Google's Upgraded URLs signified a major change to the way that Destination URLs are associated with keywords and other trackable objects (creatives, sitelinksc etc.) and a new paradigm for how URLs are constructed and served with ads.

While traditional ('legacy') URLs are well-understood, they can be problematic because they're simply not scalable if you have large numbers of keywords. For example, pushing changes to millions of keyword URLs at once can take a significant amount of time. On top of that, Google Ads usually requires that a trackable (like a keyword) is re-submitted for editorial review every time a change to its URL is made.

Upgraded URLs represent a solution to these problems. 

The Basics Of Upgraded URLs 

Instead of a single Destination URL for each keyword or creative, Upgraded URLs makes it so that each URL is now created from three URL 'building blocks' that exist in various parts of your account, similar to how Product Group URLs work. These three building blocks are: 

Final URLs: A landing page / click-through URL.

Tracking Templates: A template URL for tracking solutions and extra parameters.

Custom Parameters: User-defined ValueTrack parameters.

We'll explain each of these in depth below. Upgraded URLs also introduced several new Google ValueTrack parameters.

Once set up, URLs are no longer found only at the keyword or creative level. Instead, Google Ads combines a keyword’s Final URL (think of this as a click-through URL), a separate account-level Tracking Template, and any user-defined Custom Parameters it can find. The combination of these three pieces will then generate and serve a URL that looks like URLs that we knew prior to Upgraded URLs.

In a nutshell:

One Tracking Template + Many Final URLs + Many Custom Parameters = Many Served URLs

Since the Tracking Template can live at the account level, you can manage common parameters and your redirect logic in one place. Additionally, because Tracking Templates don’t contain the Final URL, updates to the template won’t trigger editorial re-reviews.

Final URL / Landing Page 

Every trackable object (keywords, sitelinks, placements, creatives, etc.) has what Google calls a Final URL. In MarinOne, we call this the Landing Page. Google also has a Mobile Final URL for mobile devices, known as a Mobile Landing Page in MarinOne.

The Final URL/Landing Page can be thought of as the ultimate page where a user clicking on the ad in Google will arrive. This URL must be a domain that the company owns and can only contain redirects if they are within the company’s own domain (no third-party redirects are allowed).

Note: In case MarinOne detects that the end of any Landing Page URL does not already contain a ?,  a ? is appended to the end of the Landing Page URL. This is a preemptive measure to ensure that when Tracking Parameters are appended to the end of a Landing Page, the URL does not fail.

Therefore, it is advised to upload creatives in MarinOne. Uploading creatives in the publisher account can result in these syncing into MarinOne, Autocorrect appending a '?'  to the end of the Landing Page, and pushing the creatives back to the publisher account, resulting in a removal and creation of the same creative.

Tracking Template 

A Tracking Template is the template that Google Ads uses to assemble the URL that will actually be served with your ads. Its primary use, as the name implies, is to support third-party tracking solutions, such as Marin Tracker, which uses URL redirects. It can also be used to add parameters in non-redirect cases for large numbers of objects.

You can add Tracking Templates to every object in your account, including: sitelinks, ads, keywords, groups, campaigns, and even the account itself. But the power of Upgraded URLs comes from having fewer higher-level templates. In fact, the ideal scenario is to have just one at the account level template.

The Tracking Template can be set at the Account Level. Simply navigate to the Admin section, select the Revenue & Tracking tab, then click on the URL Builder sub-tab. From here, use the Account tab to set up your Account Tracking Template.
You can also add a Tracking Template at various other levels, including Campaign and Group, via bulk upload. Simply use the header Tracking Template in your bulk sheet.

To learn more about MarinOne's URL Builder, check out our dedicated article.

Custom Parameters 

Additionally, Google uses Custom Parameters in order to make it easy to pass parameters and other information to the URL at serving time without hard-coding them in the Final URL/Landing Page or in the Tracking Template.

Custom parameters live at all levels except for the account level (i.e. keywords, creatives, ad groups, campaigns, etc.) You can refer to them in both the Tracking Template or the Final URLs/Landing Pages.

Up to three custom parameters can be defined per object, and they have both a custom name and custom value. The value of a custom parameter can contain any of the characters found in a normal URL, and even Google-defined ValueTrack parameters (such as {creative}) -- but cannot reference other custom parameters. Custom parameter values have a maximum length of 200 characters.

Examples of Custom Parameters

1. Keyword level: {_marinkwparam1} = “abc123” 
2. Campaign level: {_campaignparams} = “Brand_Shoes” 

In the first example, either the Tracking Template or the keyword’s Final URL/Landing Page needs to contain ?mkwid={_marinkwparam1} so that when served, it is substituted with ?mkwid=abc123

In the second example, {_marincampparam1} contains a fully formed query string, so in theory, you could add it directly after the Tracking Template without any special characters. In this case http://www.example.com{_marincampparam1} would be served as http://www.example.com/?campaign=Bra...ive={creative}

Putting It All Together 

Let’s look at some examples and see what they might look like when set up using Upgraded URLs. We’ll start with a non-redirect case.

URL ValueTrack Parameters 

Google allows the use of several different ValueTrack parameters which can be used within URLs to refer to the landing page. Following is a complete list of these parameters as well as an explanation of what they do:

{lpurl}: returns the Final URL/Landing Page, which will be automatically escaped if {lpurl} appears anywhere in the tracking template, except in the beginning.

{lpurl+2}, {lpurl+3} returns the Final URL/Landing Page, escaped twice or three times, respectively. May be needed if there is a chain of redirects in the tracking template.

{unescapedlpurl} always returns the Final URL/Landing Page, unescaped.

{escapedlpurl} always returns the Final URL/Landing Page, escaped. Available only for DSA and PLA campaigns.

{lpurlpath} always returns the part of the Final URL/Landing Page that follows the domain. Available only for DSA and PLA campaigns. 

Allowed in: Tracking Template

MarinOne Upgraded URL Support 

'Preview URLs' For Google Objects 

Based on the same logic that Google uses to combine Upgraded URL components into a fully formed URL on the results pages, MarinOne uses the Landing page URL, available custom parameters, and the relevant tracking template to build a Preview URL for the following Google objects:

• Keywords
• Creatives
• Placements
• Product groups
• Sitelinks

With a Preview URL that looks similar to your legacy Destination URLs, we hope that the transition to upgraded URLs will be a little less impactful to your daily workflow. Not only can you quickly see and troubleshoot how your landing page URLs, custom parameters, and a tracking template will join together, but you can view your Google Upgraded URLs alongside all of your destination URLs from other publishers in the same MarinOne grid column.

Preview URLs are rebuilt whenever a change is made to its URL components or its parents’ URL components. For example when MarinOne detects a change to a keyword’s Landing Page, it will rebuild the keyword’s Preview URL. Likewise, if the account-level tracking template is edited, MarinOne will rebuild Preview URLs for every keyword, creative, placement etc. in the account.

Table Of Upgraded URL Attributes By Account Object Type