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 Google AdWords ?
Google AdWords is one of the best advertising system on the web right now. It consists of contextual ads (text, image, video) displayed everywhere on the web. Anyone who wants to advertise something can set up an account and start advertise the way he wants ! Ads can be displayed on the search network as well as any website using
Google AdSense. You can chose to pay for each click on your ads, or pay for a number of impressions of you ads.
Let's start with a little bit of story...
AdWords has been created in 2000 with some limited features. Advertisers wasn't able to create their campaings like they want, they had to pay Google a monthly fee and let them set up their campaign. Google then launched to possibility to create our own campaigns. In 2005 google introduced the Jumpstart service to help advertisers setting up their campaigns. Everything was not as easy as it can be today, so Google had to change their advertising solution to keep advertisers advertising. Now, in 2008, you can set up your own campaign in clicks, and it works very well !
First, AdWords for the Google search network
If you want your ads to be displayed in the right part of the Google search result page, you have to decide which keywords will make them appear. When someone searches for one of the words defined in your campaign, your ad appears on the right side of the result page... in fact, there's some other things to know, like the keyword's auction. In the example on your right I searched for "AdWords" on Google, and a lot of ads appeared. There is 2 places for ads on the Google search result page; top and right. In the example, there is ads in the 2 spots.
Not only your ads will be shown on Google but they will also be displayed on sites where there's the Google search box like this one :
 Enter your search terms Submit search form |
Secondly, AdWords for the content network
Ads can be displayed on a lot (I mean, a lot) of websites on the net. Every website using the Google AdSense program allows you to advertise on them automatically. You have 2 choices to decide how you want your ads to be displayed on other websites. You can chose websites, or chose keywords. If you chose websites, your ads will be shown on the websites you decided. On the other side, if you chose keywords, your ads will be displayed on any website containing your keywords.
Keyword's auction (CPC or Cost per click)
Because of the great popularity of the AdWords program, Google had to create the keyword auction. This "auction" is used to help advertisers to display ads in the top results if they are ready to pay more than other advertisers. For each keyword there's an auction. The prices changes every day. Price per click for a keyword can be in cents as well as dollars. If you have the keyword "Dating", you will have to pay more than 1$ to appear because there's a lot of advertisers who wants to advertise they dating site. On the other hand, is you advertise for "Kozlowski-Krajewska syndrome" (this is a rare disease), you will be able to pay 2-3 cents per click because no one advertise for this.