It’s SilverDisc’s 17th Birthday today, so here’s a free gift of an idea for Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to consider.

Here at SilverDisc we’re often having to install and test new conversion tracking code for our PPC clients. Usually this involves searching for one of our client’s keywords on each search engine, clicking on it (thus incurring cost for the client) then going through the client’s site, making a test purchase and, later, checking that all the analytics has worked.

A cool feature that the search engines could add to improve efficiency would be a dummy campaign/ad-group/keyword that was automatically created by the engine itself within the PPC account specifically to test conversion tracking.

The keyword could be assigned by the engine itself, and could be very long, cryptic and unique to each client account, e.g. g54fr89fdcdjasdoe84.

• Searching for this keyword would always trigger the client’s ad
• Clicking this ad would not incur any real charges (although it may simulate a charge). Alternatively, a very low charge could be applied, e.g. £0.01.
• Conversion tracking could work much faster for this one keyword, e.g. near-real-time, to allow better, faster testing

This would save loads of time within agencies and mean that client accounts were up and running sooner, making more money for both clients and search engines.

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Rarely does Google give such a public ringing endorsement for a third party as this, on the official Google Analytics blog:

Your next coffee table e-book

Can I look forward to a link drop to SilverDisc here or here?

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