Choosing a tracking domain

Every EventsIQ campaign that uses Redirect delivery needs a tracking domain. It is the hostname your ad links point at: the place where the click is recorded before the visitor is sent on to your landing page.

You have two ways to get one. You can take a subdomain on eventsiq.io, such as acme.eventsiq.io, or you can point a subdomain of your own website, such as track.acme-solar.com, at EventsIQ with a CNAME record. Both run the same tracker. The difference is setup effort, whose name the visitor sees, and which landing pages Google will accept the domain for.

Both are managed under Settings → Domains.

Option 1: a subdomain on eventsiq.io

Click Get a subdomain, type a name and save. If you choose acme, your tracking domain is acme.eventsiq.io.

There is nothing to set up at a DNS provider. The subdomain is on our zone, so it is ready straight away, and its HTTPS certificate is already in place.

A few rules apply to the name:

• One word, with no dots. Hyphens are fine, so acme-solar works.
• At least three characters, using letters, numbers and hyphens, starting and ending with a letter or number.
• Some names are kept for EventsIQ itself, such as www, app, track, go and blog. If you pick one of those, you are asked to choose another.

Because this subdomain sits on the tracker's own domain rather than on your website, it is not tied to any one landing page domain. One subdomain can serve campaigns that land on several different websites, which suits agencies and lead generators who run pages on more than one domain.

The trade-off is visibility: the link in the ad shows eventsiq.io, not your brand.

Option 2: a CNAME on your own website

Click Add domain and type a subdomain of a website you own, for example track.acme-solar.com. You can paste a full address like https://track.acme-solar.com/ and EventsIQ cleans it up.

Open the new row and you will see one DNS record to add at your DNS provider:

Copy the exact values from the row, since that is what EventsIQ checks against. Add the record, come back, and click Check again until the status reads Live. Most records are picked up within minutes, and some take up to an hour.

Some DNS providers, including Namecheap and GoDaddy, add your domain to the Name for you. If yours shows acme-solar.com beside the Name field, enter just track. Otherwise the record ends up as track.acme-solar.com.acme-solar.com, which saves without complaint and points at nothing. The row reminds you when this applies.

A bare domain like acme-solar.com is refused. Pointing the whole domain at EventsIQ would take over your website, and the DNS standard does not allow a CNAME there anyway. Use a subdomain.

What each status means

The certificate is issued and renewed automatically. You never upload one, and every tracking domain is served over HTTPS only.

The benefit of this option is that visitors and ad networks see your own name in the link. The cost is a DNS change, and one rule from Google that matters a great deal.

Why Google only accepts your own subdomain for your own website

Google Ads has a policy about custom tracking domains. A subdomain of your website that points at a click tracker is accepted only when the ad's Final URL is on that same website.

In practice:

• track.acme-solar.com is fine for ads landing on www.acme-solar.com.
• It is also fine for any other subdomain of the same site, such as quotes.acme-solar.com.
• It is not fine for ads landing on acme-home-energy.com, even if you own that domain too.

The reasoning is straightforward. A tracking link on acme-solar.com tells the person clicking that they are dealing with Acme Solar. If it then delivered them to a different website, the link would be making a promise about the destination that it does not keep. Matching the tracking domain to the landing page domain keeps that promise honest.

Ads that break the rule can be disapproved, so EventsIQ checks for it. When you set up a Google campaign with Redirect delivery, the campaign sheet compares the tracking domain with every landing page in the campaign. If any landing page is on a domain Google may refuse for that tracking domain, the sheet names it and suggests either a tracking domain on the landing page's own website or Direct delivery.

Which one to pick

A simple way to decide:

• All your landing pages are on one website you control, and you want your own name in the link. Use a CNAME on that website, for example track.acme-solar.com. Set up one per website if you run several.
• You run campaigns for several websites, or you cannot change DNS quickly. Use a subdomain on eventsiq.io. It is ready immediately and is not tied to one landing page domain.
• You do not want a redirect at all. Use Direct delivery. The ad points straight at your landing page, and the EventsIQ form on the page asks for a click id when it loads. You lose redirect rules and split tests, but you need no tracking domain.

You can have both kinds of domain in the same account and choose per campaign.

Removing a domain

Click Remove on the row. Every campaign link on that domain stops working straight away, so move your campaigns to another domain first if their ads are still running.

If a CNAME domain shows DNS record gone, someone has changed the record at your DNS provider. Links through it have stopped. Put the record back and click Check again.

Whichever option you choose, the tracker behaves the same way on it: it records the click, follows the destination parameter exactly on Google links, and adds only its own click and campaign ids.