How Does Sales Lion track my Keywords in Google Adwords?

We get questions from customers how exactly does Sales Lion connect its keywords from Google Adwords. Can anyone explain why Sales Lion makes updates to the URL's of my Google ads after the initial connection to Google? Let's explain.

What's happening?

Sales Lion applies tracking parameters onto the end of the destination URLs of your text ads or keyword-specific destination URLs. You may have noticed this if you edit one of the text ads in your AdWords account.

Why does Sales Lion do this?

What do these parameters look like?

Sales Lion adds two tracking parameters to the end of your text ads and/or keyword-specific destination URLs. The parameters are _kk and _kt. When added to a URL of a standard text ad, they look something like this:

http://www.saleslion.com?_kk=accoutmanagements&_kt=3379166f-49a0-431d-a20c-7805d06fa958

How often are these parameters applied?

When you first link an AdWords account to Sales Lion, it happens immediately. On an ongoing basis, Sales Lion needs to understand if you have added or changed anything in your account. Depending on the size of your AdWords account, Sales Lion will make this check every few hours and apply tracking parameters as necessary

What if I've got other parameters on my URLs?

That's OK, Sales Lion will just add our _kk and _kt parameters onto the end of the string, so we wont muck with any additional tracking you're doing.

What if I go into AdWords and delete the Sales Lion tracking parameters?

Not to worry, if you've gone into the AdWords UI and messed with the Sales Lion tracking parameters, the next time we check for new changes or additions we will recognize that you've altered one of the parameters. In this case, we will automatically fix it.

Does this help Sales Lion track organic search as well?

Certainly, when Sales Lion sees clicks that come from google without tracking codes, we can assume that these clicks did not come from one of your ads, and we can mark them as having come from Google organic search.