Separating Sponsored from Organic search referrals in logs

[djmdjmdjm]

What tools are people using to distinguish organic search results from sponsored search results?

I'm currently on Urchin 3 (through Hostway). I can view referals by search engine, but I have no way to seperate traffic through organic search from traffic through my sponsored search ads (same applies for all 3 major engines).

What tools are people using to get this information?

thanks - dan

[craigmn3]

I use webceo and am in love with it. It returns the truest results I have ever come across. It also tells me what's going to happen. It seems to go past the "regional" settings that I will get and let me know if google is smiling on me, or kicking me in the rear...before I see it. And the rankings are only the organic links

It is a free download, without time limit. A paid version is available with more options but I didn't need those. The free program also has a submission section and alot of reports, and optimization help.
I know what your thinking out there...no I am not connected to them in anyway...just a fan.

the program is available for download at:
http://www.webceo.com/

[schmeetz]

I do it manually. There's some solid stuff out there but it starts at $200/month and up.

[danners02]

Most sponsored results services provide stats on what traffic they sent you - compare that with your overall traffic, or you can specify a different URL for your sponsored ads, eg: www.mydomain.com?source=google-ads which your stats package will pick up on.

[dburdon]

DJM,

I use Statcounter across 10 campaigns. I tag all the Yahoo and Google paid traffic.

There are two problems.

Firstly you have to download the raw data into an Excel file, then separate the paid traffic via sorting. Its long winded and time consuming. I'm looking for a low cost programme to replace Statcounter.

Secondly, there's a limit on the number of records the Statcounter system will store. On heavy traffic campaigns I can only store and retrieve up to two days traffic.

[wwwizzard]

Would Google Analytics not do the trick?

[MagicBeanDip]

I use my own home-grown software to track incoming clicks from google adsense. It redirects to the landing page you specify in the query string and keeps a log of all clickthroughs.

Zip archive is at the bottom of this article:
Click Tracking Software

Direct link to download:
http://v1.magicbeandip.com/mbd-file/AffTrack01beta.zip

I set up my adsense ads to point to AffTrack.php and include the url of the landing page in as part of the query string. ie: mydomain.com/AffTrack.php?rpath=/LandingPage.html

I also usually add some extra bits to the query string to tell me where the click came from. ie: &ad=1 or &keyword=books.

[chadhaajay]

I'd suggest to go for Google Analytics. We are using it to separate the PPC traffic from organic search traffic. If you don't have the Google analytics invitation then you may want to try WebCEO software.

[darren13]

I use StatCounter, though agree with DBurdon above - not a lot of good when it comes to large numbers of records unfortunately, although really useful excepting that point.

I also use WebCeo a little, and that's absolutely brilliant for me to track rankings, check out competitors etc occasionally.

To separate out my PPC from my organic I always add a bit to the link I specify. For example with Yahoo/ex Overture, I have a campaign running for holiday cottages. I will specify the link in my PPC campaign as: blah blah mysite.co.uk/?overture for example. Just sticking that little /?overture on the end makes it easy for me to see in stats then.

HTH,

Darren.