URL best practices & troubleshooting guide

URL best practices & troubleshooting guide

The url an ad clicks to is an integral part of the campaign trafficking process.  In order to optimize QA and implementation, the following are some best practices that should be adhered to when sending click through urls for your campaigns: 

  • Url must not be a redirect.   

  • When a redirect url is submitted, the url appends for analytics tracking do not work.  Similarly, MTA tracking does not adhere. Also, redirects are a security risk.  See here for how to diagnose a redirect.


  • Url must be live for testing and QA. 

  • When a url is not live, AdOps cannot test to ensure the ad tags click through properly, that url appends stick, and that MTA tracking is applied.  In addition, when a url is not live, Google cannot crawl the url, causing DSP rejections. 


  • Urls should not have url appends applied. 

  • UTM and CID parameters are generated within the ad server, a Brand-specific trafficking worksheet or a specific url generator document by the AdOps team.  Should you require a specific parameter included in the appends, please contact the AdOps Director to discuss. 

  • These clients: Maple, PWC Brand US, Subzero, US Bank Retail, US Bank RPS, White Castle - may send you urls with appends already applied.  If they do, doublecheck with the client that the url is correct as they have provided it. 

    • If your client is not on the list above, AdOps creates the url appends for your clients.  The urls should be 'naked', or unappended.


  • Urls containing macros should be checked for case styling. 

  • Any urls utilizing Google macros must have the macros in lowercase format.  Examples: %ebuy! %epid! %ecid! %eaid! %esid! 


  • Urls must be SSL compliant (https://) 

  • When the url is not SSL compliant, DSPs reject the ads associated with that url. 


  • Url must not contain mixed content.  

  • The webpage content a url links to should be entirely SSL compliant or all non-compliant - not a mixture of the two.  Mixed content pages result in DSP rejection. 


  • Url should end in a ? If your url needs appends*. 

  • A question mark notes the start of a query string in the url.  If there is no ? Present in the url, the url must end with a ?  

  • *If there is already a question mark within the url and you need AdOps to add appends, your url should not end in a ?.  There should only be one question mark in a url string. 

 

  

When QAing the url, if you can answer: YES to the any of the above,  the url is bad.
If you see no question mark or two question marks on the url, the url is bad.

Troubleshooting Guide
  1. too many question marks.
    1. your url should have only 1 question mark.  if there are 2, your url will not work properly.
      1. why would there be 2? one from the client url and one from the url appends that the client wants us to apply.
        1. make the second question mark an "&"
          1. example: client gives you this url:  https://www.lfg.com/public/leveladvantage/tool?llarole=ria
            1. there is 1 ? in that url to start the query string. our url append for this client is ?utm_campaign=%epid!-%ecid!&utm_source=riabiz&utm_medium=email&utm_content=lfg-b2b-fy22-ria&utm_term=xm_%ebuy!_%epid!_%ecid! which starts with a ?. 
            2. to fix this, you'd change the ? to a & at the beginning of our append to allow for our append to be added to the query string, permitting the url to function as the client wants it and still allow for the appends to fire correctly.
          1. final url would look like this: https://www.lfg.com/public/leveladvantage/tool?llarole=ria&utm_campaign=%epid!-%ecid!&utm_source=riabiz&utm_medium=email&utm_content=lfg-b2b-fy22-ria&utm_term=xm_%ebuy!_%epid!_%ecid!

  1. your url appends fall off
    1. most likely, the url you added your utms or cids to is a redirect.  check that your url is not a redirect.  that will fix it 99% of the time
    2. check to make sure your appends are applied properly.
    3. there is a jump or anchor in the url.  the anchor needs to be applied after the appends for the url to work correctly.
    4. check to see if there are macros in the url appends.  if there are % marks in your url.  If there are, test the url via click tag.  If it works on the click tag but not in copy and pasting from a workbook, then the % is causing the appends to fall off.

  2. the url goes to a 404 or dead page
    1. check to see if there are % marks in your url.  If there are, test the url via clicking the ad tag.  If it works on the click tag but not in copy and pasting from a workbook, then the % is an illegal character on the website. (NYUL's urls have this nuance!)
    2. check to see if the url is case sensitive.  on the tsheet, are there any capitals in the url that are forced lowercase with a url generator? change the lowercased letters to uppercase and see if that works.
    3. check to see if there are spaces before, during or after your url.  if there are, remove them.
    4. are there typos? that'll definitely break your url

  3. slashes
    1. too many or not enough.
      1. too many: https://www.mainlinehealth.org/blog/the-beat-of-your-heart/?utm_source=captify&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=be-seen-cardiac&utm_content=be-seen-cardiac&utm_term=302889622
        1. the slash between heart and ?utm is causing the url to break.  this is uncommon.
      2. too little: https:/www.mainlinehealth.org/blog/the-beat-of-your-heart?utm_source=captify&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=be-seen-cardiac&utm_content=be-seen-cardiac&utm_term=302889622
        1. it's missing a slash in the https:// area

  4. your sheet won't import into the ad server
    1. check for spaces before and after the url.
    2. if there are spaces in the url that the client absolutely must have, replace them with a %20.  %20 is the encoding code for a space.

general information about urls and their parts can be found here

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