Reporting on site link and ad extensions

[Ken Foster]

I use the API to download daily the Account, Ad, Keyword, Managed Placements and Search Query Performance reports.  This seems to work for 95% of the data we are tracking.  I'm told by our marketing team however that some destination URLs are not showing up in any of the reports.  These all seem to be site link URLs done using the Ad Extension capability. (I'm a developer using the API not a Marketing person using Ad Words, so if my terminology is wrong on anything I apologize.).

I've played with the Ad Extension Performance report, DestinationURL report and URL Performance report. The URLs in question do not appear on any of these reports either.  Does anyone know how I can report on (and to do that I need to get the URL back) these site link URLs?

A previous Forum thread mentioned CampaignAdExtensionService, is that what I need? Can anyone give a 50,000 foot level explanation of what I need to do to get the daily performance data using that service if it's the correct one? I mostly use the ad hoc reporting API. I do use Ad, Account and Campaign services to get current status (and any added/modified/deleted records) of the respective object, but I'm not familiar with CampaignAdExtensionService.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Ken

[Zweitze]

This is what I made of it:

 

You can get the results of site links by requesting field "ClickType" in your ad and keyword reports. When you do so, you get separate rows with clicktype="sitelink" for results of sitelinks. Note that you can only get results of all sitelinks together, you cannot get results of individual sitelinks. Then again, you can't see the results of individual sitelinks in the AdWords web interface either.

Note: field ClickType is also available in Managed Placement reports, but site links are not available in display networks.

 

You can use the CampaignAdExtension service to query and modify the existing site links. But that service won't allow you to learn the results (impressions, clicks etc) of the individual site links.

 

If you want to get the results of individual sitelinks, use unique URLs and a service like Google Analytics to distinguish them.

 

Hope this helps.

[Ken Foster]

Thanks for the response. I downloaded the AdPerformance report for yesterday once with, and then without the ClickType column. I can see the extra rows you mentioned however the URL is the same for both. I'm told by our marketing team that the Sitelink URL is supposed to be different. We relate data from this report to data we collected on our website. The way we match is through fields on the URL.  But I can't get the sitelink URL to be correct and therefore can not match it to our internal data.

Why isn't the actual URL available in the reports?

[Ewan Heming]

The URL in the Ad Performance Report is just the one for the Ad Headline itself, so you need to use the CampaignAdExtensionService and AdExtensionOverrideService to obtain the destination URL for a sitelink. There is an Ad Extensions Performance Report, but I can't see the URL in it.

[Zweitze]

As I tried to say earlier, the performance of individual sitelinks is not available in AdWords - not the AdWords web interface, not AdWords API.

 

It just isn't there.

 

You can ask Google (not in this forum, this is just API) to change AdWords so that information becomes available, and when it is, ask the API team to include it in the API. In the mean time, you can use Google Analytics to track their performance.

[Mark]

Hello All,

Is that true I can't get Site links URL using any of the reports?

If yes, what I can do to get sitelinks URL / Adlinks using Adwords API?

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hi Mark,

There is good news! You can use the Placeholder Feed Item Report in order to get stats aggregated at a sitelink level.

Cheers,

Anthony

AdWords API Team

[Mark]

Hello Anthony,

Yes, I got the stats. But not able to identify site kink Urls.
Can you please provide more details how I can get Site link URLS ?

Thanks

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hey Mark,

The AttributeValues field should contain your sitelink URLs. Alternatively, you can also use the Final URL Report where ClickType = SITELINKS.

[Mark]

Hello Anthony,

Yes, I got the 

But something is still not clear to me.

I got the AttributeValues field as a sitelink URLs, but some times URL come on 2nd position and sometime it is on 5th, is it right behaviour?

Also I am not able to get URLS from Final URL Report where ClickType = SITELINKS.

Is any thing special required to get Sitelinks using Final URL Report?

Thanks

[Anthony Madrigal]

Hello Mark,

Could you please send me your report query and client customer Id via Reply privately to author so that I can take a look?

Thanks,

Anthony

AdWords API Team