Related search for content, or RSOC in short, is a monetization product launched by Google. It gives website owners the opportunity to embed monetized keyword blocks directly into their content. Each time a user clicks on one of these keywords, they will be sent to a page filled with ads (the flow may change for different providers). If they click on one of these ads, the website owner gets paid.
Compared to traditional AFD (Adsense for Domains), RSOC is more compliant, user-friendly, and can lead to higher conversion rates. This is because the keywords are naturally integrated inside the content page, which makes it less intrusive and more engaging.
While RSOC provides many benefits compared to AFD, it also comes with challenges, especially when it comes to tracking. Without the right tracking setup in place, performance marketers cannot properly analyze and optimize their campaigns.
In this article, we will explain how RSOC tracking works, its limitations, and how to solve them for better results.
How Does RSOC Tracking Work?
Once you are approved for RSOC by Google, you are assigned around 500 unique channels (this may vary). These channels act as custom identifiers which can be added to your links to see where revenue and tracking are coming from.
Based on this, you will get a revenue report from Google broken down by Channel, GEO, Device, or Style ID (the design of the keyword block). We will take a closer look at these dimensions later in this article.
The goal is to use this data smartly, combine it with your traffic source data and spread it across different campaigns, landers, or countries to get more insights. Later, we will explain how you can do this.
What Data Can You Track With RSOC?
As mentioned above, you can track revenue and conversion data on different levels or dimensions:
- Channel: These are unique identifiers which can be used as tags to help you categorize traffic for better performance insights. For example, you can use different channel names to differentiate between traffic from various ad platforms or campaigns. However, there are usually limits on the number of unique channel names you can use each day. This limit is defined by the number of channels you were assigned, and can be reused in a different campaign after 24 hours.
- GEO: Refers to the location, usually on a country-level, of the users.
- Device: Refers to the device type, such as desktop, mobile, tablet etc.
- Style ID (if implemented): You can assign a unique
As you can see, Google does not provide revenue data on click-level.
The RSOC Tracking Challenge: No Click-Level Revenue Data
The lack of revenue attribution on click-level is the biggest RSOC tracking challenge currently. Google does not show you which specific click generated revenue and how much that revenue was.
If you can’t have precise data, your optimization strategies may be based on incorrect stats, causing you to cut down on what’s working or scale what isn’t.
How to Improve RSOC Tracking Accuracy With ClickFlare
The best way to improve tracking accuracy for RSOC is to cross-analyze the available data you have from Google for the dimensions we mentioned above with data from your ad platforms.
This can get tricky if you’re doing it manually. Google reports each breakdown separately, so you can’t easily cross-analyze things such as how a specific channel performed on desktop in the US.
Even if you found a way to do this manually while avoiding mistakes, you still have no idea how much each channel cost you. Most media buyers use ad platforms such as Facebook, TikTok or native platforms, which don’t directly connect to your RSOC provider.
Now imagine you have hundreds of channels and campaigns. Exporting and cleaning the data manually each day is close to impossible.
This is where tracking software, such as ClickFlare, comes in. It integrates with top ad platforms, such as Facebook, Google, TikTok, Taboola, Outbrain, and many others, as well as with RSOC providers like Tonic, Ads.com, Sedo, System1, ExplorAds and more. ClickFlare is currently the tracking tool with the most RSOC integrations.
Essentially, ClickFlare acts as the middleman between your ad platform’s granular data and RSOC’s reports on all the different levels we mentioned earlier, giving you click-level revenue estimates that are more accurate for scaling and optimization.
All you need to do is simply integrate your ad and revenue platforms on ClickFlare, which you only need to do once. After that, data will be automatically pulled every hour via API.
How Accurate Is RSOC Tracking?
It is important to highlight once more that the revenue you will get on click-level is an educated estimation made by ClickFlare’s algorithm based on all the data it has access to.
However, given all the available breakdowns and traffic source data, this estimation can be used to optimize your campaigns with a higher degree of confidence.
Conclusion
RSOC is a great monetization tool for content pages that generally delivers a better user experience and better performance compared to traditional AFD. But if you don’t have the right tracking in place, you won’t have the necessary insights to optimize and scale your campaigns properly.
Google only gives you aggregated data, with no click-level revenue, making it more difficult to pinpoint what’s actually working. ClickFlare has found a reliable way to cross-analyze this data by connecting to both your traffic platforms and RSOC providers, giving you an educated estimation of revenue on click-level. This will help you make better decisions and optimize your RSOC campaigns with confidence.
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