If you work in the digital marketing world, you may have come across the terms “GCLID” and “auto-tagging” before. But you may not be completely familiar with how they work and the importance of their role in tracking and attribution for Google Ads.
What is the GCLID?
A GCLID (short for “Google Click Identifier”) is a unique ID for every ad click via Google Ads. The value of the GCLID is often passed in a query parameter for the landing page of an ad click. This is to help advertisers associate ad attributes (Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword, Ad, etc.) with the session in Google Analytics. It is also used to facilitate Google Ads conversion tracking.
For example, we have gone to GymShark, a popular e-commerce brand in the fitness industry, through a brand paid search Google Ad. We can see the GCLID is appended to the URL of the landing page.
Below breaks down the components of the URL you see in the example. The parameter value after the “=” following the parameter name “gclid” is the GCLID.
Cj0KCQjwk96lBhDHARIsAEKO4xZyfbWi5R9a1Q2jr5glBHkFimC_K49jFdIuzJc_jiVcOlShev2DA98aAvFFEALw_wcB
If there are already query parameters in the URL prior to the GCLID, you will see a “&” symbol before the parameter name (as in the example above). This indicates the parameter value is ended for the previous parameter and a new parameter name has started.
How is the GCLID Used?
The GCLID is then stored in cookies on your browser for use by Google Analytics and Google Ads conversion tracking. You can see this stored by using Chrome developer tools > Application > Cookies > Domain > Filter by the GCLID value.
Below in this example, we can see two cookies below include the value of the GCLID. Which are then used in Google Analytics and Google Ads tracking.
The GCLID is passed in the collect request from Google Analytics under the dl parameter and associates the GCLID with the Google Analytics session. You can use this information to check the GCLID is being parsed and stored correctly by Google Analytics by viewing the dl parameter of the collect request for Google Analytics under Network in Chrome Developer tools. This can be used to troubleshoot if you have issues with Google Ads tracking into Google Analytics.
On Google’s ad side, information is stored against the GCLID (click), which includes all the different attributes of the targeting of the ad. This can include but is not limited to: campaign, ad group, keyword (if applicable), search term (if applicable), ad content, etc.
What Benefit Does Using The GCLID Have?
The benefit of the GCLID for Google Analytics
In Google Analytics and Google Ads it is possible to create a link between your Google Analytics property and your Google Ads account. When the GCLID is being used, this link can pass information using the GCLID as the key to match data.
The ad information associated with the GCLID can be joined with the Google Analytics information associated with the session. This allows data to be joined up from both Google Ads to Google Analytics and from Google Analytics to Google Ads.
- This replaces the need for using utm parameters for Google Ads, as you would require for other digital marketing channels. The equivalent information that would be passed in UTM parameters can get directly passed from Google Ads to Google Analytics link matching on the click ID (GCLID).
- In fact, the GCLID allows richer data to be tracked compared to typical utms including information such as:
- Query match type
- Ad Group
- Ad format
- Placement domain
- Google Ads customer ID
- In fact, the GCLID allows richer data to be tracked compared to typical utms including information such as:
- Additionally, it allows for information to be imported from Google Analytics to Google Ads such as Google Analytics conversions, % engaged sessions, events/session and avg. session duration.
The Benefit of the GCLID for Google Ads Conversion Tracking
Well, it basically makes it work.
Without the GCLID, when the Google Ads conversion tracking fires it wouldn’t know which click, campaign, ad group, etc. led to the conversion and it wouldn’t be able to attribute the conversion back to Google Ads.
When the Google Ads conversion tracking fires, it passes back to Google Ads the conversion information and the GCLID stored in the background.
What is Auto-Tagging?
Auto-tagging is a setting in Google Ads that when enabled appends the GCLID parameter to the end of URLs.
To enable auto-tagging within Google Ads in the left-hand navigation go to Settings > Account Settings then Auto-tagging. Ensure the check box is ticked for auto-tagging to be enabled next to “Tag the URL that people click through from my ad”.
How to Check if Auto-Tagging is Working
Once auto-tagging is enabled from within Google Ads, it is worth checking the GCLIDs are being appended to the URLs from your ads.
Another way you can sense check that auto-tagging should work is to try appending a dummy GCLID to a landing page on your website. For example, you would try: https://thedigitalmetric.com/?gclid=Tester123
If the GCLID parameter isn’t still there after the page is fully loaded, then it’s likely the parameter isn’t being handled properly and your tracking won’t work.
A common error handling the GCLID is for the website to redirect the page with the GCLID parameter to one without. This means that the GCLID is gone before the tracking code on your site can store and send information about the GCLID. To resolve this it’s best to set up redirects on your website so they preserve the query parameters.
Check out the Google Ads documentation for more information on checking if your Google Ads auto-tagging works. This is a great resource to both test and troubleshoot any issues.
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