(upbeat synth music)
- [Julian] Hi there and welcome back to
another video of Measureschool.com teaching you
the data-driven wave of digital marketing.
My name is Julian and today we're gonna learn
about query strings and how we can
use them as marketers.
Now when we talk about query strings,
we actually need to take a closer look
at the URL that you see in your URL bar up here.
Let's inspect this a little further.
I'm going to copy this out and put this
into the spreadsheet, here.
And we have different components of a URL, actually.
You might be familiar with them already.
At the beginning here we have our protocol.
Then this is followed with our host name.
After that, we would have the path,
and then after a question mark right here,
this is the tail of a URL,
we actually have our query string.
Now what does this actually do?
If you know what a URL actually is,
it is an address that gives you back a website.
Now this address is split up in these different components
and they do different stuff for you.
First of all, the protocol would be
the communication method between
your browser and the server, so it knows what to expect.
Behind the host name is usually an IP address
that identifies the server.
And then the path would give you back
certain resources, certain folders inside of the server
and display information for you.
Now if you change around any of these components,
your website most likely would change.
But the query string is actually something,
if we would leave that out, for example, for this page.
It doesn't do anything to the page.
We would still have the same information available.
So why is this query string important?
Well, it actually transfers different information
that might not be relevant for the server side,
but for other tools, in our case,
that would be Google Analytics.
Now if you're familiar with UTM parameters,
we have another video on that, as well.
Then you might know that these actually
help us to classify the traffic,
where the traffic came from,
and puts them into, for example,
this Source/Medium report here where we can identify
where the user came from, if he used UTM parameters.
But you might have also seen other cases
of UTM parameters on different websites.
Now, let's look at query strings a little closer
and take them apart.
So first of all, let's copy this URL
and go into our second sheet here, our query string.
Now this is our URL, that query string,
as we already said.
It's actually just this part after
the question mark.
Let's put that in here.
Make this a little bit bigger.
And inside of this query string,
we have an identifier, an identifier
where the query string actually starts.
And that's the question mark.
Then we have connectors in there
and these connect our different key value pairs.
These are usually marked by the & sign.
And then we have key value pairs.
And this is the information that actually
is encoded in this query string.
Now you just need to know how to read
these query strings and the key value pairs,
also called URL parameters.
And these parameters are actually
between the question mark and the separators, here.
So we have one, two, and three.
Let's go ahead and dissect them.
First, we have here our newsletter.
Then we have our medium,
Email.
And we have our campaign
right here.
Now these are Key-Value pairs.
These are the query parameters,
also called URL parameters
that make up our query string.
If we separate them further, we actually get to the
Key-Value pairs.
Now, the separator here is the equal sign
that actually separates the key from the value.
So, in our first example here,
we have our UTM source.
And our value would be newsletter.
Now the second one would be UTM medium.
And our value would be Email.
And our UTM campaign would be summer15.
Now this is the information
that is actually encoded inside of our query string.
You just need to know how to read them.
There are a few rules, but once you understand
how you can take this apart, you get to
the key value pairs and the information
that Google Analytics can actually read.
Because, as you might know, in our all traffic report,
we have our Source/Medium.
And this is a category that we can classify
our traffic in.
And now we are telling Google Analytics explicitly
where we want to classify this traffic end.
So our UTM source should be newsletter,
our medium should be Email, and our campaign
should be summer15.
Now we can try this all out.
This information's in here.
I'm gonna reload the page and go into the realtime reporting
of our account.
We see that there's a new page view
that has just been generated.
And if we go down here, wait for a while.
It needs to pick it up first.
Should be able to go to Traffic Sources.
And we see here that the traffic
that we just received came from medium,
source newsletter, and the campaign, summer15.
So Google Analytics has picked up this information
and is now classifying this traffic in this way.
Now this is one use case of query strings in your URLs.
If you want to tell Google analytics explicitly
where the traffic that just reached your page came from.
Now you could use this link, with this tag URLs
in your Facebook campaigns
or in your email newsletter, for example.
We have another special video on that
that you can check out right here.
Now, you need to be careful once you
write these value pairs in here,
you can't just type in anything
because they actually need to be URL-encoded.
Now for example, if you have multiple values
in here, they actually need to be connected
with a plus sign.
So, a space would be a plus sign, in this case.
Special characters need to also be encoded.
The equal sign for example, or umlaut, as well.
Now the best method to do this
is actually find a URL Decoder/Encoder
and type in any of your strings that you want to change.
Encode them and it will give you back
the string that you can use in your URL, as well.
All right, just to recap,
we know now what the query string is and what it's for.
Now how would you use this as a marketer?
There are several use cases.
Sometimes query strings are used to communicate
something with the server,
send information back and forth.
But they can be also used in marketing tools.
We already discovered one use case with UTM parameters
that we can use to tell Google Analytics
explicitly if we want to send the traffic
and which category.
And by the way, we also have our UTM tagging tool
that you can use in order to make more sense of this.
By putting the campaign Medium/Source in a spreadsheet,
and the URL will be automatically built for you.
But there are also other ways that Google Analytics
makes use of the query string.
One is cross-domain tracking.
So if you go to Measure School, here.
They actually have a link to another website
that we have.
And if I click on this Login link, here.
Then there is a query string attached
with this huge number at the end.
Which actually tells our Google Analytics
on our second website, which is a different domain, here,
that's measure.school,
that we just came from our first property
and we would like to stitch
both of these sessions together.
This is also known as cross-domain tracking.
So we have cross-domain tracking installed here
and if the query parameter wouldn't be transferred
onto this link, we wouldn't be connecting
our two domains together
and Google Analytics would see this as separate traffic.
So this is just one more use case
where the query string is very important.
Another case that you might be aware of
is when we go back to our Demoshop here
and type something into the search.
We actually have a query string here
with the s and equals sign and then woo,
which is the value of this s key,
which resembles our search.
Now, in this case, our search actually communicates
an important value to our server.
And he authors the results and the content down here.
If I would put something else in here,
then obviously this would also change
our search results here.
But we can use this in Google Analytics as well,
because there's actually a report in the Behavior section
called Site Search.
Now how does that get filled?
We just need to give Google Analytics
our key of
our query string, right here.
So in our case that would be s.
We could then go into our Admin section
and say that we have identified under the View Settings
our Site Search.
Right here, Query parameter,
and we can type in our s,
in order for Google Analytics
to fill our reports correctly.
So again, here we use the query string
to identify our search results.
Another example would be Email.
So if you're here in our Email marketing tool, of Drip,
where we have, for example,
a variable that's oftentimes
possible in Email marketing tools
to insert a variable from a custom form field,
can also use that in a link.
So, for example, here we have a link that we sent out.
And we have a query parameter attached.
And right here, this is, again, our UTM tagging.
But also, at the end, and this is just attached
with the & sign again,
we have here our first name equals
and then our subscription field
that will be dynamically replaced to whatever user
we sent this out to.
Now once the user gets the Email, right here,
he would obviously get this replaced
with the variable, and the link, as well,
would then feature a replaced value
right here, from Julian.
Now this could then be picked up,
and, for example, forwarded on to a Contact Us field.
Right here, that would be automatically filled.
We have another video on this, as well.
Now these are just a few use cases
how you can use query parameters.
It really depends on the tools
and the methods that you wanna use them in.
I think, to understand query parameters
and query strings is very important
as a marketer, in order to be able
to see what information gets sent back and forth,
and how to manipulate these query strings
for your own marketing efforts.
(upbeat electronic music)
All right, so did you like this video?
Then, don't hesitate.
Give us a thumbs-up.
And if you wanna see more, then you can go over
to the next video over there
or subscribe to our channel right over there,
because we will bring you new videos
just like this one every week.
Now, my name is Julian, see you in the next one.