Not all bots are bad, though. Some are helpful, like search engine crawlers, for example. But others, like click bots or spam bots, can mess up your analytics and make it hard to evaluate your traffic.  

That’s why Google Analytics 4 (GA4) plays an integral role in the process of identifying bot traffic and filtering out malicious ones. As a tool that contains records of all your website visitors, it can serve as an initial indicator of bot activity.   

In this article, we will explore the secrets of how you can use GA4 to identify bot traffic and take some actions to minimize its presence on your website.

What exactly is bot traffic?    

Bot traffic refers to automated website visits carried out by computer programs rather than human users. These bots serve various purposes, ranging from indexing content for search engines to analyzing the healthiness of your website… and also, unfortunately, stealing your data, spreading spam, or committing click fraud.      

Good bots, like search engine bots, play a helpful role in indexing and ranking your site. They contribute to the visibility of your content in search results, which makes them a must-have for the overall healthiness of your website. 

However, bad bots, such as click bots or spam bots, are the ones you need to watch out for. They can mislead your analytics by artificially inflating pageviews and sessions or triggering false interactions.  

What is bot traffic in GA4?         

When it comes to GA4, bot traffic refers to the above-described automated visits. As such, this traffic does not represent a genuine interest in your product or service, and if it infiltrates your analytics, it will impact your data accuracy.  

It’s important to mention here that GA4 automatically excludes web traffic from known good bots and spiders. This applies to bots with well-established identities and consistent behavior. 

Search engine bots and known SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush fall under this category, and their traffic wouldn’t show up in your GA4. However, some new or less popular bots, no matter good or bad, will still appear in your Google Analytics reports. It takes time for Google to detect repetitive visits across websites coming from the same sources or sources showing specific patterns.           

And while GA4 automatically clears your reports from the helpful bots, web traffic from the malicious bots still makes its way into your analytics data. 

But how can you recognize it and avoid its impact on your data and further activities? Let’s explore how you can do that in GA4. 

How can you identify bot traffic in GA4?  

Identifying bot traffic in Google Analytics involves using a combination of built-in features and additional settings. While GA4 includes some automatic mechanisms for filtering out known bots, it’s important to implement additional measures to enhance bot detection. Let’s explore some.   

Customize your reports     

The default reports in GA4 don’t contain all the metrics that can distinguish between bot and human traffic. So, your number one task is to customize your report data in a way that will help you recognize the signs of bot traffic.  

Our recommendations? The Traffic acquisition and User acquisition reports are the ones that hold most of these key metrics you’d like to have included, so let’s start from there.   

Here’s how to access these reports in your Google Analytics 4 account:  

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Select “Reports” from the left menu.
3. Expand the “Acquisition” section in the Life cycle collection.
4. Choose the desired report:
   • Traffic Acquisition report
   • User Acquisition report

Once there, you can start customizing your report by clicking the “Customize Report” button (pencil icon) in the upper right corner. Select “Metrics” under Report data, and you can start with adding metrics. 

Here’s our recommendation of metrics to have included under each of these two reports:   

Traffic acquisition report:    

• Engagement rate
• Average engagement time
• Sessions
• Engaged sessions
• Views per session

User acquisition report:         

• Total users
• Users (Represents the number of active users)
• New users
• Event count
• Engaged sessions per user

Recognizing suspicious patterns       

Here’s how to identify suspicious patterns in your data: 

Behavioral data:

• Short engagement sessions: Bots often spend seconds on a page, unlike humans. Check the engagement rate (the formerly known bounce rate in GA) and average session duration for anomalies.
• Unrealistic page views: Hundreds of pages viewed in a single session could indicate scraping bots. 
• Unusual interactions: Unnatural scroll patterns, rapid form fills, or visiting multiple pages with no mouse movement are examples of bot-specific interactions.
• A sudden flow of spam comments: Spam bots main purpose is to land on your website and spread spammy comments. They often promote unrelated products, use flattery language, or include irrelevant links. You can recognize them by the unnatural and generic language.   
• Declined card transactions: Fraudsters usually use stolen or non-existent credit card information. Many attempts to complete a transaction mean they’re trying different variations or the card they’ve stolen has been blocked. 

Demographic data:    

• Traffic spikes from a single IP address: Botnets or malicious scripts can generate high traffic volumes in a short time span. Sudden, massive increases in web traffic originating from a single IP address are a clear sign of bot traffic.
• Unlikely origins: Traffic spikes from countries you don’t target or visits classified as ‘Location not set’ might be bots. Unusual sources, such as unfamiliar websites, data centers, or crawlers with unusual user agents, are another sign of suspicious traffic.
• Unusual traffic sources: A sudden influx of uncommon devices or operating systems could be suspicious and indicate bot traffic. For example, a spike in new user acquisition by a single traffic source is a sign of suspicious activity.  

How to filter bot traffic in GA4?  

Now that you know how to recognize early signs of bot traffic in Google Analytics 4, let’s see how you can exclude it from appearing there in the first place. 

While GA4 doesn’t provide the same level of granular filtering as Universal Analytics, there are some features that can be used for this purpose.  

Use custom filters 

With custom filters in Google Analytics 4, you can modify or segment the data in your reports based on specific conditions. By applying your preferred criteria, you can tailor the data you see in your reports. This way, you’ll filter out suspicious or known bot traffic sources from messing up your data.

To access custom filters in GA4, navigate to the “Analysis” section and click “Reports.” Once you are in a report, you can find the “Filter” button at the top of the page.

You can create custom filters based on various conditions, such as events, user properties, or other dimensions. 

Choose the dimension you want to filter and set the conditions for inclusion or exclusion.

There are two types of filters you can find: “Include filter” and “Exclude filter.” As their names are self-explanatory, the first one is used if you want to include a particular type of traffic, and the latter is for the traffic you want to exclude. When filtering out bot traffic, you’ll naturally want to use the ‘exclude’ filter.    

You can set conditions based on various parameters, such as country, user properties, equality, inequality, regular expressions, etc.

For example, you might create a filter to exclude users who stay less than 10 seconds on your website.   

Create segments 

The purpose of the “Create segments” feature in GA4 is to help you define and save specific subsets of your data. This can also be done based on various criteria, and together with segments, you’ll be able to analyze and understand the behavior of specific groups of users or events within your overall data set.   

To create segments in GA4, navigate to the “Explore” tab in your GA4 property. Once there, look for the “Segment builder” in the top left corner. 

Under segment conditions, you can: 

• Exclude known bots:
  • Add a condition like “User Agent does not contain” and list common bot user agents (e.g., “Googlebot,” “Bingbot,” “SemrushBot”).
• Filter by IP addresses:
  • If you have specific IP addresses associated with bots, create a condition like “IP Address does not equal” and list those IPs. 
• Examine events and engagement:
  • Add conditions based on suspicious event patterns or low engagement metrics:
    • “Event count is less than X”
    • “Session duration is less than Y seconds”
    • “Pageviews per session is equal to 1”

Configure unwanted referrals 

In GA4, you can use the referral exclusion list to exclude certain domains from being counted as referrals. You can block up to 50 unwanted referrals per data stream to exclude known bot or spam referral traffic.

To set up the referral exclusion list, go to your GA4 property settings, navigate to “Data Streams,” and click on the relevant data stream. From there, you can find the “Referral Exclusion List” section.

Block bot traffic with a bot mitigation solution  

While these strategies can improve data reliability, they don’t guarantee the absence of bot traffic in your reports. GA4 filters can exclude bots from reports, yet it’s not foolproof against their access to your website.  

To truly combat bot and spam traffic, prevention is key. It’s not enough to simply filter them out of your Google Analytics data. You need to stop them from accessing your website and online activities altogether.

As a bot detection and protection solution, ClickCease blocks any type of bot targeting your ads, organic online activities, or website. This means your overall online traffic gets protected, ensuring accurate, reliable data in your Google Analytics 4.    

Ensure full protection against bots.

FAQs: 

How do I know if I have bot traffic?            

In your traffic reports in Google Analytics 4, you can spot suspicious user activity, usually common to bot traffic.  

Look out for unusual patterns like sudden spikes in events and conversions. For example, a user might be viewing many pages or items in a short time, which might be a sign of bots crawling your website rapidly to collect as much information as possible.   

Additionally, in the “Network Domains” report, you can identify traffic from unusual domains, which most likely come from bots. 

Another common sign of bot traffic is low time on page (or high bounce rate). Bots usually have very low time spent on pages. Examine these metrics to identify pages that might be attracting bot traffic. 

Some other anomalies include spikes in traffic, specific pages with abnormal patterns, or sudden drops in conversion rates. 

If you notice these signs in your GA4, there’s a chance that bots are affecting your traffic, and you may want to investigate further or implement measures to mitigate their impact.

Does GA4 block bot traffic?  

Google Analytics 4 automatic blocking excludes traffic from bots and spiders, which are already identified as such. This includes traffic from already known tools that serve for SEO or other beneficial website activities, as well as lists of already known malicious bot traffic sources.

This helps keep your data relatively clean and prevents skewed metrics about user behavior.

What are the limitations of GA4 bot filtering? 

While Google Analytics 4 automatically excludes known sources of bot traffic, there are many new bots, especially malicious ones, that are not detected by the automatic filters.

This means you’ll need to take manual measures to identify and filter out the remaining unwanted activities from your reports. However, there’s not a single report or metric that can represent signs of bot traffic. 

It takes a combination of reports to come to some insights. Sometimes, there’s no clear sign to distinguish between a bot and genuine user activity, which makes the process more complex.

For more accurate bot management, it’s recommended to consider further protection. These could include security plugins, CAPTCHAs, and even dedicated anti-bot services.         

The post How to Identify Bot Traffic in Google Analytics 4: A Full Guide appeared first on ClickCease Blog.

Whether you’re just starting out or you’re an experienced affiliate marketer, there are a variety of tools available that can help take your business to the next level. From tracking tools to link generators, there’s something for everyone.

With the right selection of tools, you can significantly enhance your profits, streamline your workflows, and gain valuable insights into your data. They’ll enable you to better optimize your campaigns, target your audience more effectively, and ultimately, achieve your business goals and secure its growth.

So, if you’re looking to take your affiliate marketing game to the next level, keep reading. We’re going to be discussing the top affiliate marketing tools you need to be using in 2023 and beyond.

But before we jump into the tools themselves, let’s first talk about how they can revolutionize the way you manage your affiliate marketing business.

What are the benefits of using affiliate marketing tools?

For affiliate marketers, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of work they have to do. Managing multiple networks, products, or campaigns is something quite common in the everyday life of an affiliate marketer.

In fact, over 70% of affiliate marketers work with three or more affiliate networks while also promoting multiple products. This can be a lot to juggle, right? Especially if you’d like to stay on top of it all and keep on track with everything.

That’s why using relevant tools can be a game-changer. Here are some of the key benefits that these tools can offer: 

• Automate processes: Affiliate marketing tools can automate many tedious and time-consuming tasks, such as link creation and product updates, allowing you to focus on more important tasks. 
• Save time: By automating processes and streamlining workflows, affiliate marketing tools allow you to work smarter, not harder, and manage multiple campaigns with ease.
• Accurate data: Some tools, like ClickCease, can filter out invalid traffic, protecting the affiliate’s reputation and Return on investment (ROI) from click fraud or bots. This ensures that your analytics and funnels contain only accurate data.
• Make informed decisions: With accurate data, you can make better-informed decisions about which campaigns to optimize and which products to promote, maximizing your profitability.
• Stay organized: By using affiliate marketing tools to manage your campaigns, you can stay organized and avoid the chaos that can come with manually managing multiple campaigns across different networks. 
• Better Targeting: Affiliate tools can help you target the right audience with the right message, increasing the likelihood of a successful conversion and generating more revenue. 

Overall, using affiliate marketing tools can help you save time, stay organized, make informed decisions, and as end result, increase your profits.

Our favorite affiliate marketing tools

WordPress – website-building platform

Let’s start with the basics, shall we? If you’re just starting out in affiliate marketing, you might think that owning a website isn’t essential. 

After all, there are plenty of influencers and YouTubers who have found success without one. But let me tell you, having your own website can be an absolute game-changer when it comes to affiliate marketing.

It’s no secret that WordPress is the number one go-to solution for building a website. It’s the most popular website-building platform out there and for good reason. It’s incredibly user-friendly, customizable, and offers a ton of features.

No matter what kind of website you’re aiming to create, WordPress can meet your needs – from a simple one to a highly personalized one. And the best part is that the platform is reasonably priced. You can begin building your website for free, and as your business grows, you can upgrade to get more sophisticated features and plugins. 

WordPress key features:

• There’s a free plan that you can keep for as long as you need
• User-friendly and easy to use
• A vast library of free and paid themes
• SEO-friendly and search engines love WordPress sites
• A massive collection of plugins that add functionality to your website
• Regularly updated for security and stability
• A large community of users and developers offers support and resources

Pricing and free trial option:

Even in terms of pricing, WordPress has a plan that can be fit for everyone. Starting from a free option and low-cost plans starting at just $4 per month, it truly is a platform that’s an easy choice for anyone.

Unbounce – landing page builder 

Unbounce is becoming an incredibly popular landing page solution in the affiliate marketing world. The platform can be used for custom-built landing pages for each marketing campaign, enabling affiliates to create a seamless customer experience.  

Not only does this result in a smoother and more enjoyable buyer journey, but it also leads to more customers and increased conversion rates.

It also comes with features that help you understand where your conversions are coming from and what works best. This information can be used to further refine your marketing strategies and ultimately boost conversions even more.

In summary, Unbounce is a versatile platform offering various features to improve affiliate marketing campaigns’ success. It’s flexible, easy to use, and great for beginners and users with more advanced marketing experience.

Unbounce key features: 

• Simple editor with drag-and-drop functionality
• Bunch of pre-existing templates
• A/B testing of different landing page variants
• Integration with other marketing tools and platforms
• Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) for better personalization
• Built-in lead capture for easier lead generation

Pricing and free trial option:

Unbounce offers a 14-day free trial that allows you to fully explore all the features available in the plan you choose. The starting price for their base plan is $74 per month, which covers a certain number of visitors and conversions that can be tracked. 

Voluum – affiliate tracking tool

Voluum is a comprehensive click-tracking software that affiliate marketers use to track both paid and organic campaigns. Anyway, its real power lies in tracking the performance of paid campaigns in a highly comprehensive and granular manner.

Basically, it tracks how each of your ad campaigns is going and shows you all the juicy details about the value you get from every single click. With all this information at your fingertips, you’ll be able to better set up your ads strategy. 

You can easily figure out which campaigns are working well and deserve more budget and attention, which ones require some tweaking, or which ones aren’t worth your budget at all.

So if you’re focused on maximizing affiliate marketing earnings through paid sources, it’s definitely a tool worth exploring.

Voluum Key Features:

• Manage all of your campaigns in one place
• Affiliate marketing dashboard
• Real-time tracking
• Data visualization
• Custom conversion and behavior tracking
• Redirect webhook
• Traffic source & affiliate network templates
• Suggestions for improvements – anything from best keywords, ad placements, and targeting options

Pricing and free trial option:

Voluum is not a cheap tool. Its plans start at $119/month. However, there’s a 14-day demo trial period where you can experience its features and benefits before making a commitment.

Rebrandly – URL shortening and branding platform

Rebrandly is a tool used for pretty much anything URL or links related. It can help you shorten your URLs, build UTM tags, or manage your links.

The coolest feature Rebrandly offers is probably the possibility to shorten URLs under a custom domain. What this means is that you can use your brand name within this custom domain. So instead of placing some bitly.com/123 or linktr.ee/456 within your content or ads, you can simply have yourbrandname.llink/some_cool_landingpage.

It’s known that shortened, brand-named URLs are more reliable, trustworthy, and appealing. But aside from this, according to Rebrandly, your CTR can increase up to 39%. Isn’t this something that we all aim for?

Rebrandly is a powerful link management tool that goes beyond just customized domain branding. By tracking all of your links, it provides valuable insights into your traffic and audience, helping you optimize your link strategy for maximum impact.

Rebrandly key features:

• Creating and sharing branded links
• Fast redirection to destination URLs
• Collaborate with multiple team members easily
• Creating or editing multiple links in a bulk
• UTM tag builder
• Link management and analytics dashboard
• SSL certificate provided at no additional cost

Pricing and free trial option:

Rebrandly is a super affordable tool. There’s a free plan, under which you can create one branded domain name at no cost, and the paid plans with more features start at $12 a month. 

Geniuslink – link management platform for Amazon Associates Program

Geniuslink is another URL shortening tool, which is particularly useful for those working with the Amazon Associates Program. It can create a single link that tracks visitors’ location and, based on this, redirects them to the appropriate product page on Amazon, ensuring affiliates won’t lose their commissions. 

Let’s say you’re based in the US, and you use a product link from the US Amazon page. If you have an international audience coming from France, for example, Amazon will redirect them to the French page. They will complete the purchase there, and you will lose the commission.

This is where Geniuslink comes in. It takes your Amazon product ID and creates a single URL, redirecting the visitors to the right page and keeping them tracked as a purchase coming from you as an affiliate. 

This way, the tool allows its users to monetize their international traffic, which can make a huge difference in their revenue.

Geniuslink key features: 

• Use one single link instead of different links per location
• Track and monetize international traffic
• Adjust all your links at once
• Receive alerts about broken links or out-of-stock products
• Effective link-building and optimization

Pricing and free trial option:

Geniuslink is also cost-effective tool with a starting price of $5/month, including all features and 2,000 clicks. You can scale up the number of clicks as your business grows without a significant increase in price. They also offer a free 14-day trial which amazingly includes unlimited clicks.

Hotjar – website analytics and feedback tool 

If you’re serious about succeeding as an affiliate marketer, then you need to be constantly tweaking and optimizing your website for maximum results. Hotjar is one more tool that we believe deserves a place among the mix of affiliate marketing tools we are exploring.

It’s an all-in-one analytics and feedback tool that provides website owners and marketers with a comprehensive suite of features. From website user behavior to recommendations on which areas of a website may need improvement, it can help you make proper optimizations for maximum results.

One of its coolest features is its heatmap functionality. With heatmaps, you get a visual representation of where your visitors click, move, and scroll on your website.

As a website owner, it can be challenging to understand how your visitors are interacting with your website and products. And this is where Hotjar really shines. You can track your visitors’ every move, from the pages they land on to the buttons they click.

With this, you get in-depth insights needed to make informed decisions about your site’s design, content, and user experience.

Hotjar key features:

• Visual representation of the users’ journey
• Recordings and playbacks of user sessions
• Live user feedback tool
• Conversion funnel analytics
• Feedback polls and surveys
• Usability testing

Pricing and free trial option:

Hotjar is also a budget-friendly tool. The most basic plan is free with unlimited heatmaps and covers up to 35 daily sessions. For more advanced features, the Plus plan starts at $32 monthly.

AAWP – WordPress plugin for creating Amazon affiliate links

AAWP (or Amazon Affiliate for WordPress) is an Amazon affiliate plugin for WordPress. It’s like an all-in-one solution for Amazon affiliate marketers looking to excel in their field.

One of its biggest benefits is that it allows you to easily create product boxes and tables, leading to an increase in click-through rates and conversions on Amazon. The software also offers a variety of tools to design unique layouts for Amazon products, enhancing user experience and site functionality.

So if you’re an Amazon affiliate marketer, AAWP is an excellent plugin for your WordPress site that can help you take your affiliate marketing to the next level. 

AAWP key features:

• The plugin can be used with any theme on WordPress
• Create automated bestseller lists and set the number of products individually
• Create AAWP shortcodes directly from your browser toolbar
• Variety of well-crafted templates
• Customize existing templates or create completely new ones
• Comparison Tables to compare multiple products with each other
• Automated updates of product information

Pricing and free trial option:

What’s great about AAWP is that all of the core features are included in every subscription plan. The most affordable plan starts at just €49, while the Ultimate plan provides a more comprehensive set of features for €399 per month.

Ahrefs – SEO tool

As an affiliate marketer, you must be familiar with the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in driving traffic to your site. That’s why Ahrefs is such a valuable addition to your toolkit. It’s a comprehensive SEO tool that comes with a range of features that are particularly useful for affiliate marketers.

In functionality, it is very similar to Semrush, but one of the most significant advantages of Ahrefs is its backlink index. It’s widely considered to be one of the most comprehensive backlink indexes available, making it a valuable resource for analyzing your website’s backlinks profile, as well as your competitors’.

In addition, Ahrefs has a pretty unique keyword research tool. With its advanced features, it will surely be of help for identifying the best keywords to optimize your content and improve your search rankings.

Ahrefs key features:

• Track backlinks performance
• Find keywords that your audience is searching for
• Analyze your own and your competitors’ websites
• Content exploration features to enhance your content strategy
• Site Audit with detailed reports to optimize your website 

Pricing and free trial option:

Although Ahrefs doesn’t provide a free trial of their primary tool, you still have the option to enroll in a 7-day trial with limited access to their Site Explorer and Site Audit using Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. If you’re interested in using Ahrefs for the long haul, their base paid plan begins at $83 a month.

Information worth mentioning here is that if you choose to pay your plan annually you’ll get 2 months free.

Surfer SEO – optimize website content

Another SEO tool on the list, this time focused on improving your website content. Surfer SEO is designed to enhance your organic traffic, improve your online rankings, and heighten the visibility of your affiliate site on the web. 

When it comes to content writing and analysis, there’s no better SEO tool out there. It analyzes top search results for a given topic and gives you all kinds of information and keywords you can work on or include in your content.

As you work on your content, Surfer SEO gives you a score and easy-to-follow content suggestions. Implementing these suggestions will significantly increase your SERP ranking opportunities and improve your on-site page optimization.

Surfer SEO key features:

• In-depth analysis of SERPs for target keywords
• Improve ranking for target keywords
• Content guidelines and suggestions for optimal articles
• Enhance on-page optimization
• Works in any language
• Plagiarism checking tool
• Repurpose old content for improved SEO ranking

Pricing and free trial option:

Starting at $49/month, Surfer SEO provides an affordable option for businesses looking to optimize their online content. Plus, with a free 7-day trial available for all plans, you can try it out risk-free and see the benefits for yourself.

ClickCease – detect fake traffic

Last but not least comes ClickCease, whose goal is to safeguard all of your marketing efforts from the harmful effect of fraudulent activity.

Paid campaigns on platforms such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads are a popular way for affiliates to promote their business and products. However, with the rise of cybercrime, there is an increasing risk of fraudulent activities in paid campaigns.

These fraudulent activities generate clicks, impressions, or traffic on paid advertising through automated bots, click farms, paid-to-click (PTC) sites, and more. According to research that ClickCease conducted in 2020, an average of 14% of the clicks on ad campaigns that we protect are fake.

If all these fake clicks remain undetected, your ad budget will get wasted on invalid traffic. Besides that, you will spend additional time tracking and analyzing irrelevant data, leading to even further negative effects if you optimize your campaigns based on this data.

In conclusion, ClickCease’s ad fraud detection and prevention capabilities can help you save money by eliminating fake clicks and irrelevant data from your funnels. This ensures that your advertising budget is used efficiently to attract genuine human traffic, leading to more sales and conversions.

ClickCease key features:

• Monitor and block click fraud across multiple ad platforms
• Customize fraud filters based on your industry
• Suggestions on how to improve your protection
• Prevent harmful sources from even seeing your ads
• Avoid competitors clicking on your ads and depleting your ad budget
• Integrate with any website-building platform
• Improves the overall Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
• Accurate data for better-informed campaign strategy

Pricing and free trial option:

With its Standard protection plan starting at just $55 per month, ClickCease offers comprehensive defense against fraudulent traffic. Take advantage of the 7-day free trial to gain insights into how fake traffic may be impacting your paid campaigns.

The bottom line

All things considered, using at least a few affiliate marketing tools can be a game-changer for new and experienced affiliate marketers.

The benefits of these tools are numerous, including automating tedious tasks, saving time, providing accurate data, making informed decisions, and staying organized. With the right tools, affiliates can significantly enhance their profits, streamline their workflows, and gain valuable insights into their data.

In today’s digital landscape, affiliate marketing has become increasingly competitive, and staying ahead of the game requires a combination of effective strategies and the latest tools.

As the world of affiliate marketing continues to evolve, so will the tools and technologies available to marketers. Therefore, affiliate marketers must stay up-to-date with the latest tools and trends to ensure they can stay ahead of the competition and achieve their business goals.

Overall, using affiliate marketing tools can help you as an affiliate marketer work smarter, not harder, and ultimately, increase your profits.  

The post Best Affiliate Marketing Tools: Top 10 for Maximum Results appeared first on ClickCease Blog.

Tracking conversions and website events are how Meta manages this ad reach and optimizes your ad traffic. They do this through the Facebook pixel, which allows us to track website events.

But what are website events?

These are any activity that takes place on your website, whether that is signing up for your newsletter or buying one of your products.

Facebook categorizes these into standard events and custom events. So what’s the difference?

What are Facebook’s standard website events?

Standard events are any activity on your website that has been predefined by Meta. This covers most of the most typical customer activity on your site, including:

• Adding items to the cart
• Completing registration
• Getting in contact via various methods, including email or phone
• Signing up for trials or downloading forms
• Viewing specific pages or content, such as videos or landing pages

If a site has the Facebook pixel installed, then marketers can access this user interaction to customize their ads for better conversions or build lookalike audiences.

What are Facebook custom events?

Facebook Custom Events are a way to track user interactions with your website that hasn’t been predefined. For example, you might have specific CTAs where you want to track the conversion or perhaps even track offline events.

The great thing about custom events on Facebook is that you can create them for any action you want.

Often this is tracking website visitor behavior. But it can also analyze more specific actions or even define details of some standard events.  

Examples of custom events for Facebook include:

• Time on page
• Page views per session
• Form submissions, including questionnaires, download forms, or inquiry forms
• Value of purchases (from standard events)
• Other site pages visited
• Offline events such as events attended, stores visited, or purchases made offline

Facebook custom events can be a powerful way to boost your marketing campaigns. By being able to track conversions and understand how people interact with your ads, you can optimize future campaigns and bring even more people into your Facebook marketing funnels.

You can track your standard or custom events and, of course, any conversions from these events in the Facebook Analytics dashboard.  

How to track Facebook custom events

To track custom events on Facebook, you’ll need to use the Meta Pixel (which is the new name for the Facebook Pixel). This piece of code is added to your website or mobile app, allowing you to track user behavior and send that data back to Meta, where it can be used to optimize your ad campaigns.

To set up the Meta Pixel, you’ll need to go through the Ads Manager dashboard using these steps:

1. Go to the Meta Ads Manager and click the “Pixels” tab.
2. Click on the “Create a Pixel” button.
3. Give your pixel a name and click “Create.”
4. Follow the instructions to install the pixel on your website or mobile app.

Once you’ve installed the Meta Pixel, you can start tracking custom events.  

To do this, you’ll need to use the “trackCustom” function, which allows you to specify the event you want to track and any relevant parameters. For example, if you want to track when a user adds an item to their shopping cart, you might use the following code:

fbq(‘trackCustom’, ‘AddToCart’, {value: ‘10.00’, currency: ‘USD’});

This code tells the Meta to track a custom event called “AddToCart” and includes two parameters: the value of the item added to the cart and the currency.

Setting up a custom audience

To create a custom audience, you’ll need to use the “fbq” function and specify the audience you want to create. For example, to create an audience of users who have added items to their shopping cart, you might use the following code:

fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToCart’);

This code tells the Facebook Pixel to track the “AddToCart” event and create a custom audience of users who have taken this action.

Tracking custom conversions

Custom conversions allow you to track specific actions that users take on your website or mobile app, such as completing a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. To create a custom conversion, you’ll need to use the “fbq” function and specify the conversion you want to track.

This might be a specific sale item, a service you offer, or even a free trial.

How to set up tracking and analytics for custom events

To track your Facebook custom events, audiences, and conversions, you’ll need to use the Meta Pixel. Facebook Analytics is no longer available, but there are several tools that Meta for Business provides to help you monitor the performance of your campaigns.

These are:

• Meta Business Suite
• Meta Ads Manager
• Meta Events Manager

Business Suite allows you to track and edit all your ad campaigns across Facebook and Instagram. However, the tools are a little fragmented, so the events manager loads as a separate tool within your Meta dashboard.

Read Meta’s guide to setting up your custom conversions here.

You can use the data and insights provided by the Meta Events Manager to understand how people are interacting with your website or app and identify trends and patterns in their behavior. This can help you optimize your website or app and measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

Although Meta’s suite of analysis tools is great, you aren’t restricted to just using their dashboard. There are plenty of tools to help you manage your PPC campaigns, including tracking your custom events and custom conversions.  

One of these is Google Tag Manager. To track Meta pixel events and conversions in Google Tag Manager, follow these steps:

• Go to Meta Events Manager
• Click on the Meta Pixel you want to integrate with Google Tag Manager
• Hit the ‘Manage Interactions’ button. It’s on the far right-hand side of the desktop dashboard.
• You’ll see a pop-up with available interactions, which will include ‘ browser pixel’
• Click Manage and select ‘Add to another website’
• Click on ‘Install code manually’
• Copy the base code (click on ‘copy’)
• Go to Google Tag Manager and create a new custom HTML tag
• Rename your new tag something like ‘Meta pixel’
• Paste the code from Meta into the code area and save
• Choose your Meta tag to track across all pages on your website

From here, you will have your Pixel installed and ready to go, and you can track the data on Google tag manager.

So how can you optimize your Facebook and Instagram campaigns, and specifically your custom events?

Optimize for desktop vs. mobile devices

If you’re running ad campaigns on Facebook or Instagram, you will need to have optimized your ads for mobile users. 

According to research from Facebook, mobile users are more likely to convert than desktop users and tend to spend more than their traditional counterparts.  

Mobile optimization is crucial if you’re trying to sell something, as there’s a much higher chance that someone will purchase on a phone or tablet than they would on a laptop or desktop computer.

Another thing to remember is that mobile users make up the majority of internet traffic. And for Facebook or Instagram users, this is even more important as users are mostly on the apps.  

And when it comes to ads on Facebook or Instagram, you should also make sure you have a strategy to avoid traffic from fake accounts. With an estimated 1.4 billion fake accounts on Facebook alone, these non-genuine accounts can greatly impact your ad spend.

Blocking fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram

Unfortunately, you can’t use Facebook’s custom events to spot and block non-genuine traffic. These accounts are often managed by bots and are used for anything from spreading disinformation to simply liking and engaging with accounts for money.

Although Facebook and Instagram regularly clear the decks and boot bots and fake accounts off their platforms, they usually catch up with the problem rather than proactively prevent it.

Read our guide to ad fraud on Facebook.

ClickCease is the industry-leading choice for digital marketers who want to avoid fraud on their paid ads. By monitoring traffic based on over 100 data points, ClickCease blocks fake accounts and bots in real time. And no, it doesn’t block genuine human customers.

Run your own traffic audit on your Instagram or Facebook Ads with a free 7-day trial of ClickCease.

The post How to optimize for Facebook custom events appeared first on ClickCease Blog.

While you can’t guarantee that you’ll beat them to the punch every time, you can at least take a peek at what they’re doing and use it to fine-tune your strategy.

Keep reading for 15 of the best PPC keyword spying tools to keep an eye on your competition, reduce the work you have to do, and improve your results!   

What are ad spy tools?

When it comes to optimizing PPC ads, a key area to help improve is by tracking your competition. And being able to use spy tools gives you the ability to get the type of insight that can be hard to find anywhere else. These PPC tools take most of the guesswork out of tweaking your ads so you can beat your competition more often when it comes to paid search rankings. And many of them also monitor organic search rankings, making them great tools for content marketers using both PPC and SEO.

How do these PPC ad spy tools work?

Although there are many variable ad tools, the one thing they have in common is that they track your ad performance vs. your competition. And by collating that data, you then have some great at-a-glance information to make informed decisions to change and optimize your ads.

By viewing your competitor ads, you can see what is working for your competitors, track ranking positions, view competitors landing pages, and analyze their ad copy or keyword bidding. Some spy tools even give you an estimated ad budget for your business competitors and will also show you where their ads are placed across multiple platforms. Most tools will allow you to track specific keywords or keyword groups, and many will also offer alerts if your ads are underperforming.

Be aware, though, that some PPC spy tools will work with multiple platforms, while many will also focus on one platform.

The best PPC spy tools

Our list of the best PPC spy tools is in no particular order. But if you’re looking for a great tool to keep an eye on your PPC competitors, spot profitable keywords which you might be missing out on, or track your ranking positions or ad performance, all of these tools offer something useful.

1. SpyFu

SpyFu is considered one of the best PPC spy tools out there for several reasons. One of the biggest is how much you can actually learn about your competitors. From bidding information to the total budget spent, this tool allows you to be a fly on the wall at your competitor’s strategy session.   

SpyFu also has a cool feature called Kombat that lets you compare keyword overlap between two PPC campaigns. This allows you to refocus your campaigns, determine which keywords have fierce competition, and adjust accordingly.

Prices start from $33 per month, making SpyFu an affordable option for marketers looking to spy on their competitors’ ads.  

2. BigSpy

This useful PPC spy tool allows users to track ads on a wide range of websites, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter ads (among others). Note that this list doesn’t include Google Ads or any other search ads platform, so this is best suited for social media advertisers.

However, if you want to track things like the ad engagement, the landing page associated with the ad, analyze the ad text, or view the audience targeting, then BigSpy is a pretty cool tool.  

BigSpy also starts at a very affordable level, costing just $9 per month for the basic package. This still allows you to analyze Facebook and Instagram ads and track 25 ads per day.

3. Google Auction Insights

If you’re looking to spy on your competitor’s Google Ad campaigns, Google Auction Insights offers an excellent and free solution. It allows you to see exactly who you’re competing against in your PPC ad auctions.

Everything from competitors’ websites to their Google ads impressions and shares becomes clear to you. The tool also helps you maintain focus since there are potentially dozens or even hundreds of competitors out there.

But only showing you competitors that bid on the same search terms as you can help focus your attention where it truly counts.

Since it’s pretty much integrated into the Google Keyword research tool, you can conduct PPC keyword research using the information you gleaned from the competition’s Google Ads.

4. Ad Beat

This super cool tool analyzes your competitors’ domain and tells you exactly how many ads they have been running and where. It also shows you the creative types (banners, videos, search, etc.) and can even tell you which publisher sites have shown their ads.  

You can also spy on their videos, landing pages, native content, and much more. All in all, a very cool tool for anyone who wants to be kept in the loop with the competition’s ad efforts.

Ad Beat doesn’t come cheap, though, with the standard price clocking in at $249 per month. 

5. Ahrefs

As far as PPC spy tools go, Ahrefs is one of the most indispensable in a marketer’s kit because it’s useful for everything from tracking ranking positions to keyword research.

But Ahrefs’ organic search report also allows you to check the exact keywords your competitors are ranking for and how much traffic they get from it.

There are also other features like the Top Pages report that shows which pages send the most traffic to competitor sites and the Content Gap that shows the keywords competitors are ranking for but you aren’t. With subscriptions starting from $99 per month, Ahrefs is worth it for much more than just its PPC spying capabilities.

6. SEMrush

SEMrush is another top-rated SEO tool marketers use to track dozens of SEO metrics. But it’s also an incredible PPC spy tool. If you’re looking to spy on your competitors and get data on their bidding, PLAs, and Youtube ads, SEMrush is perfect for you.

Go further by spying on which ad copies are performing the best, how your keywords compare with your competition’s, and, more importantly, using the Keyword Kombat game to learn how keywords compare.

The beauty of using spy tools like SEMrush is that you can create a strategy that combines Google search optimization with your PPC ads for the best results.

With packages starting at $99.95 per month, SEMrush is a tool you can’t ignore.  

7. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is one of the most popular PPC spy tools thanks to its traffic analyzing feature. It helps you to view the total traffic gained by any domain, and you can even compare it to yours.

It also has other features that make it an excellent spying tool. For example, SimilarWeb allows you to see the total number of organic keywords vs. paid keywords for a competitor’s URL. You can also see the cost per click and how much traffic each keyword drove to the website.

In fact, SimilarWeb offers a broad suite of analytical tools to track data across organic, paid, and affiliate ad campaigns, as well as market research, sales analysis, and much more.

With packages starting at $167 per month, SimilarWeb is an impressive tool and one with broad applications.

8. MixRank

MixRank helps you check out what happens after visitors have interacted with your competitor’s Google ads. It has a huge database of 20M + mobile apps and 80M+ websites and can show you info on competitor landing pages and PPC campaigns. 

MixRank is highly useful for app marketers because it can also help them stay on top of the mobile market trends before anyone else even knows what’s happening. And because you have access to competitor landing pages, you can craft a truly holistic strategy.

9. iSpionage

iSpionage is a great alternative to many of the PPC spy tools on this list because it combines a lot of spy features into one. Speaking in terms of goals, marketers often use iSpionage to optimize conversion rates and increase leads generated.   

Some of the features include monitoring competitor spending (across multiple networks, from Google Ads to Bing PPC ads) and beating your competitors to available industry leads. With iSpionage, you can also sneak a peak at your competitors’ ad budgets, placements, and landing pages and identify content gaps to get the lead on your rivals.   

Pricing starts from $50 per month, allowing an affordable option to track your competitors’ keywords and ad performance.

10. The Search Monitor

Tracking your PPC performance across multiple territories and regions can quickly get complicated for enterprises or larger businesses. And that’s where The Search Monitor comes in.

Offering a suite of tools to monitor your brand (and your competitors), including tracking affiliate violations, competitor activity on search terms, and bids on your branded keywords, the Search Monitor is a powerful tool. It even allows you to automate and track takedown requests for brand violations.  

Like many of the PPC spy tools on this list, there are a lot of features. But being able to track competitor keyword bids, ad performance, and brand keyword bidding is the bread and butter here.

A tool this powerful doesn’t come cheap, with prices starting from around $600 per month.

11. Facebook’s Ad Library

Spying on your competitors’ Google Ads and landing pages is great. But if you’re relying heavily on social media ads, and specifically Meta’s suite of platforms, you’ll want to know what’s happening here too.  

Facebook’s Ad Library is a convenient and free way to spy on your competitor’s ads to get a real insight into what they are up to on the platform. And because Facebook gives you access to more than just your direct competitors’ ads, you can easily study the landscape before exploring a new audience or niche on Facebook or Instagram. 

Oh, and yes, it is free if you use Facebook Ads.

12. Stillio

Stillio is another landing page spy app, although this one requires a bit of foresight. If you’re up against a specific competitor and want to see everything they do, Stillio will take automatic screenshots of the URL daily.

This is useful if you want to see tweaks in their approaches, such as offers, pricing, or new content. Combined with traffic analysis tools, you can clearly follow your competitor’s thought process and maybe even predict their next steps.

While it’s not specifically a PPC tracking software, Stillio can help you spy on landing pages, which can make or break ad campaigns.

There is a free 14-day trial, and after this, you’ll need to pay $29 per month for the basic package.

13. Follow

Follow allows you to follow your competitor’s activity with surprising detail. Everything from traffic estimates to their affiliate marketing insights is yours for gleaning.

If you want even more control, Follow has a Chrome extension that lets you pull concise data from the websites and landing pages you visit.

There are other features as well – the notifications you get when a website has a new activity or social media mention and the ability to share our insights with your team – that make it a great addition to any marketer’s toolkit.

Follow actually offers a decent free package, with 50 monthly searches of URLs. But the paid package is also very affordable, with an annual basic package at $297 or a monthly package for $37.

14. Serpstat

Serpstat is great when trying to review the competition around any of your keywords. You can check the CPC of each keyword and then view related keywords that top-ranked domains are also bidding on. Use this to identify interesting gaps in your competitor’s strategy and take advantage of them.

Serpstat also allows you to monitor competitor domain performance over time. How many organic keywords are they ranking for? How many PPC keywords are they bidding on? How high are they on the Google search results page? You’ll have all the answers.

Pricing starts from $55 per month for the Lite package or $119 for the Standard.

15. Moat

Moat belongs in a unique category of PPC spy tools because it allows you to see your competitor’s ads and, more specifically, where they were last seen. This allows you to track all the places that your competition is advertising so you can piece together their strategy and try to beat it.

Moat also shows you your competitor’s past ads (everything from mobile ads and ad copy to even the pictures used) in case you want to do deeper research and track their progression over time.

This may help you view your own efforts contextually or even measure your company’s growth alongside your competitors’.

Moat is built for enterprise customers, and there is no readily available pricing info, so you’ll need to contact them for a quote.

16. ClickCease

Although ClickCease is not a dedicated PPC spy tool, our dashboard allows you to track fake clicks on your PPC ads. This form of invalid traffic, or click fraud, was responsible for annual marketing losses of over $41 billion in 2021, with that figure rising to over $60 billion in 2022.

But it’s not just blocking bad clicks. ClickCease also comes bundled with AdSpy, a unique tool that allows you to track your competition’s Google Ads campaigns and get notified whenever anyone new bids on your search terms.

This early warning system allows you to track your competition, adjust your bids and improve your campaign performance.

You can try ClickCease, and AdSpy, for free for 7 days. Packages start from $55 per month for the standard protection.

Read more about the essential PPC tools to improve your PPC advertising campaigns.

The Bottom Line

There are many ways to beat the competition and boost your conversions; knowing what your competitors are doing just happens to be one of the most important. Everything from activity on their landing pages to their paid ads is a crucial piece of the puzzle. And that’s why these PPC tools can make a huge difference to your campaign goals and, potentially, your PPC website traffic.

But it’s equally important to protect your ads once they’re up and running. Invalid traffic and click bots can skew your data, increase your CPC, and inflate your ad budget.    

The good news is that ClickCease offers advanced click fraud protection for your PPC campaigns and AdSpy, a powerful competitor PPC spy tool, so you can supercharge your campaigns and beat your competition.   

Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial today.  

The post The best PPC spy tools to get ahead of the competition appeared first on ClickCease Blog.

If you don’t already use split testing, this post will walk you through what it is, why it’s so effective, and some of the ways you can use it in your marketing campaigns. We’ll also explore additional optimizations you can add to your split testing to make them even more effective.  

What is split testing?

Split testing is also known as A/B testing, and it’s the practice of testing multiple versions of landing pages, ads, or emails to find better performers. The highest converting versions after the split test are then used more often.

When you launch a split test, your total traffic is distributed across all the test pages. Each one’s performance is traced and analyzed to identify the best performer. The split test software will then thin the herd by gradually allocating more traffic to the better pages until you find whichever is best for conversion rate optimization.

Understanding how to make great landing pages is a key part of split testing with PPC ads.

Why do so many marketers use split testing?

Regardless of your split testing methodology, there are three significant benefits to running a split test:

• Accuracy
• Automation
• Optimization opportunities.

Split testing is mostly handled by software which means you can expect pinpoint accuracy. This accuracy also lets you test even the tiniest changes, from ad copy headlines to the position and color of the CTA button.

All you’d have to do is create identical versions of the testing criteria and change measurable elements. The software will run the test and churn out accurate and actionable data.

In this way, you can optimize all your marketing efforts without investing an unreasonable amount of time. 

The split testing cost is usually nothing compared to the payoff from finding the best page elements in your samples. However, it’s a good idea to follow best practices, so you get the most bang for your buck.

Here are some of the best ways to run a split test.

Four split testing best practices

1. Limit variables

Variables can throw a wrench in any experiment, and split testing is no different. Testing your ads in a vacuum with zero unplanned variables would be best, but that will never happen.

What you can do is control as much as you can. For example, ensure the traffic source is the same for all variations of the landing pages when you run split tests. You don’t want to send hot leads to one page, and cold leads to another. 

You should also avoid getting tripped up by too many split testing criteria. If you wish to test multiple things in your ad, consider breaking it up into several small tests so you can easily measure the outcome.

2. Drive as much traffic as possible

The more traffic you have going to your tests, the more data you’ll be able to pull out. Otherwise, you’ll have statistically insignificant results – like four people responding to ad 1 while 5 respond to ad 2.

If you find that traffic will be a problem, it might be a good idea to first invest your resources in generating sufficient traffic. Raising traffic has a good chance of increasing your conversions to begin with. Once You have enough traffic, you can be sure that the split testing works, and then proceed to measure and optimize as necessary.

3. Use the data exhaustively

Sometimes your variations will produce a massive improvement, and other times, they will be minute ones. But regardless of the outcome, it’s critical that you use everything you’ve learned in every way that you can. 

Of course, this goes hand-in-hand with running the split tests exhaustively. Your first split test is unlikely to yield any real info, but after driving a lot of traffic through it, patterns will start to emerge.

If the improvements are significant, then you and your team will probably begin implementation immediately. But even if the test fails woefully, you’ve at least learned of one approach that won’t work. Any successful split testing spirit is one that yielded good data, regardless of the result.

When optimizing for performance, understanding what works can be just as important as finding what doesn’t works. The key is to extract insights from the split test results and move on.

4. Keep testing

More often than not, split testing will highlight minor improvements that you can make. That’s why one split test isn’t enough to draw a lasting conclusion.

A better plan is to keep testing and uncovering these minute improvements, tweaking your ads and pages until you arrive at the best possible versions with the highest conversions.

Best tools for split testing

Here are some of the best split testing tools for small and large businesses

• Adobe Target: A well-known split testing enterprise tool that offers a lot of personalization options
• Google Optimize: Offers seamless integration with Google Analytics while also letting you test multiple website variations
• Optimizely: Allows you to do A/B testing, multivariate testing, as well as other web content management
• Convert: Convert is tailored for SMEs and offers a simple drag-and-drop system to create A/B and multivariate split testing.
• Visual Website Optimizer (VWO): An enterprise-level split testing tool, perfect for testing products, websites, and even apps. 

Why is split testing important?

Split testing is an important process as it can identify which marketing methods are most effective. An A-B test can also help you test assumptions before investing too much. Every ad you launch costs money, and it only makes sense to allocate the largest budget to the best ads. But how do you find out which ones will have the highest conversion?

Even though there are no limits to what you can spit test, most marketers prefer only to split test when they expect statistically significant results.

Testing four positions of your “Buy now” button may seem like a good idea, but if the web page is rarely visited, you could run the test for months before getting any actionable data.

That’s why it’s better to focus on high-priority variables like high-traffic web pages and Google ads.

Major split testing mistakes to avoid

Split testing without a hypothesis

The primary purpose of a split test is to test a hypothesis. This allows you to create tests that can either validate or disprove your hypothesis. Otherwise, the best results will have no meaning since you can’t adequately interpret them.

So if you’re testing two versions of the same landing page, ensure you know exactly which elements are being tested, so you know what to do differently. 

Betting it all on the results

Split testing is only one of the tools you can use to optimize conversions as a marketer. Sometimes, it yields excellent results, but other times, you’ll need to add other strategies.

It’s also important to remember that the key may be to boost your overall traffic. If you get 200 visitors and split testing helps you raise your conversion from 10% to 20%, that’s still just 40 conversions

But double the traffic, and you’ll get the same 40 sales, even before applying your split testing results. This is why it’s a good idea to look to other strategies that drive web traffic.

Split testing insignificant values

While rebranding its logo, Google tested 41 different shades of blue. But your business probably shouldn’t. As one of the largest and most recognizable brands in the world, Google has dozens of products, and billions of customers and is serving businesses in a wide range of industries.

As a result, the split testing for their logo color makes sense from a revenue and branding standpoint. The experiment also reportedly yielded about $200M of revenue in a year (The Guardian).

Unless your business can reasonably expect the same financial payoff from split testing brand colors, you should probably split test variables with greater weight.

Driving too much traffic to bad performers

This may seem counterintuitive since you need enough traffic to make the split tests worth it. But imagine that you’re testing two ads – one with a 1% conversion rate and one with 15%. Every user you send to the poor-performing ad is basically lost, and you may never get them back.

As a result, it’s important to constantly modify your tests so that you’re sending less and less traffic to the poor performers. This ensures that you’re gathering useful data and putting it to use without sacrificing any conversions.

Advanced split testing for pros

Here is a final tip that you can use to optimize your campaigns – keep bot traffic away from your ads and landing pages. On average 14% of ad revenue is lost to bot clicks (ClickCease), and on average 40% of all web traffic is from bots. (Imperva)

This has two implications. First, it means that your A/B tests are highly skewed as a large chunk of your data is produced by “users” who will never convert.

Secondly, in addition to your split testing costs, you also have to deal with revenue lost to click fraud. Unless your business has bottomless pockets, you need to nip these in the bud ASAP.

That’s where ClickCease comes in. Our service offers click fraud protection that ensures only real users interact with your ads. And with Bot Zapping you can keep bots off your WordPress website and prevent sneaky bot based fraud such as account takeover, payment card fraud and spam injection. With ClickCease, you can test with confidence, trust the results, and save your business a lot of money.

Run your own traffic audit with ClickCease with our 7 day FREE trial.

The post What is split testing and how can you manage it? appeared first on ClickCease Blog.

But did you know you can customize your dashboard experience? This can be done using both Google’s own software and a range of third-party dashboard providers.

Google actually makes it easy to create a customized view using dashboard templates to help you stay on top of your most important Google Ads metrics.

But you might also want to add extra insight, collate information from across other ad campaigns or go deeper than the default view allows. 

So, if you’re wondering what data you can access to check and optimize campaign performance, we’ll take a closer look at the world of Google Ads dashboards.

Why do I need a custom Google Ads dashboard?

The Google Ads dashboard offers an essential overview of your ad campaigns with the key metrics you need. But by creating your own customized dashboard for Google Ads you can view performance metrics that are tailored to your specific needs quickly and easily.

Most search engine marketers will spend a lot of time reviewing their Google Ads campaign performance and sharing it across departments. So having the right statistics to view can make the difference to both your own workflow and if you need to collaborate with team members or clients.

These custom dashboards can be accessed easily so you can switch between them without too much hassle.

You can also share custom dashboards with specific people, for example, team members or clients. This makes it easy to share campaign-specific data without needing to grant access to your standard dashboard. 

So how can you set up your own custom Google Ads dashboard?

How can you set up a custom dashboard in Google Ads?

The custom dashboards can be accessed from the ‘Reports’ icon at the top of your Google Ads homepage.

On this page, you’ll be presented with a blank canvas to create your custom dashboard. You can view a sample dashboard to get the creative juices flowing or jump straight in.

If you start with the new dashboard, you’ll see a blank canvas of 12 blocks – two rows of six.

You can then insert your elements into these blocks.

You’ll find the full instructions on Google’s page for creating and editing custom dashboards.

When setting up a custom Google Ads dashboard you can create using the templates for:

• Reports
• Scorecard
• Notes

Reports

This is where you add the data about your campaign results and performance. You’ll find all manner of bar charts, pie charts, and additional insights. An example of the reports you can integrate into your dashboard using this category include:

• Conversion data
• Traffic data by time, date, or location
• Auction insights such as keyword or campaign performance 
• Comparisons between paid and organic search

Scorecards

With scorecards, you can monitor important metrics such as bounce rate, conversions, ad impressions, and your click-through rate.

The scorecard can be customized by date range such as previous 30 days or a specific date.

You can also customize the view as a chart, percentage view, or absolute change over the specified time period.

Note

As it sounds, this is where you can add notes related to your dashboard. This can be useful to add context or information for other viewers of your custom dashboard.

Sharing Google Ads dashboards

You can schedule a snapshot of the report in your dashboard with whoever you like, via email. Simply hit the share button add their email and customize the time, date, or frequency you’d like to share the data.

If you prefer, you can download a snapshot of the dashboard as a PDF by hitting the download button. This is obviously useful for adding to reports or presentations. 

Alternative Google Ads custom dashboards

Monitoring your Google Ad campaigns doesn’t just fall to Google.

There is, of course, a huge selection of software tools that can be used to manage your Google Ads as well. 

All of these tools can easily integrate with your Google Ads accounts and be used to monitor everything from your ad impressions or advertising budget to your conversion rate and other key performance and engagement metrics.

Some popular options include:

• Adzooma
• Adalysis
• Funnel
• Report Garden
• Optmyzr
• Skai
• ClickCease

All of these tools are built to monitor and optimize your PPC campaigns, giving a different perspective and a more complete view. And you can also export the data from these custom dashboards for your clients, or to present it to your own team, or as part of a PPC audit.

Taking Adzooma as an example, you can monitor ad campaign performance across multiple platforms, not just Google Ads. So if you need to see how your key metrics for Meta for Business ads are performing vs Google then you can add that to your custom dashboard.

With ClickCease, we focus on preventing fake traffic from bots or competitors. This invalid traffic, known as click fraud, can account for up to 60% of clicks and views on Google Ads campaigns. 

Find out more in our complete guide to click fraud.

Using ClickCease gives you a unique view of your invalid traffic that Google doesn’t see. For example, although Google does pick up invalid traffic, it isn’t in real-time. So when traffic is picked up as fraudulent, you’ll either need to apply for a refund yourself or wait for Google to refund you.

ClickCease also works with Facebook Ads and Bing Ads and can help greatly improve your ROAS on your ad campaigns.

Try out ClickCease for FREE for 7 days and get a completely different view of your Google Ads campaigns.

The post Everything You Wanted to Know About Google Ads Custom Dashboards appeared first on ClickCease Blog.

You’ll want to take a look at the auction insight reporting tool for Google Ads. This treasure trove of information can help you adjust your bids and work out areas you need to improve to rank higher.

What is Auction Insights for Google Ads?

The Auction Insights report is a downloadable data sheet that shows how your keyword bids have performed in the real time bidding auctions. It lets you compare the performance of your individual keywords and ad campaigns against anyone else in those auctions.

The theory is that you can see where your ads are performing and where they are falling short – and by how much. You can even see where your ads have tied with a competitor and whether your ad came out on top or not.

Auction Insights is available for:

• Google paid search
• Google Shopping
• Performance Max campaigns

You can then access six unique statistics related to the ad performance. These are:

• Impression share
• Overlap rate
• Outranking share
• Position above rate (Search campaigns only)
• Top of page rate (Search campaigns only)
• Absolute top of page rate (Search campaigns only)

How to access the auction insight report

Your auction insights report can be generated for the Google Ads campaigns that meet the minimum threshold for activity. What is the minimum threshold? Well, no one actually says, but based on other requirements for audience analysis, at least 1000 visitors within the past 30 days will be about sufficient.

To access the data, you obviously need to login to your Google Ads account.

You can then access data based on:

• Campaigns
• Search keywords 
• Ad groups

Choose the page for the data you want to analyze. Once inside, you’ll be presented with a list of available campaigns, keywords, or ad groups. Click the tick boxes for the ones you want to view.

Click on the Auction Insights button and you’ll be taken to the report.

If you have selected only search or shopping campaigns then you’ll have the data available right there. If you’ve selected a mix of search and shopping results then you’ll need to hit the corresponding radio button to switch between pages.

You can then, of course, filter your results.

How to read your auction insights data

So you’ve accessed the auction insights report, downloaded your data and now you’re wondering what it all means. 

Impression share

Impression share is calculated by working out the actual total of impressions against the potential total that were available. So for example, if your ad received 1000 impressions from a potential total of 10,000 then you’d have an impression share of 10%.

Overlap rate

If your competitor’s ad receives an impression at the same time as your ad then this is an overlap. The overlap rate measures how often your competitor’s ads were shown at the same time as yours. So for 20%, your competitor’s ads showed two times in every ten impressions.

Outranking share

As you might have guessed, this is the amount of times your ad outranked a competitor. And, of course, it also highlights the amount of times your competitors might have outranked you…

Position above rate (search only)

Similar to outranking share, this percentage explains how often your competitor’s ad appeared above you in head to head bids. And as stated, this can only be shown for paid search campaigns.

Top of page rate (search only)

Another self explanatory metric, the top of page rate highlights how often your ad appeared at the top of the paid search rankings. 

Absolute top of page rate (search only)

Similar to top of page rate, the absolute top of page rate refers to how often your ad is displayed at the top of the page as the very first ad. 

What can you do with auction insight data?

Now you can see how your ads are performing, the data might serve as a useful starting point for a PPC audit. Can you adjust your bids or up your ad spend? Do you need to work on your quality score? 

Google’s own recommendations for improving your search results and getting your ad ranked higher include:

• Increasing your ad campaign budgets
• Adjusting your keyword bids
• Focusing on improving your quality score
• Adjust targeting 

And of course, with the insight from the auction insight reports, you can see how these changes need to be enabled.

What isn’t shown in Google Ads insight data?

One thing you won’t see in your auction insights reports is data about invalid traffic. Often referred to as click fraud or ad fraud, invalid traffic is any form of non-genuine traffic clicking or viewing your paid ads.

You can actually view your invalid traffic, or IVT rate, in your Google Ads dashboard.

Google Ads normally picks up between 1-3% of clicks as invalid. However, by using our own fraud filters, an average of 14% of all clicks on paid search ads come from bots, competitor clicks, or other non-genuine sources.

Find out more in our complete guide to click fraud.

If you’re running Google Ads for your own business or on behalf of your clients, you can perform your own auction insights using ClickCease.

ClickCease will highlight fake traffic including fraud from sources such as VPNs or outside of geo location, fraud by specific keywords, and much more.

Sign up for a FREE 7 day trial of ClickCease to run your own traffic audit.

The post How to Use Google Ads Auction Insights and Rank Higher appeared first on ClickCease Blog.