Adwords Releases Upgraded URLs

Today, Google announced the release of what are dubbed “upgraded URLs” for AdWords advertisers that use tracking parameters. For anyone who has toggled back and forth between a URL builder and Adwords while creating a suite of ads, this is very welcome news.

With this change, the landing page URL and the tracking parameters that make up the destination URL will be treated separately. The separation means that making changes to your tracking won’t necessarily send your ads back into editorial review and ad history and stats remain with the ads (see caveat below).

You can scale tracking parameters across various levels of your accounts and set up new custom tracking parameters.

Two New Components: Final URL + URL Options

Instead of setting the Destination URL, you’ll define the landing page in the new “Final URL” field. This is the actual landing page that the user sees after clicking on an ad. The final URL can include redirects within your domain (redirecting to a third-party domain is still a no-no) and tracking parameters.

The URL Options section is where you’ll find the ability to scale your tracking changes with the new tracking template and custom parameter fields. The benefit here is that you can manage the tracking parameters separately across various levels of your account without having to reset your ad performance stats.