Original Referrer populated but Original Search Phrase and Original Search Engine" are blank

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I have several leads where the Original Referrer field is populated with "http://google.com", but the Original Search Phrase and Original Search Engine are blank.

I have a 2 part question:

1. Why would the referrer be captured but the other fields are not? I understand if a user is blocking cookies, using incognito mode, etc - the data could not be captured, but I'm curious why it does not apply to the Original Referrer field.

2. Will the Original Referrer be populated if a user visits your site initially from a paid ad?

Thanks!

[Michelle_Tizian]

Hi Jennifer,

I just checked a few of my ppc campaigns and those who converted came from the display network so the original search word is not captured. So they might have seen your ad while reading content that's somewhat related to your ad. But a keyword search didn't trigger the click. So the ad trigger came from the display network. This answers #1. 

I checked another lead record who did convert and in this case the original search word and original search engine is populated. It was from a keyword search.  I also checked agains my google adwords account and analytics to check on the keyword that triggered the conversion and it is for a keyword, but not an exact match, it's more a broad match. This asnwers #1 & #2. 

[Anonymous]

I'm curious about this.  Similar to Michelle, we have leads from google paid search and display ads, but none of our leads have an Original Referrer value of "http"//google.com".  However, they do have values that start with "http://www.google.com".  I'm checking with our agency to see what the source of these may be and will update this discussion when I get more informaiton.

[Michelle_Tizian]

Hi Elliot, 

For my 3 campaigns, it will usually say for the search engine field as google, then the Original Referrer value will have something like http://www.google.com.it or .de .fr or what ever country and then a whole bunch of characters similar to something like: aclk?sa=l&ai=CkabnYoVdUa36Kc-VhgeSr4D4AvOxta8Du_br8Eywo- 

Some of them will even include the search string at the end. That would be nice if your agency have more insight.

[Anonymous]

Michelle & Elliott, 

Thanks so much for the feedback. 

Elliott, I was curious if you were able to get an update from your agency?

Basically, I'm trying to figure out the best way to segment paid leads vs. an organic leads when the "Original Referrer" field says "http://google.com". It might be as simple as an organic lead has the original referrer of "http://google.com", while a paid lead will have a string of characters appended to "http://google.com", like what Michelle provided above. 

Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

I'm still waiting for a final answer from our agency.  We differentiate our paid search leads from natural search by the presence of a querystring parameter that corresponds to the 15 digit SFDC ID for the Campaign we created for Google paid search .