Marketing Defined

Track Adsense Statistics with Google Analytics

A current, ongoing survey by Google indicates they are seriously considering adding the Adsense tracking feature, that all webmasters have been screaming out for, into their Analytics website statistics software.

The Google Analytics team, via the Analytics blog, is seeking the following feedback from site owners that use both Google Analytics and Google AdSense:

Q1. Which Google Analytics reports do you use most often in conjunction with your AdSense account?

Q2. Which Analytics report or metrics would you most like to see added to Google Analytics to help you succeed with AdSense?

Scripts currently available to track Adsense clicks through Google Analytics are sketchy at best and offer disappointing tracking stats. Here are a couple of such scripts, although they are provided by two of my favorite SEO and Marketing blogs and webmasters:

Aaron Wall’s “SEO Book” blog provides a free javascript to track “adsense” clicks via the Google Analytics goal tab .. but it is limited to the Firefox browser … and

Amit Agarwal’s “Digital Inspiration” provides Click Tracking in Adsense, Chitika and YPN with Google Analytics limited to Internet Explorer.

The tracking of Adsense clicks provided by the above scripts is done through the Analytics feature: “Goals”. A goal is a way of tracking when a website visitor does something you want - Buy an item, submit a contact form, or in our case click an adsense ad.

How To Create A Goal in Analytics to Track Adsense Clicks

In the case of the first “free” script mentioned above at the SEO Book blog, to create and define a goal in Google Analytics you assign it a URL. This url doesn’t have to exist, as the javascript will trigger it. In the Goal URL field, enter “/asclick” and “AdClick” for the goal name.

You then add the javscript to your page by copying the provided astrack.js to your website server and adding one small line of javascript to the footer of your website, which must be positioned after all adsense code on the web page:

<script src="/astrack.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

After some time you should start seeing goal tracking appearing in your Analytics stats.

.. but the shortcomings of these scripts including bulky javascript code, made me ignore them in favor of a professional, paid Adsense tracker - the accurate and excellent Adsense Gold Tracking Script… aff link.

The comprehensive statistics available via the Adsense Gold tracker has really impressed. Daily analysis of the stats provided and application of these results, has seen my Adsense CTR’s surge upwards since I installed it some 6 weeks ago… by an encouraging 30 percent and steadily growing.

The Adsense Tracker only needs to be installed on one of your domains but will track Adsense CTR’s across a wide spectrum of domains, simply by inserting one line of javascript code at the bottom of each web page displaying Adsense ads.

Adsense Gold provides exact and clearly presented Adsense statistics under the following categories. Each category can then be further split into those “with” clicks, or “without” clicks. Excellent stuff, for further optimizing each niche adsense website, when you examine for example the “Keywords” category that presents each keyphrase searched for to arrive on your adsense optimized web page.

• Domain - total clicks by individual domain
• Days - day of the week
• Hour - hour of the day
• Ads - name of advertiser’s ad clicked on, allowing you to block the domains of low paying advertiser’s from showing ads on your website - via your Google Adsense account
• Format - which size adsense block selected
• Pages - actual web page on your website that presented the Adsense ad
• Directory - which Directory or Folder on your website the webapge belongs to
• IP - IP address of visitor
• Clicks - stats at a glance for each click before dissecting further with any category includes the added bonus of halting click fraud should you see repeated clicks from one domain
• Referrer - name of search engine or domain that referred your visitor
• Ref Address - entire URL of referrer, including keyphrase searched for to arrive at your domain
• Keywords - keyword or keyphrases selected - with and without clicks
• Channels - lists channel name or channel number of each ad

I have yet to encounter better Adsense statistics reporting package… If Adsense Gold Tracker is used properly to its full potential, I believe the optimizing possiblities offered to a new Adsense webmaster (or any publisher) via the bonus of additional website statistics — is excitingly professional and “complete” at a pretty darn good price.

The “keywords” category, both for ads clicked on or not, gave me a whole new insight into what kind of information/articles my visitors were looking for, at each of my websites. Which not only provided accurate keyphrases for insertion in new Blog posts, but how/what to select in the way of income producing affiliate products to buy and present - AND - entire themes for that matter, to concentrate on for niches… to compound website stickiness.

To give you an example, since analyzing and applying the data provided by Adsense Gold — my Alexa stats for the Marketing Defined web site, shows a jump in traffic rank of 65,500 places and a “page views” increase of 50% equalling 12.9 page views per visitor in traffic and page views. Phew! visitors are stopping to actually read and learn from what I publish ;-)

If you are unable to invest in the excellent Adsense Gold Tracking software just yet, then I am certain you will eagerly await Google’s announcement that they have added a comprehensive Adsense tracking feature into the free Google Analytics software.

The ability for publishers to freely analyze their website statistics for click fraud for, will surely be a welcome relief if Google were to go ahead with the integration of Adsense statistics into Google Analytics.