Google AdWords Upgraded URLs: What You Need To Know

Earlier this year Google announced that they would be retiring the “Destination URLs” feature in AdWords and would require all accounts to migrate to “Upgraded URLS” by July. These “Upgraded URLs will feature two fields: “Final URL” and “Tracking Template”. Google claims that moving to these new URLs will have many benefits to advertisers, including:

• Reduced crawl and load times on websites
• Value Track parameters – help you gain additional insights about your ads
• Allows you to change custom tracking parameters for a group of URLs without resetting ad stats

So, you might be asking yourself: What do I need to do?

If you’re using third-party tracking software:

Well if you use tracking parameters within your AdWords campaigns, you will need to upgrade your URLs within your AdWords account. If you do nothing, Google will automatically upgrade all eligible URLs by copying current Destination URLs to the new Final URL field.

You will need to create a tracking template in URL options:

Your tracking template contains the domain you want to track (whether this is your own or a third-party tracking site) and the parameters you use to identify your ad. Custom Parameters can let you use your own IDs, for example, to identify keywords. Rather than hard-coding these IDs, you can use custom parameters that fill them in. You can use custom parameters in tracking templates and Final URLs, but not in Destination URLs.

Note that manually upgrading your ads will result in putting your ad through Google’s review process again and resetting your performance stats.

If you aren’t using third-party tracking software:

If you don’t use tracking parameters, you don’t need to do a thing! There is no difference between “Final URLs” and “Destination URLs” so you just need to be aware of the difference in terminology.

So, hopefully that has cleared things up and now you should be prepared for the big update in July! However, if you’re still left scratching your head at the thought of tracking templates and custom parameters, don’t hesitate to get in touch – we’ll be happy to help you make sense of it!