevant to the target or not working properly for users on all devices. This report combines data from both the search and display networks. To separate these out you can apply the Ad Distribution Network dimension as a secondary dimension, this then shows which URLs were on the Content network (display), Google search network and which showed in search partner websites.

Placements: This report is broken down into three sections:

Placement Type: To separate Automatic and Managed

Placement Domain: Website on which your ads were shown

Placement URL: The specific page on which your ads were shown

These help you to see results at a high as well as in detail, giving you the full picture on which to make decisions. And as with the reports I've already covered, you have the full picture of interaction in one place.

Keyword Positions: This is one of the clunkier looking reports, but that doesn't stop it being useful. The first column lists your keywords, placements, categories or other target alongside the visits generated. You then need to click on the target you'd like to analyze and boxes will appear on the right showing where the ads for this target have been shown.