What is happening with Destination URLs?

If you have an AdWords account, you may have received an email from Google recently entitled “Changes to your AdWords URL tracking”.

This change is in regard to the “Destination URL” – which is the URL of the page you direct the Ads to. So when someone clicks on your Ad, they are directed to the page you deem as the most appropriate for the search.

Recently Google have made a change to make it easier to add manual tracking code to these URL’s. In most cases this is done automatically so Google Analytics can determine when a visit came via Google AdWords. But some Advertisers add manual tracking e.g. for their internal systems.

As part of this change Google are removing the “Destination URL” field, and replacing it with the “Final Landing Page URL”. There will also be another field for those using manual tracking, called “Tracking Template Parameters”.

So beginning 1st July, if you don’t use manual tracking, Google will automatically upgrade your URL’s by copying the current “Destination URLs”, to the new “Final Landing Page URL” field for all ads and keywords.