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How to: monitor visitors' AdSense clicks in real time - tutorial

Discussion in 'AdSense' started by denniss, Dec 24, 2010.

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  1. #1
    How to: monitor visitors' AdSense clicks in real time - tutorial
    Tutorial by: denniss
    Exclusive for DP

    Hi folks,

    Last week I posted in this forum section about a suspected clickbomb attack that happened to me ( http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2037861 ). Everyone was really helpful with advices, and as such I'd like to give back to the community.

    In a recap, I thought my site was clickbombed due to a 300% increase in CTR. But after tracking my visitors' behavior I've discovered that the clicks are indeed legit and were attributed to only one ad in my inventory. To be honest I did not know how to do that before, but I've learned a few tricks during my adventures. Some folks asked how I did that exactly, so here is a short how to/tutorial, exclusive to DP.

    This tutorial is divided into two parts, one dealing specifically with tracking your visitors' AdSense clicks (and more importantly, which ads they click on), and the second part deals exclusively with identifying and troubleshooting suspected clickbomb attacks (coming soon).

    #1 How to track your visitors' AdSense clicks in real time?

    Okay, I'll admit that I never knew it's possible before this suspected clickbomb attack happened to me and I had to Google this and try it out. But it's actually possible to track your visitors' AdSense clicks in real time and even get advanced info on each person that clicked an ad in the process, including the IP address, country of origin, network/ISP s/he is connecting from and even full browsing history for your site including browsing pattern/history for each user, and even the number of clicks on ads s/he did (including multiple clicks on the same ad - we'll come to that in part #2).

    We can achieve that using free online service statcounter.com - http://statcounter.com .

    statcounter.com is a visitors analytics service but it is really much more detailed than Google Analytics as among other features it allows you to track AdSense clicks. There are limitations to the free version: it only "remembers" the last 500 site visitors, though that should be enough for our purposes (alternatively you can always upgrade to a pro version that "remembers" the last 5,500 visitors, but for me the free one did the trick).

    So to set up statcounter what you do is:

    1. Go to statcounter.com and register a free account.
    2. Log into the site and add a new project (that's your site, in case you're wondering).
    3. Select a "hidden" counter (unless for some reason you want to have a public one).
    4. Now select how you publish your website (Wordpress, Joomla, html code, etc).
    5. Now you'll get the tracking code that you have to add on your site. Simply insert it anywhere after <body> and before </body> starting/closing tags for your site's html code. This will activate tracking.

    Statcounter gives you visits data in real time without any delays. So you'll instantly get stats, logs, etc. There's a lot of wonderful features to explore there, but what we need is a way to see AdSense clickthroughs, right?:)

    To get real time clickthroughs logs for users / ads:

    1. Select your project / site in welcome statcounter.com screen.
    2. Select "Exit Link Activity" from the sidebar menu: exit-link-activity.JPG
    3. Now you can see latest AdSense clicks! adsense-clicks-real-time-log.JPG
    4. You can click on the magnifying glass to see the information of the person who clicked any AdSense ad (including browsing pattern, where he came from, which pages he accessed, etc....) adsense-visits-logs.JPG
    5. You can also click on the google URL next to it. It WON'T activate/count the ad, but rather will show you the actual ad that was shown to the visitor in a new window (unless the ad is country/IP-restricted for you in the first place, then you won't be able to see it).

    Overall that's about all you need to know about it. If you use this method and spend a few hours tracking the AdSense clicks in real time you'll be able to identify click patterns for different ads and pages and even countries.

    If you have any questions or anything, just let me know :)

    And stay tuned for next tutorial part (coming up in the next few days): #2 how to troubleshoot suspected clickbomb attacks using statcounter.
     
    denniss, Dec 24, 2010 IP
  2. JamesColin

    JamesColin Prominent Member

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    #2
    Nice, thank you for the tutorial, a few years before there was a php/mysql script to install on one's site which allowed to know a few infos about which ads were clicked on which pages, but after some change in adsense, I think those scripts stopped working, I suppose statcounter still use an improved version of those open source scripts.
     
    JamesColin, Dec 24, 2010 IP
  3. denniss

    denniss Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Would you have a link / name for that script?

    I'd like to check it out, as while statcounter is an awesome tool it's still one more third party web service and http / dns request you need to add to your site, thus slowing down the site overall. If I could get something similar to run locally on my server that'd be better... and even if the script is broken it should be possible to fix it :)

    Thank you in advance.

    P.S. I'm glad you've found my tutorial to be useful :)
     
    Last edited: Dec 25, 2010
    denniss, Dec 25, 2010 IP
  4. JamesColin

    JamesColin Prominent Member

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    #4
    The name was adsenselogger, it was free and open source but after going paid it now doesn't exist because it doesn't work anymore.
    Otherwise there is also this old thread: http://www.websecurity.mobi/adsense-tracking-software/

    Honestly even when it worked it didn't catch all click events on some browsers, but it was interesting while it worked.
     
    JamesColin, Dec 25, 2010 IP
  5. denniss

    denniss Well-Known Member

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    #5
    Well, then I guess statcounter is a better solution:)

    What I like about it is that all browsers are supported, and you can install the tracking code on any site without needing to install a script on your own server -- even Blogger and Wordpress.com site owners can do it (I also tried it with our local WpTouch mobile site theme and it works 100% well with it too!). So it is a really good solution for the average blog owner.

    At the same time, though, it does create some extra dns/http calls and slows down the loading time when someone tries to view a page on your site, so I recommend putting statcounter's code next to the </body> exit tag, if you're using it.

    I am currently checking out an archived (free) version of adsenselogger and will try to track down some working clones or forks of therefore for local install on our dedicated server, and will keep you and everyone else posted if I will find anything.

    Cheers and Merry Christmas mate!
     
    denniss, Dec 25, 2010 IP
  6. krishmk

    krishmk Well-Known Member

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    #6
    Well I am using statcounter for 4-5 years. The exit link activity is not accurate. Many exit link clicks (to adsense ads) logged in statcounter never show up in adsense clicks. And sometimes clicks showing up in adsense do not appear in statcounter log.
     
    krishmk, Dec 25, 2010 IP
  7. denniss

    denniss Well-Known Member

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    #7
    Hi mate,

    I am somewhat surprised by that, as from what I've seen statcounter was +/-~5% accurate on clickthroughs.

    Basically I've measured statcounter's live stats versus the "increase" in number of AdSense clicks in any given hour (hourly statcounter logs + adsense ads clicks comparison increase monitoring, that is), and the results were more or less accurate with statcounter -- only not showing the pages where I assume it was not loaded (some folks click on ads before all third party scripts load and statcounter simply cannot count those clicks, while some browsers have javascript disabled, which would disable the stats tracker count).

    Cheers!
     
    Last edited: Dec 25, 2010
    denniss, Dec 25, 2010 IP
  8. denniss

    denniss Well-Known Member

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    #8
    I forgot to mention something very important that one of the forum members reminded me of.

    Basically the method given above to check out the exact AdSense ads:

    ...was lacking one important part.

    Specifically: if you cannot see the ad because of country restrictions (let's say you live in India and are trying to view an American ad - chances are you will not be able to see it because of IP restrictions), there's a way to bypass that using a proxy.

    For example, if you're seeing local ads but would like to see American ads, all you need to do is use a proxy service like anonymouse.org -- this will allow you to see American ads.

    (This is the exact advice I got on this from soft1000 via a PM:)
    Likewise, if you need to check other country-specific ads for other countries, for any given one simply find an online proxy service that's located in this country and use it to check out actual ads.

    To do this:
    - first match the IP address of the person that clicked on a specific ad to a country (statcounter gives you that info when you click on the "looking glass" image).
    - Then google up a free proxy service for this country with something like "online proxy [country name]". E.G. to find a proxy from UK use this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=online+proxy+uk
    - access a proxy site and and copy the URL of the google ad in question from statcounter's logs to view it.

    That's all i had to add :)
     
    Last edited: Dec 28, 2010
    denniss, Dec 28, 2010 IP
  9. credasys

    credasys Peon

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    #9
    Thanks for this useful tutorial mate.
     
    credasys, Dec 28, 2010 IP
  10. Arrowhead

    Arrowhead Peon

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    #10
    Thank you denniss for that really useful info, i've been meaning to look up tracking adsense click but never got around to hunting all the info down. Looking forward to the part 2. Please please post a link here to the second part when you get it completed.
    Thanks again
     
    Arrowhead, Dec 28, 2010 IP
  11. farhaj

    farhaj Member

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    #11
    Does statcounter also help in to know to which adsense website it has clicked..?
     
    farhaj, Dec 28, 2010 IP
  12. denniss

    denniss Well-Known Member

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    #12
    It will show you the ad in question (as described in addition to tutorial above) that a visitor has clicked on, so yes. You will be able to right click the ad and see which site it points to in 'properties' or "link location". Just make sure you do not left click on it ;)

    You're welcome, folks!

    I'll be posting the next part about clickbomb diagnostics shortly and will certainly add a link to it in this thread.

    Cheers!
     
    denniss, Dec 28, 2010 IP
  13. farhaj

    farhaj Member

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    #13
    But I do not remember exactly but somewhere someone said that statcounter reduces the adsense income as google may not give amount.. I guess maybe it is because of the factor that we can get to know the websites which users have clicked...
     
    farhaj, Dec 28, 2010 IP
  14. Sahil72

    Sahil72 Well-Known Member

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    #14
    Thanks a lot for sharing this :)
     
    Sahil72, Dec 28, 2010 IP
  15. tommygadget

    tommygadget Peon

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    #15
    I use StatCounter too. It's a very useful tool to track visitor behavior without telling Google about everything.

    TomG.
     
    tommygadget, Dec 28, 2010 IP
  16. denniss

    denniss Well-Known Member

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    #16
    you're welcome :)

    nah, you must be mistaking it with some other service... StatCounter is a stats/analytics service that has millions of users and a Google PR8 for its website... and AdSense clicks logging is just one of hundreds of features that it offers as standard. So no worries about using it.
     
    denniss, Dec 28, 2010 IP
  17. farhaj

    farhaj Member

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    #17
    So it is true then that with statcounter I can get to know which ads my visitors clicked ( meaning know the URL of the website which adsense does not let us know)...
     
    farhaj, Dec 29, 2010 IP
  18. farhaj

    farhaj Member

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    #18
    annd is it better than google analytics
     
    farhaj, Dec 29, 2010 IP
  19. simple007

    simple007 Well-Known Member

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    #19
    Thx for this helpful tutorial, indeed it sounds very true and accurate also. statcounter might give a backlink to you for promoting them ;) Congrats for your legit CTR...
     
    simple007, Dec 29, 2010 IP