Tracking template in Google Ads: the example to start from, the parameters worth including, and how to test it safely

A tracking template is a Google Ads field that rewrites your final URL at the moment of the click, so you can attach campaign parameters once instead of editing every landing page URL in the account. The example almost every account should start from is one line: {lpurl}?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_content={adgroupid}&utm_term={keyword}&matchtype={matchtype}&device={device}. The curly braces are ValueTrack parameters, which Google replaces with real values as the click happens, and {lpurl} is the final URL itself. Set it at account level, test it before it goes live, and never put a tracking template on an account whose conversion tracking you have not already verified, because a broken template breaks every link in the account at once.

This page covers what goes in the field, a worked example per level, the parameters worth including, how to test it safely and the four ways it breaks. For hand built campaign URLs outside advertising, see the campaign URL builder and the nine parameters.

What the field actually does

Your advertisement has a final URL, which is the page a person lands on. The tracking template takes that URL and wraps or extends it at click time. Because the template lives in one field, a change to your parameter scheme is one edit rather than hundreds, and that is the entire reason the field exists.

• {lpurl} is the final URL. Every template has to contain it, or a variant of it, otherwise the click has nowhere to go.
• ValueTrack parameters in curly braces are filled in by Google at the moment of the click, so you never maintain a list of campaign names by hand.
• It is set at four levels: account, campaign, ad group and the individual advertisement or keyword. The most specific level wins, which is useful and is also where accidental overrides hide.
• It is not the same field as the final URL suffix. The suffix appends parameters and survives parallel tracking cleanly, which is why simple parameter tagging is often better done there. Use the template when you need to wrap the URL, such as sending the click through a redirect, and the suffix when you only need to add parameters.

Worked examples

Situation	What to put in the field
Standard account, parameters only	{lpurl}?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_content={adgroupid}&utm_term={keyword}
Readable campaign names instead of IDs	{lpurl}?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={_campaign}&utm_term={keyword} with a custom parameter named {_campaign} set per campaign
You want the full diagnostic set	{lpurl}?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_content={creative}&utm_term={keyword}&matchtype={matchtype}&network={network}&device={device}&placement={placement}
The final URL already has a query string	{lpurl}&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc is wrong for mixed accounts. Use {ignore} carefully or standardise on the final URL suffix instead, which handles both cases without a separate template
Click goes through a third party redirect	https://tracker.example.com/click?url={lpurl_enc}&cid={campaignid} using the encoded form, because a URL inside a parameter has to be escaped

Two details in that table save most of the debugging. {lpurl} arrives unescaped and suits the first position after your domain; {lpurl_enc} is the escaped form and is what you need when the landing page URL is the value of a parameter. And custom parameters, the ones you define yourself with a leading underscore, are how you get readable names into analytics without maintaining a template per campaign.

The parameters worth including, and the ones that waste a slot

Parameter	What it gives you	Worth it?
{campaignid}, {adgroupid}	Stable identifiers that survive a rename	Yes. Renaming a campaign does not break historic reporting
{keyword}	The keyword that matched, on search campaigns	Yes, and remember it returns the keyword rather than the query somebody typed
{matchtype}	Broad, phrase or exact	Yes. It is the fastest way to see which match types produce the conversions
{device}	Mobile, desktop or tablet	Yes, if your conversion rate differs by device, which it usually does
{network}	Search, search partners or display	Yes. This is how you find out what search partner traffic is really doing
{creative}	The advertisement identifier	Useful on accounts testing creative seriously
{placement}	The site or app, on display and partners	Only on campaigns where that inventory exists
{loc_physical_ms}	A location code for where the click came from	Rarely. It arrives as a number nobody wants to decode, and the geographic report answers the question better

Testing it without breaking the account

• Use the Test button next to the field. Google will resolve the template against a sample final URL and tell you whether the result loads. A template that fails this test will not serve.
• Then test a real click, on one advertisement in one low spend campaign, before applying anything at account level. Click it, look at the address bar, and confirm the parameters arrived populated rather than as literal braces.
• Check the page still works. Some sites strip or choke on unexpected query strings, and some redirect in a way that drops them. If your parameters disappear after a redirect, that redirect is the bug.
• Check analytics the next day, not the same hour. Confirm the sessions are landing in the right campaign and that you have not created a second set of medium values such as CPC and cpc, which are different strings and will split your reporting.
• Keep parallel tracking in mind. The browser goes to the landing page while the measurement happens separately, so a slow or broken redirect in your template costs you clicks rather than merely data.

The four ways this goes wrong

• No {lpurl}. The commonest error and it takes the whole account offline, because every advertisement now points at a URL with no destination.
• An override you forgot. A template set on one ad group or one keyword beats the account level one, so a scheme that works everywhere except in one campaign is almost always a leftover from a previous agency.
• Inconsistent parameter values. Google, google, g, adwords and paid as four spellings of one source. Write the convention down in the account notes and in the naming document, because this is the error that quietly ruins a year of reporting.
• Template plus suffix doing the same job. If both are set, parameters can appear twice or conflict. Pick one mechanism per account and document which.

Where to set it, and who should own the field

Account level for the scheme, campaign level only for a genuine exception such as one campaign routing through a partner's redirect. Leave ad group, advertisement and keyword level empty unless you can say out loud why they are not. One person should own the convention, and the convention belongs in writing next to whoever owns the ad account, which is the thing to settle before any of this matters. Our note on who actually controls a Google Ads account covers that part.

Tracking templates: the questions that come up

Tracking template or final URL suffix?

Suffix for adding parameters, which is what most accounts need and which behaves predictably with parallel tracking. Template when the click has to pass through something, such as a redirect or a third party measurement service. Using both for the same parameters is how duplicates appear.

Why do I see the braces in my address bar?

Because the parameters were not substituted, which usually means they were typed into the landing page URL or a page template rather than into the Google Ads tracking template field. ValueTrack only resolves inside Google Ads fields.

Does a tracking template affect quality or cost?

Not directly. What can affect performance is speed: if your template sends the click through a slow redirect, people drop before the page loads. Keep the chain to one hop and measure the landing page's response time as you would any other page.

Can I get the search term rather than the keyword?

Not from ValueTrack. {keyword} returns the keyword that matched. The actual query lives in the search terms report, and treating one as the other is a common reporting error.

Will this break if I rename campaigns?

Not if you use {campaignid} rather than the campaign name. IDs are stable and names are not, which is the main argument for IDs even though names read better in a report. Custom parameters give you readable names without that fragility.

Do I need this if I only use auto-tagging?

If you use Google Analytics and Google Ads together, auto-tagging already connects the two and you need neither. Add a template or a suffix when something outside that pair needs the data: a different analytics tool, a CRM, a call tracking provider or a spreadsheet.

The click that never carries a parameter

Everything above exists to attach identity to a click so you can tell where it came from. The visits worth knowing about now include a growing set that arrive with nothing attached at all: somebody asked an assistant for a recommendation, got your name, and typed it in or followed a link that carries no campaign information. Those sessions land in your reports as direct or branded search, and no tracking template reaches them, which means the channel that produced the decision is invisible in exactly the system you have just configured so carefully. Worth knowing the size of it before you conclude that direct traffic is just people who remembered you. Measuring whether assistants name you sets out how to take that reading.