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SOLVED
Unspecified UTM Term in Paid Search
Hello,
When looking at top paid search keywords, I'm seeing a lot of unspecified keywords. Does anyone know why they are coming in as unspecified?
Thanks!
1 Accepted Solution
Correct answer by
Your question could have 2 connotations:
1. Why am I seeing so many Unspecified in my reports? What are they?
2. Why am I missing so many UTM Term values? Why aren't they being set?
1. This is just due to the way that eVars work.. because they are generally (but not always) set up to be Visit Level expiry... any hits that have no value will still show in the report (i.e. unspecified)
This is a way to see ALL the data, including the hits that have no value... unlike props where if no value is set, then the data doesn't show at all in the breakdowns.
Let's look at a set of 100 data
Prop1/eVar1 are set to "value 1" on 30 hits, the eVar is set to Visit level and accounts for another 20 records.
Prop1/eVar1 are set to "value 2" on 10 hits, the eVar accounts for an additional 5 records.
The rest of the 100 hits don't set these dimensions at all.
| Page Views | |
| Prop1 | 40 |
| value 1 | 30 |
| value 2 | 10 |
| Instance of eVar1 | Page Views | |
| eVar1 | 40 | 100 |
| value 1 | 30 | 50 |
| unspecified | 0 | 35 |
| value 2 | 10 | 15 |
The "instance of" is where the eVar is actually set (it's similar to the Prop), but when you are looking at your Page View metric, you can see that the remaining 35 hits (where no value was set) is attributed to unspecified
If you don't want to see this, you can hide it.. just uncheck "Include Unspecified" in your Dimension filter:
----------------------
2. If you are wondering why your UTM Term isn't being set with values, this is a larger discussion
UTM Term is an optional parameter... are you sure that the this has actually been added to your UTM links?
www.domain.com/?utm_source=something&utm_campaign=some_code_123&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=
Also... UTM Term is not the same thing as Search Engine Keywords, if that is what you are thinking (based on your report title, it almost seems like that is what you are expecting).. unless of course, someone is using "Dynamic Keyword Insertion" to pass the keywords into your UTM Term....
The best way to confirm what is happening is to check your URLs, hopefully you have an eVar that is set up to track the URL (limited to 255 characters), or you will have to do a Data Warehouse export or Raw Data Feed to see the URL as captured by Adobe.
Do they have a "utm_term=" as part of the url? Is there a value provided?
If there is, you will need to check the implementation of how you are collecting your UTM Term (v19)... if there isn't, then it's not an analytics issue.. but a tagging issue you will need to take up with your Marketing Team.
Correct answer by
Your question could have 2 connotations:
1. Why am I seeing so many Unspecified in my reports? What are they?
2. Why am I missing so many UTM Term values? Why aren't they being set?
1. This is just due to the way that eVars work.. because they are generally (but not always) set up to be Visit Level expiry... any hits that have no value will still show in the report (i.e. unspecified)
This is a way to see ALL the data, including the hits that have no value... unlike props where if no value is set, then the data doesn't show at all in the breakdowns.
Let's look at a set of 100 data
Prop1/eVar1 are set to "value 1" on 30 hits, the eVar is set to Visit level and accounts for another 20 records.
Prop1/eVar1 are set to "value 2" on 10 hits, the eVar accounts for an additional 5 records.
The rest of the 100 hits don't set these dimensions at all.
| Page Views | |
| Prop1 | 40 |
| value 1 | 30 |
| value 2 | 10 |
| Instance of eVar1 | Page Views | |
| eVar1 | 40 | 100 |
| value 1 | 30 | 50 |
| unspecified | 0 | 35 |
| value 2 | 10 | 15 |
The "instance of" is where the eVar is actually set (it's similar to the Prop), but when you are looking at your Page View metric, you can see that the remaining 35 hits (where no value was set) is attributed to unspecified
If you don't want to see this, you can hide it.. just uncheck "Include Unspecified" in your Dimension filter:
----------------------
2. If you are wondering why your UTM Term isn't being set with values, this is a larger discussion
UTM Term is an optional parameter... are you sure that the this has actually been added to your UTM links?
www.domain.com/?utm_source=something&utm_campaign=some_code_123&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=
Also... UTM Term is not the same thing as Search Engine Keywords, if that is what you are thinking (based on your report title, it almost seems like that is what you are expecting).. unless of course, someone is using "Dynamic Keyword Insertion" to pass the keywords into your UTM Term....
The best way to confirm what is happening is to check your URLs, hopefully you have an eVar that is set up to track the URL (limited to 255 characters), or you will have to do a Data Warehouse export or Raw Data Feed to see the URL as captured by Adobe.
Do they have a "utm_term=" as part of the url? Is there a value provided?
If there is, you will need to check the implementation of how you are collecting your UTM Term (v19)... if there isn't, then it's not an analytics issue.. but a tagging issue you will need to take up with your Marketing Team.
