What should the utmz cookie contain when using AdWords auto-tagging? (posted: 8/8/2008)

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We have a client that uses AdWords auto tagging. The destination URL for many of they AdWords ads is a page that redirects the user to their final destination. This was breaking the Auto Tagging functionality because the gclid was not passed to the final landing page when the user was redirected.

We told the client this and they changed the redirect code so that the gclid value is passed in the query string to the final landing page and the utmz cookie is set correctly

With a normal setup, the utmz cookie usually has the gclid and the utmctr values. utmctr is pulled from the document.referer value (I think). But with a redirect between AdWords and the final landing page the utmctr value is lost because the document.referer value for the final landing page is the redirect page, and not Google.

The gclid variable functions pretty similarly to a giant lookup table in Urchin, each time the Analytics system gets a new session with a gclid variable the medium and source will be taken directly from the AdWords database. So, as long as the gclid variable gets passed to the first page on which Analytics loads, everything will work out in the end. You might look into other sources though, as that's not possible with Overture and Microsoft's advertising, of course.