applejack2
07-16-2004, 05:31 AM
I am after a second opinion on this before I try to sue Google under the Trades Description Act. Has anyone used their conversion tracking tools because as far as I am concerned they do not work and technically there is no way that they can work.
This is how Google says it works:-
"If the user clicks on your ad and reaches one of your conversion pages, the user’s browser sends the cookie to a Google server, and a small conversion tracking image is displayed on your site. When such a match is made, Google records a successful conversion for you."
This is why it can never work:-
Yet in the javascript code conversion.js there is no call made to the cookie and it is not sent back. What is sent back is a http image call to Googles server which passes the "google_conversion_id" the "google_conversion_value" the "google_conversion_label" and the date and time. Therefore as no read of any cookie is made on the conversion page every hit from that page whether or not it originated from clicking on Google's Adword or elsewhere, will return the image call to Google's server and therefore it is impossible to track.
What I don't understand is why they do this when to do it properly and actually read the cookie and if it exists then send the call to the server is so simple to do!!!!
What they should actually do and which again should be very simple is every time an Adword is servered up this writes a unique cookie say based upon the number of times that Adword has been called based upon the keyword so therefore it would be simple to identify every unique visitor who subsequently makes a sale without stats being screwed up if the users come from shared machines. If it worked in the first place that is!!!
However what is really disturbing about this is that if this doesn't work it throws doubt on the other systems they say they have in place and in particular for tracking click fraud.
I look forward to hearing from you all.
P.S.
I also asked them why I have to show their advert on my site after a user makes a sale. Their response was that it is because they want the user to know that they are being tracked. Okay so they want the user to know they are being tracked after they have been tracked. Which is a bit like bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Why the hell should my brand equity be potentially diminished because of pissing people off by Google when they are the ones supposedly doing the tracking. If they were really that concerned about letting the user know they should have a pop box on their site everytime a user clicks on an Adword informing them that they are about to be tracked and giving them the option not to be.
P.P.S.
You can easily get round this by putting the code on your own page and changing the image attributes for height and width to 0.
A new Netscape in the making I suspect, not because of what I just said but there is only one way they can go now and it is down!!!
This is how Google says it works:-
"If the user clicks on your ad and reaches one of your conversion pages, the user’s browser sends the cookie to a Google server, and a small conversion tracking image is displayed on your site. When such a match is made, Google records a successful conversion for you."
This is why it can never work:-
Yet in the javascript code conversion.js there is no call made to the cookie and it is not sent back. What is sent back is a http image call to Googles server which passes the "google_conversion_id" the "google_conversion_value" the "google_conversion_label" and the date and time. Therefore as no read of any cookie is made on the conversion page every hit from that page whether or not it originated from clicking on Google's Adword or elsewhere, will return the image call to Google's server and therefore it is impossible to track.
What I don't understand is why they do this when to do it properly and actually read the cookie and if it exists then send the call to the server is so simple to do!!!!
What they should actually do and which again should be very simple is every time an Adword is servered up this writes a unique cookie say based upon the number of times that Adword has been called based upon the keyword so therefore it would be simple to identify every unique visitor who subsequently makes a sale without stats being screwed up if the users come from shared machines. If it worked in the first place that is!!!
However what is really disturbing about this is that if this doesn't work it throws doubt on the other systems they say they have in place and in particular for tracking click fraud.
I look forward to hearing from you all.
P.S.
I also asked them why I have to show their advert on my site after a user makes a sale. Their response was that it is because they want the user to know that they are being tracked. Okay so they want the user to know they are being tracked after they have been tracked. Which is a bit like bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Why the hell should my brand equity be potentially diminished because of pissing people off by Google when they are the ones supposedly doing the tracking. If they were really that concerned about letting the user know they should have a pop box on their site everytime a user clicks on an Adword informing them that they are about to be tracked and giving them the option not to be.
P.P.S.
You can easily get round this by putting the code on your own page and changing the image attributes for height and width to 0.
A new Netscape in the making I suspect, not because of what I just said but there is only one way they can go now and it is down!!!