Solving the (not set) in Google Analytics

Today’s tip comes from two sources: Alex L. Cohen and PPC Hero, with their mystery solving and publicly sharing their solution on how to import data and increasing compatibility between Yahoo PPC and Google Analytics. As with any search engine that isn’t Google, you have to expect a certain amount of disparity in reporting data imported into Google Analytics since the two were not created by the same company, nor made to fit together the way that AdWords and GA do.

However, there is a workaround that will allow you to gather more data from your Yahoo paid search campaigns and cut down on those (not set) results we see so often in Google Analytics with those other search engines. Supposedly, to collect all the data that you can, you’re already tagging all your ads and destination keywords manually with a UTM generated specifically for that campaign, ad group or keyword. In this case, it is still a UTM thrown onto the back end after your destination URL, but instead of having to generate a specific one, you throw the same generic UTM code on, using Yahoo’s dynamic variables.

The Bottom Line: Jury is still out on this one: while I have seen a significant decrease in (not set) in my Yahoo keyword results, I do have a lot of {ovkey} results instead. I do have questions in to the blog authors for further deliberations. Stay tuned!
--See “Comments” section for the resolution!