Why doesn’t my tracking link work with Bing?

ClickMagick and Bing work great together so if you’re having tracking problems with Bing it simply means that something isn’t set up correctly. The most common reason is that you haven’t properly set up your tracking link in your ad.

The easiest way to track down tracking link problems is to open your Bing account in one browser window while watching the set up video side-by-side in another window. Here’s a link to the Bing Set Up Video:
 
How To Set Up a Tracking Link in Bing


If reviewing the video didn’t help you find your problem, there are two other settings to check ...

Either you’ve got a campaign-wide tracking template set up—which won’t work with ClickMagick—or you’ve got “auto-tagging” turned on which is also incompatible with ClickMagick.

Let’s disable both of these settings …


Bing’s Campaign-Wide Tracking Template

There are two common models that tracking systems use, the “query string” model and the “Sub-ID” model. You don’t really need to know what that means other than to understand that ClickMagick uses the “Sub-ID” model.

Bing, on the other hand, assumes that you’re using the “query string” model and that makes their campaign-wide tracking template incompatible with any tracking system—such as ClickMagick—that uses the “Sub-ID” model.

Setting up the tracking template at the ad-level works great for both types of tracking systems.

So, as long as you stick to using the tracking template associated with each individual ad (as shown in our Bing Set Up Video), you can track anything you’d like in Bing. Just make sure you have the campaign-wide tracking template turned off.

Here’s how …
 
1.    Go into your campaigns by clicking on the Campaigns tab at the top of your screen.
 
2.   Click on the Settings tab, then click on the name of the campaign you want to check:


 
 
3.   Scroll down to the Advanced Settings and look for the Campaign URL options section near the bottom of the page. Click on the link that says “Tracking template”. An entry box will pop open. Make sure that box is empty as shown in the screenshot.
 
4.   If you changed anything, be sure to click on the Save button at the very bottom-left of the page to save your changes.

That’s all you need to do to make sure that you don’t have a campaign-wide tracking template set up that conflicts with the tracking template that you set up in your ad.


Bing’s Auto-Tagging Feature

Bing’s auto-tagging feature also assumes that you’re using a “query string” based tracking system so it can also cause problems if you have it enabled.

By default, Bing has auto-tagging turned off, so if you didn’t change that setting anywhere, you shouldn’t have to worry about it. But if nothing else you’ve tried seems to have fixed your problem, you should double-check this setting.

Follow these steps to disable auto-tagging in your account:
 
1.    First, go to the Account menu by clicking on your email address in the upper-right corner. Select “Accounts & Billing”:



 
 
2.   Look at your settings and confirm that the “Auto-tagging” setting is showing “Off”. If the setting says “On”, then you’ll need to turn it off. Start by clicking on the pencil next to the word “Account” which will allow you to edit the settings:


 
 
3.   For the Auto-tagging setting, uncheck the box that says “Add UTM tags to my destination URLs”:
 



Be sure to click the Save button to save your changes.



Next, follow these steps to disable auto-tagging in your Shared Library:
 
1.    First click on the Campaigns tab at the top of the page. Next, click on the “Shared Library” link in the lower-left corner of the campaigns page:
 


 
 
2.   After clicking on “Shared Library”, it will slide up to the top of the page and present a list of options. Click on “URL Options”:
 


 
 
3.   Make sure that the “Auto-tagging of Click ID” option is unchecked:



If the box was checked, be sure to Save your changes.


That’s it!

If you’ve made sure that these settings are correct, and that you’ve set up your tracking link correctly as shown in the Bing Set Up Video, then you should be able to successfully track ads inside of Bing using ClickMagick.
 
Tip: If you’ve double-checked all of your settings and you still aren’t able to get your ad to track with ClickMagick, contact us at our 1-Hour Support desk and send us screenshots of the different settings in your Bing account. In other words, send us a screenshot of your tracking template settings for your individual ad under the “Ad URL options”, and send a screenshot of each of the settings shown in this FAQ so we can verify that they are correct.
 
   How do I take a screenshot on my computer or mobile device?