Google AdSense tracking in Google Analytics
Google has finally launched something that will help a lot to track the performance of your AdSense campaings. If you already own some websites that uses AdSense to monetize, you will love this new feature because it will allow you to see detailed AdSense revenue by website, which was absolutely not possible with the AdSense-only interface.
What is it ?
It is the ability to link your AdSense account with your Analytics account. By doing this, every impression and every click will be tracked in Analytics.
Where do I go to see the detailed stats ?
When you link your two accounts, you will see a new menu item appear in your Analytics account, just like this one :
You will see 3 different menu items under "AdSense" (in fact 4, but the first is only the summary of the 3 others). These are the 3 different statistics you can get for AdSense.
What will I see in "Top AdSense content" ?
You will get detailed stats (total revenue, clicks, impressions, CTR and eCPM) for every page on your website. This is simply AWESOME. With this feature I discovered that in my dating website, the page that is generating the more revenue is the registration page.
Here's what it looks like :
Like any other Analytics graph you can change the view to "table", "pie chart", "performance chart" and the "comparison chart". You can also sort the table columns and change the time period.
What will I see in "Top AdSense referers" ?
You will see detailed stats (total revenue, clicks, impressions, CTR and eCPM) for each referer. A referer is a domain name on which your ad has been shown and clicked. For example, if 2 people clicks on your ad shown on www.example.com and clicks 2 ads each (40c each), the revenue for the referer www.example.com will be 1,60$.
Let's take a look at this :
With this feature you can easily track where your ads are being shown and which website leads you the most valuable members. As you can see in my stats, my most valuable referer is hotmail.
What will I see in "AdSense trends" ?
You will see what you already see in your AdSense account : revenue by day, just like this :
The only difference is that you will get a little bit more because you can choose exaclty what trend you want to see, by using this menu :
How do I activate it ?
Now that I convinced you to use this awesome feature, let's activate it. First, I assume you already have your AdSense account and your Analytics account and everything is up and running on your different websites.
1. Go to "Analytics settings" on your Analytics account and click on "Edit AdSense linking settings".
2. Check every AdSense website you want to track in your Analytics account.
3. Select the primary website. I suggest you take your biggest revenue generating website (the one that has the more traffic) or the website that is the least editable, because for each other website you will have to open the source code to add something.
4. Open the source code of your other websites and put the little JavaScript code block at the beginning of all pages (it may be a good idea to have a master page on your website where you can globally put the code, instead of opening every page).
It is very important that the tracking code (just like the one below) be placed in the "<head>" tag. If you don't do so, the tracking will simply NOT work. Trust me, I already tried !
<script type="text/javascript"> window.google_analytics_uacct = "UA-123456-1";</script>
Conclusion
Google is and will stay for a while the best advertising company on the net. Just try to find another service that provides you the same tracking functionality.
What is an AdSense-only website and why does it exists ?
There is many people who wants to make money easily. There is many ways to on the net to make money. One of them is by using the Google AdSense program. Because it is easy to use and provide easy money, many people are starting using it every day.
The Google phenomenom has caused a new phenomenom: the AdSense-only websites. There is TOO MANY websites that exists only to display ads and make money. This king of website is becoming more and more popular because it is cheap and content-cheap, so they are easy to create and maintain.
This exists because some people creates websites on which they try to sell books to know everything about the "AdSense secrets" for about 10$ (I already saw 200$ one day). They always tell that they personnaly make thousands of dollars every month with the AdSense program but in fact, the real money they do is with their one-page website on which they sell their books for a lot more than what it's worth. Those books DOES NOT contains anything you can't find for free (and easily) on Google.
Here is a list of websites you should NEVER trust (I don't add link because I don't want Google to think I actually link to them) :
http://www.adsenseonly.com/
http://adsense-secrets.com/
http://www.instant-adsense-templates.com/
http://www.googleadsensesecrets.com/
http://www.10adsensesecrets.info/
http://www.thesecretsofadsense.com/
http://www.adsensetrafficsecrets.com/
http://www.adsense.deeljeabiz.com/
On the other hand, these sites gives you real AdSense tips (for real websites) :
http://www.seopedia.org/contextual-advertising/google-adsense-adwords/5-google-adsense-secrets-tips-and-tricks/
http://www.wolf-howl.com/22/google-adsense-tips-tricks-and-secrets/
Always remember this simple rule : if it's too good to be true, it is because it IS too good to be true !