BP's Weblog

Ah, now, there's the rub. Last week, I explained how I was now tracking Google Adsense clicks using Google Analytics. Now, the method used is a little less than reliable, but it appears to record clicks accurately. Since then, I've been enjoying better Adsense stats than the Adsense site shows - Analytics lets you see the sequence of page views that led to each "goal" accomplishment. As well, it reports things like which keyword hits on search engines led to what percentage of ad clicks. Also, Analytics tracks user sessions, so I can see how many clicks per browsing session, vs. exposures and page views, which is usually all that's available.

My blog is fairly low traffic, and my traffic is bimodal - readers: people truly browsing the web or even specifically reading my blog, and searchers: people who are actively searching the web and encounter my page for one reason or another. I gather, based on the early Analytics reports, that my suspicions about these two traffic classes are both true: readers don't tend to click links, and web searchers have a pretty high tendency to do so.

Anyone, with such small numbers, it's easy to notice another problem. Remember, the Adsense+Analytics hack from last week should only report less or the same clicks than actually happen, since it just logs based on ad text clicks. It also does so without modifying the code (which might fall afoul of of the Adsense terms).

Any AdSense ad code, search box code, or referral code must be pasted directly into Web pages without modification. AdSense participants are not allowed to alter any portion of the ad code or change the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason.

At least, I take this to be true. The intermediary code doesn't change any of the pasted Adsense code, nor change the behavior of the ads - it does ad additional telemetry to the system. Perhaps this is why this clause sounds so broad: they want to prevent people from being able to notice what I have: Adsense-counted clicks are quite a bit less than recorded clicks. Since last Tuesday, Adsense has reported the following per-day clicks: 7,0,1,0,0,2, while Analytics has recorded 2,4,5,4,2,5.

I know Google discounts certain clicks, to prevent automated clicking from happening, and folks getting credit for clicking on their own links. Thing is, I never click on my own links. So, since there's no oversight, how am I to prevent Google from essentially never paying me for 1/2 of my ad clicks?

I'll be eager to track how this develops. I wonder if there's something wrong in my data collection, or if Google really thinks that such a high percentage of my scarce links are bogus. In which case, Google or its advertisers are probably getting a great deal on small-time blogs like mine which attract visitors which click on ads. I'll definitely post again once there's a larger pool of data to compare against.

Technorati Tags: adsense, googleanalytics