Why do some destination URLs have manual tags, and some don’t? (AdWords)

July 13, 2017 1:57 PM

Hi all Marketo and Adwords heads! :) I'm fairly junior AdWords and don't understand why some why do some destination URLs have manual tags, and some don’t? Is there any reason for this not to be consistent throughout every destination URL? Do I need manual tags because the auto-tag GCLID doesn’t really tell us anything in Marketo? Is that something that is not translated into valuable data anywhere but through GA? Thanks
posted by bostonhill to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

Best answer: In the very old days, manual tags were needed to record the click's context (ad / campaign / etc) to be able to pass them out of Adwords into any other analytics tool. These days, most of that is handled automatically as long as you've properly linked the platforms. (Can't speak to Marketo, or your setup in particular) The manual tags could just be leftovers from older ads, or they could have been added to track some special project where the standard tracking wouldn't be sufficient. The tags are optional - they can provide extra bandwidth, but don't really hurt anything if not needed either.
posted by cfraenkel at 2:44 PM on July 13, 2017