If Google can’t count how can I count on Google?
Ever since I became a Pro member at MyBlogLog I have enjoyed looking at what my readers click on and where they click it from. One of the most useful bits of information is gleaned by seeing what AdSense banners people click on from what articles.
Now, I know MyBlogLog tracking is not perfect (they don't track AuctionAds clicks or AdBrite clicks) but they do a good job of tracking the AdSense clicks. At least I think they do a good job...
I wrote a few days ago about Google's "10% of clicks are click fraud" in which Google admits that they just blindly discredit 10% of clicks because they assume they are fraudulent rather than take the time to investigate the issue. I feel this is an indicator that Google has no clue about click fraud.
Let's take a quick look at some information from MyBlogLog compared to the same information from Google.
The first picture is taken directly from my AdSense account and only shows clicks, everything else is blacked out. The second shot is from MyBlogLog which shows the two AdSense Adblocks I run on site (now only one).
Notice how the numbers add up nicely? According to both stat tracking systems there were 27 AdSense clicks on my site for September 13, 2007. I can understand if the tracking is off by a little bit due to the fact that some companies may be operating in different timezones but MyBlogLog is now owned by Yahoo and Yahoo and Google are both "West Coast", Pacific Time Zone companies.
So, if the data from PokeFarm is OK why am I complaining? Let's take a look at the same day in regards to my scamstocks site.
What the heck? Did Google just discount 22 of my clicks? That is a lot more than 10%!
This is not the first time this has happened, I see it almost daily. I have had days where MyBlogLog tells me hmtk.com had 100+ AdSense clicks across multiple articles yet AdSense will tell me I had less than 10.
Because of Google's trouble keeping count of clicks and discounting the majority of my clicks I think it is about time I dropped them entirely. I've been running AdBrite on PokeFarm with some success but I would prefer to just run 30 day button ads (which I run here) for advertisers.
Tell me, am I the only one this is happening to or are their others like me out there? I'm not making a killing off of Google and this summer has been awful! For the first time in a long time I did not make the $100 minimum to get paid from Google. Yes, this has coincided with Google's counting problem.
Update 1
I received the following response from MyBlogLog about click tracking:
This is due to Google Adsense filtering out improper clicks (ie for clickfraud reasons).
We make no distinction for improper clicks.
If this were the case wouldn't Google have already dropped me for click-fraud? They dump bloggers all the time for click-fraud! According to recent tracking data my site is sitting at a 98% click-fraud rate!!!
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I always see massive variance between MBL and AdSense stats. I contacted Google months ago about it and they first wrote back something about being careful using 3rd party stats as it could be against ToS. That pissed me off even more as I was asking a question about a concern and they tried bullying me. So it got escalated and the next person pretty much said nothing useful, just that I should use Analytics for stats, which of course doesn’t track Adsense clicks.
One thing on MBL stats, I read a long time ago that they actual “estimate” outgoing clicks based on mouse location at time of exit. It was 6+ months ago that I read that, so I can’t remember the source unfortunately.
I do think Google is skimming off the top of my earnings either way.
I expect that if I ask Google about this they will just ban me from AdSense for being “upity” and asking them about this.
As for the variance, why are they spot on with pokefarm and way off with everything else? There is one other factor I may have discovered at work here. Once I compile some more data I will report on what sort of clicks I think Google may be discounting.
I’ll give you one hint about my “discovery”. A typical front page stint on Netscape results in 100+ AdSense clicks. My last Netscape front page story generated 175 clicks according to MyBlogLog and zero according to Google. See where I am going with this?
Did Kevin Rose buy Google? It sounds like the same people run the show at Digg and Google! WTF? I wonder if they just steal frmo 10,000 small blogs and keep track of the 200 big ones? Fishy Denmark stuff again - sheeehs! I can’t wait for hakia to run Google out of town.
As of about noon time today MBL is reporting 17 clicks on this article and Google is reporting zero. The PokeFarm clicks are within 3 clicks on both MBL and Google. I don’t think AdSense reports “live” click data but when I got up this morning (before I posted this article) MBL was reporting 2 clicks on the whole site. If those clicks occurred 6+ hours ago shouldn’t Google have counted them by now?
Page Views between both are a little off but I attribute that to people who use adblockers.
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/008748.html
Looks like others are in the same boat. I’d say stick with Google. MBL is an independant 3rd party solution. I wouldn’t trust them.
I see a lot of mentions of StumbleUpon users causing false positives due to the adblock being near the stumble button but all of my adblocks (in question) appear at the bottom of the page and not the top. I think I can test this hovering my mouse over an adblock and using the keyboard shortcuts to navigate.
I just experimented with this and even hovering the mouse over one link while leaving via another the correct link was being incremented in the MBL stats.
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Another reason why its’ better to sell your own ads.
Why does your site just have a big showing of the Webb Alert?
One thing you can do is to advertise your pokemon site on hmtk and check how much money you are making and then paying google. That will totally bring out any disparences.
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