What are Upgraded URLs and how do I upgrade?

Upgraded URLs separate your tracking information from the landing page URL making it easy to update and manage URL tracking. Find out the benefits of Upgraded URLs and how you can upgrade.

If you have set up tracking in Microsoft Advertising by adding URL parameters to your destination URLs, you will be interested in Upgraded URLs.

Upgraded URLs separate the landing page URL from the tracking or URL parameters so if you want to edit your URL parameters, your ad doesn't have to go through another editorial review. It also allows you to define a separate mobile landing page URL if you have a website that is optimized for smaller devices.

The 4 new fields added with Upgraded URLs are final URL, mobile URL, tracking template, and custom parameters. A tracking template can be added to an account, campaign, ad group, ad, keyword, and sitelink extension. When your ad is served the lowest level tracking template will be appended to your landing page URL. We recommend setting the tracking template at the account level so that it is applied to all campaigns, ad groups, etc.

Benefits of Upgraded URLs

  • More efficient tracking management: Manage and update tracking information of multiple URLs with a single shared tracking template. Turn hundreds or thousands of URL edits into one quick change.
  • Less down time; more conversions and clicks: Updates to tracking templates don't require an editorial review. This means your ads keep on running, so you don't lose out on potential conversions.
  • Additional tracking insights: Ability to add both URL parameters and custom parameters to your tracking template to gain additional insights about the source of your ad clicks.

How to upgrade

We have two different ways that you can upgrade your existing destination URLs to Upgraded URLs.

Important

If you use a tool provider or agency to manage your ads, check with them to take advantage of any upgrade support and documentation they might offer specific to their platform and service.

Import from Google Ads in either Microsoft Advertising or Microsoft Advertising Editorexpando image

The easiest way to upgrade your account URLs is to use Import from Google Ads in either Microsoft Advertising or Microsoft Advertising Editor. Here are instructions for importing in Microsoft Advertising.

  1. From the top menu, select Import > Import from Google Ads.

    If you're using the new Microsoft Advertising navigation, from the navigation menu on the left, hover over Import and select Import from Google Ads.

  2. Select Sign in to Google.
  3. Enter your Google sign-in information, select Sign in and then Accept.
  4. Select the Google Ads campaigns you want to import, then select Continue.
  5. Under Choose Microsoft Advertising account & import options, do the following:
    • Choose the Microsoft Advertising account you want to import to.
    • Choose the appropriate time zone.
    • Under What to import, select Account-level URL options. The account level tracking template will appear under the checkbox.
    • Choose the options you want for Bids and budgets.
    • Choose the options you want for Landing page URLs.
    • Choose the options you want for Tracking templates.
  6. Select Import.

That's it! Since Google Ads uses Upgraded URLs, all your final URLs, mobile URLs, tracking templates, and custom parameters are added to Microsoft Advertising. As with any import, you will want to review the Campaign settings to make sure they are set up as you like. To learn more see, What gets imported from Google Ads

Move existing destination URLs to final URL/tracking template using Microsoft Advertising Editorexpando image

You can export your destination URLs, separate the tracking information from the final URLs, and then upload using Microsoft Advertising Editor.

  1. Open your Microsoft Advertising account in the latest version of Microsoft Advertising Editor.
  2. Select Export and then Export whole account.
  3. In the file, make sure you can see the Destination URL, Final URL, and Tracking Template columns. If you don't see the columns, you can add the columns to the file.
  4. In the Destination URL column, copy the tracking portion of your destination URL and paste it into the Tracking template column. Then insert {lpurl} where your original landing page URL once appeared.
  5. In the Destination URL column, copy the landing page portion of your destination URL and paste it into the Final URL column.
  6. Delete the contents of the destination URL column. This column should be empty before you import the file.
  7. Optional: Enter a mobile URL in the Mobile Final URL column.
  8. Optional: Enter custom parameters in the Custom parameter column.
  9. Save the file.
  10. In Microsoft Advertising Editor, select Import and then Import from file.
  11. Verify that the Upgraded URL columns are correctly mapped to the Microsoft Advertising fields.
  12. Select Post to save the changes to Microsoft Advertising.
Note

In Microsoft Advertising, you can set tracking templates at the account-level, so that you only need to update it once and it applies to all your campaigns. In Microsoft Advertising Editor, you can't set an account-level tracking template so you need to do this in Microsoft Advertising. To learn more, see Create an account tracking template.

See more videos...