Google + SurveyGizmo, Part 1: Adwords
In the past two months we have received a huge number of questions concerning Google and SurveyGizmo integration. We’ve gotten so many, in fact, that we decided to write a three-part two-part article that shows everyone how to do just that.
This week: Part 1 - Tracking Keywords and Ad Type from Adwords
Next week: Part 2 -Hooking Your Survey up with Google Analytics & Conversion Funnels
This week we are going to show you how to link a landing page in SurveyGizmo to a Google Adword’s campaign and how to pass valuable information from Google into SurveyGizmo. The two pieces of information we are going to track are: 1) the keyword that triggered your Ad’s clickthrough and 2) whether your ad was shown on a search results page or on the content network.
Let’s leap right in:
Step 1 - Create your Offer Landing Page
Naturally, before we can go into Adwords and set up our campaign, we need to create a Landing Page for the offer. So, what exactly is a “landing page”?
Definition of a Landing Page
The destination web Page for people responding to an advertisement, designed specifically for that campaign and audience. The key difference between a home page and a landing page is that the former must be all things to all visitors, while the landing page should be narrowly designed to optimize conversion for a specific campaign.
The easiest way to create a landing page in SurveyGizmo is to create a new survey with our landing page template and then add your own text and images. Remember, with SurveyGizmo you can brand your landing page any way you want; our templates are just starting points.
Here are some tips for your landing page:
- Don’t ask for more information than you need. Each ‘extra’ field you ask for might cost you valuable leads.
- If you have a complicated qualification process, break it up into a few pages.
- Remember, you have all of SurveyGizmo’s features at your disposal. You can ask qualification questions or make your landing page interactive with Show/Hide logic!
Step 2 - Linking Google to your Landing Page
After you create your landing page, you need to setup your AdWord’s campaign to link to it. So, from your Adword’s control panel, copy the Survey Link that we provide you and paste it into the Adwords destination URL box. Google made an update on us, and no longer allows you to send people to a different destination URL then what is shown in the display URL. So, what you’ll want to do to make this work, is first embed the survey on to a page within your website. We suggest using the JavaScript method, as it is the easiest.
Now here is the cool trick!
We want to track which keywords are generating conversions. To do that, we tag a little extra line in the destination URL section, after the survey url landing page URL on your website, like this:
http://www.mylandingpage.com/?keyword={keyword}&from={ifsearch:search}{ifcontent:content}
This works because SurveyGizmo will automatically track data sent through the URL!
Now that we have keyword and ad type tied to every response, we can look at conversion as a whole, as in the report below. Just make sure to check off “Include URL Tokens in Summary report” for your report options:

Or, to get a more in-depth look, we can create a report that filters based on keyword and ad type.
If you are a Free user, you’ll have to export your data into Excel to see these keywords, but at the Pro level you get access to filtering so you can create reports right in SurveyGizmo.
That’s it for this week. If you have questions feel free to post them in the comments for this blog post. I’ll answer them as soon as I can.
Next week: We will show you how to perform A/B split tests on your landing page to see which version and offer text work best!


1
This is very timely information. I was just thinking along these lines after conducting my first 2 surveys.
Can’t wait for you to complete your series.
2
This is great! Say, does anyone have any suggestions for learning more about Adwords (strategies and use) in general? Is there a resource out there that covers all the angles in an easy-to-understand way?
Thanks
3
Great stuff! I’m recommending SurveyGizmo to my readers. (A little self-promotion: I’m the author of AdWords For Dummies, which covers all the AdWords angles in an extremely easy-to-understand way. (In case Brian is checking for answers to his questions.)
I’m a little confused about the tracking campaign feature. Is there a way to track lead sources from JV partners to an embedded survey on my website?
Thanks,
Howie
4
[...] research guide,  Keyword tools, Ask Database - search engine for surveys, Survey Monkey, Survey Gizmo, Google adwords tutorial, Leave a [...]
5
[...] If you use Google AdWords to advertise your website, you can take AdWords visitors to a special landing page with a survey or contact form on it. You can modify the survey link so Google will pass the search keywords over, and SurveyGizmo will automatically store them with the response. The keywords will tell you what drove people to your survey/landing page/lead generation form as well as if the lead is from an ad on the content network or search network. This can really help you optimize your AdWords investment. Examples are here and here. [...]
6
Does this work only with your survey software or does it work with other software at the same time.
If this does what you say then we could include this with our own urls, is this true as we are forced to do more keyword research to determine negative words.
7
Not too sure what happened to my post. I have been looking for how to get the query of the searched adword into my Google Analytics and I stumbled accross your site. Looks interesting as I use Woofu and it does not give me the tracking that you offer. Can I alter the above code to work with any site that I have control over.
8
It’s using standard google methods, so I suppose it’s possible to adapt. Of course, the tutorial has a focus on integration with SurveyGizmo, so you will be on your own for adapting it with your own sites.
9
Hi Goran,
If you are asking if you can change the Google code above to work with any domain that you are tracking through Google Analytics and pass the information into SG then? Yep, you sure can!
If you are interested in using this without using our software, you can still do that, but obviously you’ll have to find a way to capture and store (or act on) the data on your side.
Good luck on your endeavor!
Cheers,
-Christian