At LinkTrack, people generally want two kinds of data from our system.  They either want to know how many clicks their link got, and they want to know how many times the page was loaded.

The industry terms for these are clicks and impressions, and they’re two different animals.  That said, you can easily achieve either with LinkTrack.

Click Tracking

A click happens anytime someone sees your link in an email or on a web page, and uses their mouse to click and follow it to wherever it goes.  If you want to know how many times that’s happening, just copy and paste your tracking link anywhere you would put a regular link and we’ll count the number of clicks it gets and give you details about each one.

People use click tracking for:

• Pay-per-click advertising campaigns like Google AdWords.
• Bulk email campaigns to see which links the recipients are following.
• Twitter links to see which links get the most attention.

Impression Tracking

An impression happens whenever a web page element (like an image) is loaded.  Impressions are counted every time a page is loaded, regardless of whether the user clicks links or takes any other action on the page.  If you’re after impression tracking, check out our article on image tracking.  Essentially, it’s just a matter of pointing your tracking link to a small image, and then adding that image to your web page.  Our system will keep track of every time the image is loaded and report the details to you.

People use impression tracking to:

• Tell which pages of their web sites are getting the most visitors.
• Figure out whether the messages from their bulk email campaigns are being read.
• Gauge traffic on web site where they don’t have access to the traffic statistics.

Below I’ve written an advanced tutorial on how to collect conversion data using a LinkTrack link rather than the Adwords conversion tool.  The difference is that instead of having Google collect the data and filter out the conversions for you, we reverse the process so that we’re collecting the tracking data and filtering it ourselves.  This gives you a lot more control and flexibility for your reporting.  This tutorial assumes that you have created a LinkTrack tracking link that targets a web page designed to take orders, collect email addresses, etc. that also collects IP address and date/time information when people buy/signup/etc.

What is Google Adwords conversion tracking?

If you’re a fan of Google Adwords (like I am) you might have already discovered the conversion tool that you can use with your Adwords campaigns.  In a nutshell, the conversion tool tells you not only how many clicks your ad received, but also how many of those clicks resulted in the action you were trying to achieve – product purchase, information request, newsletter signup, etc.  This type of data is very valuable when determining the worth of an advertising campaign.  It’s great to generate a lot of traffic with an advertising campaign, but if that traffic is not converting into customers then you’re wasting money.

Why should I track my own conversions?

While I like the conversion tracking system in Adwords, I’ve always been a little leery about using it, and I have a couple of reasons:

1.       It’s JavaScript dependent.  JavaScript is my least favorite programming language because the code is interpreted by the user, meaning they can turn it off to ignore whatever you’re trying to achieve, or worse, alter it do something you didn’t intend.

2.       As an extension of #1, I also don’t like that I have to add a block of JavaScript code to each and every page I want to track conversions on and keep them updated as I change my business changes.

3.       Each Adwords link is allowed only one conversion tracking script.  What if you have more than one ‘success’ metric?  For example, what if a visitor comes to your site and signs up for the newsletter without purchasing a product?  With Adwords conversion tracking, you can only measure one or the other even though I would view either as a successful conversion.

4.       My gut feeling is that Google factors in the success rate of a particular ad into what they charge me.  They could very easily look at my conversion data and say, “This ad is bringing you lots of customers – we think you’re going to need to pay a premium for that.”

5.       To take that a little further, I have an overall concern with the amount of data Google is collecting about my business.  I’ll rant about this in another post sometime.

6.       Lastly, wouldn’t it be cool if you could track conversions through other PPC and advertising programs besides Google – and do it all from one place?

How do I do it with LinkTrack?

For my example, I’m using my LinkTrack tracking link as the destination for one of my Adwords ads so it will keep a separate record of individual clicks on each ad.  Since the LinkTrack web site records the IP address and timestamp whenever someone creates a new account, and I have that information available in a separate .csv file that I can open in Microsoft Excel.

Now all I have to do is download report data from my LinkTrack account (either for the specific link in question or my entire account at once) and compare it with the data from my own collection system.  I typically use IP addresses for comparison purposes and occasionally filter that with date/time stamps to get the most accurate results.  A little fancy Excel work will automate that process for you.  Here’s a copy of the Excel formula I use to compare two columns of data:

=IF(COUNTIF('LinkTrackData'!A:A,A1), "Conversion!","")

The best part about using LinkTrack to measure conversion data is that it you can use it on multiple marketing platforms!  It works equally well with Google Adwords, Yahoo! YPN, email advertising, banner advertising, etc.  and can tell you exactly where you’re traffic is coming from as well as which specific links to your site are generating the most revenue.

While this method is not for the faint of heart, it’s added a valuable metrics component to marketing system.  I’m also really proud that I’m able to use the utility I built in the course of my every day business.  I think that really says something about the quality of the product.

Lots of users are using the ‘password protection’ feature that comes with the premium accounts, so I thought I’d elaborate on what it does here and find out if anyone has any questions about how it works.

Usually, when you create a LinkTrack link and someone clicks it they get taken directly to the final destination you choose when you created the link.  With password protection, they’ll need to provide a password in order to reach that destination.

I’ve seen this used:

• On publicly linked special offers where the link owner doesn’t want the general public to have total access.
• With email marketing campaigns to more accurately gauge interest levels.
• And when the link owner really wants to distinguish human visitors from automated ones (bots won’t enter passwords).

If you want to see how it works, the link below will take you to Bill Gates’ Facebook page.

The link: http://linktrack.info/gates_facebook

The password is: bill

The “Remote Host” field seen in a link’s tracking history indicates the fully resolved host name for the IP address of the visitor.  The remote host is resolved using a reverse DNS lookup of the IP address in question.  This usually resolves to an address issued by the visitor’s internet service provider (the ISP) and can be used to determine the owner of the IP address.

Many businesses and a few individuals own their own static IP addresses and their remote host field will often resolve to a company owned domain.  In addition, I’ve found that many internet service providers include identifying information such as region and state in their naming scheme.

For example, my IP address resolves to pool-75-229-196-3.dllstx.fios.verizon.net.  This indicates that the IP address issued to me is owned by Verizon, and is part of their fiber-optic (FIOS) service. The ‘dllstx’ portion might indicate that I’m in the Dallas, Texas area (which I am).

For more information on reverse DNS lookups, check out  the Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_dns.

The advantage of the professional vs. the free account is the number of options available to you when you create a tracking link.  If you have a free account, here’s what you get when you want to create a link:

There’s a spot to put the URL you want to link to, some notes so you remember what it’s for, and a description that’s publicly available to the audience.  Links created with a free account expire after 30 days by default.

If you have a professional account, you see:

Which gives you the same URL, notes and description fields, plus:

• The ability to add a title to your link both for organization and if you want to make a vanity link.
• Ability to add an alert email so you get notifications for each of your click-throughs.
• Password protection in case you want to define a password to access the link.
• Ability to turn the link on and off whenever you want.
• Field to set your own expiration date (if you have a limited time offer for example), or no expiration date at all.

Here’s an itemized list of what you get with the paid accounts.

LinkTrack.info is kind of a long domain name for a link shortening service, but it’s personally important to me to be able to tell what a web site does from it’s domain name.  However, I know it’s important to have the shortest links possible so we’ll be registering another shorter domain to use with the service.  I’ll post about it here and update the system when it’s done.

I promise that all of our links will be backwards compatible, meaning your link to http://linktrack.info/your_link will also work with http://new.domain/your_link and you’ll be able to use whichever you feel most comfortable with.

I’m really pleased with the way the charting features came together, and people seem to be responding to them well.  They’re particularly surprised that they’re available in the free accounts as well as the premium ones.

Here’s a sample of the dashboard from my account, but all of the accounts have access to the same thing:

I’m currently tracking a couple of Google Adwords campaigns using my LinkTrack account.  This way I can see the exact keywords that are generating response from the campaign.  Here’s what they look like in my account:

A common question from LinkTrackers is: “How can I find out who an IP address belongs to?”

Presumably, the reason for this question is pretty simple – people want to know exactly who clicked their link.  Was it Bob in accounting or Sven Patterson in Nova Scotia?  Was Sven wearing that new parka I sent him?

Unfortunately, we can’t be that exact – yet.  What we can do is called an IP lookup.  I like to use http://whois.arin.net/ui for this.  In most cases an IP lookup will return the name of the user’s internet service provider like AT&T or Verizon.  Although not 100% accurate, you’ll often see contact information for the provider’s office that can help narrow down geographic location.

In a few cases (particularly with businesses) the IP address is dedicated to a particular group and lists their contact information instead of the service provider.

Keep in mind, however, that IP addresses can change on a regular basis for individual users; so don’t rely on them too heavily.  This is particularly true for anyone using a dialup internet connection.

That’s it for now.  Say hi to Sven for me.