Re: Losing UTM information in original referrer field because AdWords url is too long

Anonymous
Not applicable

Losing UTM information in original referrer field because AdWords url is too long

We've been able to set up tracking for a majority of our paid campaigns except for leads created through AdWords. Our smart campaigns are set up to assign source, medium, content and campaign information based on a lead's original referrer. Unfortunately, Marketo's original referrer field can only hold so many characters and the part of the string that contains our UTM information ends up being lopped off. Take for example this URL string:

http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=CRFyb6MsfU8SdN4iG-gP2-4GgBqHB07cEkePQoaQB2ZfF4ScIABABKAJQsaXbQ2DJ9viGyKOgGaABxY-c7wPIAQGqBB9P0HLWM5a3gPoDKfuRODQZUDPV0e712JJTvw0J1UHXgAej8OMQkAcB&sig=AOD64_34SOtFrrYtN72ZGn5WH4x46PxfFw&rct=j&q=***&ved=0CCgQ0Qw&adurl=http://www.***.com/?utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dcpc%26utm_content%3DOne%2BHour%2BHR%26utm_campaign%3DSearch-Branded

As you can see, the tracking URL starts after the adurl parameter I've underlined above, and this typically doesn't make it into Marketo's Original Referrer field. Has anyone figured out a solution that allows you to preserve this entire URL? Thanks in advance for the response!
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Lucho_Soto
Level 5

Re: Losing UTM information in original referrer field because AdWords url is too long

Harvey we have this problem as well. We currently use original referrer and original source info together to set acquisition programs. URLs containing "aclk" are for Google text ads and those containing "googleadservices" are for Google Display ads (or ads on the Google Display network). The original source info lets us narrow down the URL from their first visit. However, this method loses accuracy when multiple ads are going to the same landing page. 

Would be nice if Marketo could extend the character limit of this field so we only need to use the original referrer field.