If you're into PPC and running Google AdWords, you should be using site links to improve your click through and gaining a larger search real estate and if you're not, can you really call yourself a paid search marketer? Especially when you're missing out on between 10-15% Increase in CTR (click through rate) according to Google. Site links have become increasingly popular and Adwords has not been shy with rolling out new ad extensions for paid search marketers to froth at the mouth over and beef up their search ads. The most popular extensions are:

Sitelinks extensions

Location extensions

Call extensions

Review extensions

Callout extensions

But there are many others extensions available to you in AdWords.

The feature release

On April 11, 2016, Google Analytics posted “release notes” with a laundry list of features that have been added. If you crave the maximum AdWords data that you can get your hands on, you’re going to love this new feature built into Google Analytics. While the release has been over a year ago the report has slowly filtered into accounts across the globe.

How it used to be

Before having this nifty report you might have gone the custom reporting route in order to better track site links performance in your AdWords ads. But Google Analytics has made a chance to now offer Sitelinks reporting as a standard offering in their reporting. Google had mentioned in the past that AdWords site links boost clickthrough rate on average by 10-20%, and for branded terms, 20-50%. Knowing that, plus the data we had access to the in AdWords platform on-site links was enough to keep us happy.

Yes, you can get a fair amount of data on site links by accessing ad extension stats in the AdWords dashboard. Things like clicks, clickthrough rate, costs, average position, etc. This shows you how the individual site links are performing, but we lacked the additional insight on what happened after a click on the site link.

Prerequisite for the report

To get access to this report you will have to sync your Google Analytics account with the Google Adwords account affiliated with your site.

To do this visit your Google analytics account

Select admin

Under properties view

Click all products linking

Select the link AdWords account

Click continue

How it access the report

To access the new Sitelinks reporting, on the left sidebar choose Acquisition -> AdWords section in Analytics and then finally select site links

Site links finally have a home in GA

Driving site link data directly into GA not only eliminates old manual tracking practices but makes it easier to build reporting dashboards, do comparisons and run tests. Having all the data in one place will make it easier to provide reports, do A/B testing and ultimately improve the value of site links for paid marketers. Google continues to use Analytics as the place to consolidate its other platforms data making it a more valuable tool for marketers from a range of disciplines. So what do you think of this new site links report? Let us know in the comments section below.

Contact us

If you want to know more about Google Analytics don’t be shy we’re happy to assist. Simply contact us here Source: Google Analytics release notes

Tags: Data Analysis, Google Adwords, google analytics, Tools