Affiliate Marketing Forum

StarHugger · Joined: 29 Mar 2005 Posts: 363 Location: Toronto, Canada

Has anyone else noticed that AdSense reports sometimes show a different number of clicks depending on how it counts them? I have both URL channels (per page) and Custom channels (per ad unit) set up, so that I can monitor different kinds of stats. I started noticing a few months ago that the number of clicks reported on a given day for all the Custom channels on a given page often didn't match the total number of clicks reported for the URL channel for that page. (Did that make sense?)

In other words, for example, say I have an URL channel set up for mypage.htm. On mypage.htm, I have 3 ad units set up, each using a different custom channel; let's call them CH1, CH2 and CH3.

Now: CH1 + CH2 + CH3 should = Mypage.htm

But often the numbers don't add up. The page-channel clicks are often significantly less than the ad-channel clicks added together. It doesn't seem to correspond to the total clicks for, say, only one or two of the 3 channels (where maybe it's just missing one or two of the channels), so I don't know where the page channel is getting its numbers from. Or maybe it's the custom clicks that are off and reporting more clicks than there really were.

And it doesn't happen all the time, just some of the time on some of the pages...although I'm noticing it more and more. In all fairness, I'm not sure whether that's just me noticing it more, or whether it's happening more.

I've written Google about this several times. At first they thought it might be because of the new impression ads, but that shouldn't enter into it. A click is a click is a click. I'm not talking about earnings (which also do not often add up between both ways of calculating the total for a given page).

Today I received another reply from Google saying they can't figure out why the numbers are doing that, but assuring me that the aggregate (total, non-channelled) numbers and earnings are accurate. They say they'll continue to investigate it, but it sounded a bit like they might be throwing up their hands and shunting it to the back burner.

I'm disappointed that they haven't found an answer to this and it still leaves me feeling concerned about whether my clicks are being counted accurately. It also makes it that much harder to trust the accuracy of an increase or decrease in clicks when I'm experimenting with different strategies of ad positions, colours, etc.

So I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this? Or has even checked to see if their numbers are adding up as expected? Is anyone else monitoring their clicks using BOTH page and custom channels?

Starhugger
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