Applying Cost Data in Google Analytics

In March Google updated the way in which Analytics tracks cost data. An email sent out by Google informed users that it will now only display Clicks/CPC Source/Paid Keyword Traffic if either the cost Data is applied or auto tagging is turned off and you manually tag your CPC ads.

This wasn’t a huge change but if you didn’t understand what it meant it could bring up some interesting changes in your reports. A lot of people use the filter described in this blog post – http://tiny.cc/IyI22 to focus on their CPC traffic and keyword referrals. In order to have this filter work properly you will need to ensure that the cost source data from your AdWords is applied to the profile. Google will no longer automatically tag the referrals from your AdWords account. In most cases you won’t even notice the difference as this option is defaulted on when you set up a new profile. However profiles set up previous to the change will not have this on unless you specified it and you may see some strange data in your reports.

Your browser may not support display of this image.If you don’t apply the cost data to your profile Google will no longer automatically track your traffic from AdWords as CPC traffic and any traffic from your AdWords account will be reported as direct traffic to your site. Below is a snapshot from an account where the cost data hadn’t been applied in the profile. You can see where Google stops automatically tracking CPC traffic and starts to attribute the referrals to direct traffic.

Your browser may not support display of this image.In order to Apply cost Data in your report from your AdWords account. Simply go to your profile settings. hit Edit and apply the cost source from the relevant AdWords account. This should ensure that any traffic you get is attributed to the right source.

---