When you are setting your PPC campaign you have the option to use several matching type: broad, exact and phrase.
If you are using Google Analytics to track your campaigns conversion rate you will notice that in Google Analytics report you see only the phrase that you set within the PPC campaign. You don’t see the actual phrase that the user used before he clicked on your ad.

Knowing the user exact phrase can be very vital for your PPC campaign success. It will give you the ability to eliminate the phrases that do not convert. Alternatively it is a practical way (although can be expensive) to discover the keywords that visitors are using while searching the web, segmented by geographical region etc. Using this value information you can refine your PPC ads and their landing page. Doing so will improve your landing page quality score which will lead to reduce in the bid amount.

For example: Suppose we would like to sell tennis racquet. We can bid on the keyword “tennis racquet” and to choose broad as the matching type. Using Google Analytics will we get the number of click per “tennis racquet” even if the user typed a wider expression like “Federer tennis racquet” or “Free tennis racquet”. If we set up a Goal, then the conversion rate report will include the phrase that we set and not what the user typed. Google Analytics take the phrase from the PPC campaign settings and not from the actual search.

I found a very nice JavaScript that overcome this problem. It’s a simple JavaScript, yet very elegant, developed by Michael Harrison. With only few simple steps you can get within Google Analytics reports the exact phrase that the user typed before they clicked on your PPC ad. You need to download the script into your server and modify the Google Analytics code very slightly. The scripts store the information in the “User Defined Value” field. You will see this option under the segments combo box. Using the script will reveal the desire report once your will choose the “User Defined Value” as the segment option.

Great solution for a crucial PPC issue

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