GOOGLE’S ‘FINAL URLS’ ARE HERE
Google have finally decommissioned Destination URLs.
Since 1998, Destination URLs have been telling Google where to send the user once they click on an ad or in other words, it’s the web address to your landing page. In this upgrade, Google have now replaced the destination URL field with a final URL field.
In essence, they pretty much do the same job – a destination URL is where the user ends up, and the final URL is where the user ends up too. So what’s the difference and why do we care? Well, the issue is with tracking. The upgrade creates a new field for tracking management. The good news is if you don’t use tracking, you don’t need to change a thing.
If the domain of your final URL is the same as the display URL then no problem, simply stick the entire URL including any tracking parameters into the final URL as you did before. If you use a third party tracking solution then you need to use the separate tracking parameters field. Google doesn’t simply accept third party tracking URLs in the final URL as before. To do this, you need to speak to your supplier about the best way of setting this up.
We’ve found the transition an easy one. Google has auto upgraded any destination URLs that were on the same domain as the display URL. For any new ads, we simply use the final URL instead of the destination URL.
With third party tracking (such as Double Click or Atlas) our suppliers have integrated their URL parameters into the software for an easy transition.
Although this may be a big change within the industry, impact on our clients has been minimal and most importantly, there has been zero impact on their customers.
If you want to know more, support from Google can be found at the following links, or alternatively, get in touch with the team here at Circus.
