Tracking Your Amazon Clicks
With the help of a number of sellers, we have recently completed a comprehensive comparison of Amazon and seller tracking logs. In this process we learned that certain browsers are dropping the Referral URL when a customer clicks on an ad. If you are using Referral Logs to track your Amazon Product Ads traffic it means that some clicks from Amazon will be recorded as “type-in” traffic.
We were able to confirm with these sellers that the clicks billed to their account and displayed in Seller Central were accurate. We are working on a solution to ensure the Referral URL is passed regardless of customer browser. We expect to have a permanent fix in place early in 2010. We will make announcements in Seller Central when this fix is deployed
The information below provides a detailed explanation along with information about what you can do today to increase tracking accuracy.
What is a Referral URL?
A Referral URL is the address of the web page from which a user has clicked to arrive at a new web page. In this case, the URL for the page where a customer clicked on your Amazon Product Ad to arrive on your website.
What is happening today?
Depending on the browser the customer uses, the Referral URL is not being passed to your website. This means that you will not track the Amazon URL. Instead your analytics package will report this click as “type-in”. This value implies that a customer had typed the URL for that specific product page in to their browser directly.
What is the impact?
A percentage of the clicks from Amazon will not be recorded by your analytics service. The percentage of clicks that drop the Referral URL will be different for each seller.
What can I do today?
Add a Tracking Code to the URLs for all of the products in your Amazon Product Ads feed. For example “src=amazon”. Adding a tracking code in your URLs ensures you capture the source of the click regardless of the browser a customer uses. You will be able to track all clicks from Amazon by looking for URLs viewed on your website which include this referral tag. Using a Tracking Code is an effective way to track traffic from all advertising sources.
The steps to implement tracking codes in your URL’s will depend on your analytics service. If you use Google Analytics, this Google help page includes a tool to build your URL with a tracking code.
What is Product Ads doing?
We are working on a solution to ensure the Referral URL is passed regardless of customer browser. We expect to have a permanent fix in place early 2010. We will make announcements in Seller Central when this fix is deployed. We have reviewed all related systems and can assure you that billing and traffic validation is accurate.
We were able to confirm with these sellers that the clicks billed to their account and displayed in Seller Central were accurate. We are working on a solution to ensure the Referral URL is passed regardless of customer browser. We expect to have a permanent fix in place early in 2010. We will make announcements in Seller Central when this fix is deployed
The information below provides a detailed explanation along with information about what you can do today to increase tracking accuracy.
What is a Referral URL?
A Referral URL is the address of the web page from which a user has clicked to arrive at a new web page. In this case, the URL for the page where a customer clicked on your Amazon Product Ad to arrive on your website.
What is happening today?
Depending on the browser the customer uses, the Referral URL is not being passed to your website. This means that you will not track the Amazon URL. Instead your analytics package will report this click as “type-in”. This value implies that a customer had typed the URL for that specific product page in to their browser directly.
What is the impact?
A percentage of the clicks from Amazon will not be recorded by your analytics service. The percentage of clicks that drop the Referral URL will be different for each seller.
What can I do today?
Add a Tracking Code to the URLs for all of the products in your Amazon Product Ads feed. For example “src=amazon”. Adding a tracking code in your URLs ensures you capture the source of the click regardless of the browser a customer uses. You will be able to track all clicks from Amazon by looking for URLs viewed on your website which include this referral tag. Using a Tracking Code is an effective way to track traffic from all advertising sources.
The steps to implement tracking codes in your URL’s will depend on your analytics service. If you use Google Analytics, this Google help page includes a tool to build your URL with a tracking code.
What is Product Ads doing?
We are working on a solution to ensure the Referral URL is passed regardless of customer browser. We expect to have a permanent fix in place early 2010. We will make announcements in Seller Central when this fix is deployed. We have reviewed all related systems and can assure you that billing and traffic validation is accurate.
Thanks for the update. Accurate stats are always helpful.
Posted by: Kevin C. | December 11, 2009 at 10:15 PM