How Track with Yahoo Search Marketing

[husnehpet]

I added two easy ways to implement tracking with YSM. Perfect for the n00b in all of us.

Check the link in my sig.

LOL. Sorry about. Hus Nehpet: Making Money | Make Money With Me

The first method involves a smidge of PHP and about 5 minutes. So you’ll need to make sure your web host has PHP support. I run this method using Azoogle but you can modify it to fit any affiliate program.
First, log into your Yahoo Search Marketing account. Go to Administration tab and Tracking URLs.

Make sure it’s are enabled. Now whenever your ad is clicked on, a custom url will be created and sent to your webpage.

Now you don’t want to give Azoogle your precious keyword conversion data. We could encrypt the key but it’s not necessary since it’s been provided by the url. See OVKWID? This is what we need to grab. We’re going to pass OVKWID to Azoogle as a subid. In Azoogle, there is a subid report that you can view your conversions on.

Okay, now we’re going to use a little bit of PHP to create a custom url. You can modify this code to your liking. I’m using it here as a redirect. Add this code to the very top of your webpage. Make sure to save your page as .php.
<?php
$url = “http://www.x.azjmp.com/ZnXjz”;
if ($_GET[’OVKWID’]) {
$url = “http://www.x.azjmp.com/ZnXjz?sub=” . $_GET[’OVKWID’];
}
header(”location: $url”);
break;
?>
Now your subids will be recorded in Azoogle. When a conversion is made, just match it up to your Yahoo Campaign spreadsheet.

 

[emp]

No link in your sig, for you are n00b.

Share your info here, please.

::emp::

 

[bubbles]

I use this script to throw the yahoo keywords in a DB, and associate them with an ID, that way I don't give m keywords away.

<?
if(isset($_GET['OVKEY']))
{
$rawkeyword = $_GET['OVRAW'];
$rawkeyword = urldecode($rawkeyword);
$keyword = $_GET['OVKEY'];
$keyword = urldecode($keyword);

$link = mysql_connect('localhost','user','pass');
mysql_select_db("dbname", $link) or die("An error occured while trying to establish a connection to the specified database");

$sql = "SELECT * FROM keywords WHERE keyword = '$keyword'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
if(mysql_num_rows($result) == 0)
{
$sql = "INSERT INTO keywords (`id` , `keyword` , `raw`, `count`) VALUES ('', '$keyword', '$rawkeyword','0')";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
}
$sql = "UPDATE keywords SET count = count+1 WHERE keyword = '$keyword' LIMIT 1";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM keywords WHERE keyword = '$keyword'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
$result = mysql_fetch_row($result);
$subid = $result[0];
mysql_close($link);
}
header("location:http://affiliate.com/track.php?sub=".$subid);
?>

Just connect to your own database and build a similar table.

 

[jared]

Is passing the keywords to Azoogle through the subid a bad idea eh?

Guess I'll be reworking the tracking methods I use for my campaigns. Also what's the best way to differentiate and track the traffic between google/msn/yahoo?

 

[Fewleftstanding]

I've previously been sending the keywords to my advertisers through the subid, but I realized that they all have their own in house teams doing ppc too..so I figured I shouldn't give away the keywords that are converting for me.

Thanks for the script