Just curious if anyone has figured out how to get the google stats to tie in with an adsense account? That would be the ultimate gold mine of data.
I am not sure if this is avaiable, although because this is a reletively new product i am sure much additional functionality will be developed over time. Although no doubt tracking Adsense clicks and such to a much greater degree will be an ultimate goal for Google Analytics.
I thought I had read somewhere that there was a way to make this happen. I don't know, with all the new google announcements lately, it's hard to keep up.
I have just set http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com as a goal URL. Adsense clicks go there and redirect to the advertiser. I'll let you know how it goes. Let me know if I am going in the wrong direction.
Great idea tbarr60. Google Analytics does tie in quite well for Adwords - it's a matter of time before they hook it in with AS. GA has been pretty buggy since the launch. Many news stories and blogs are covering the issues surrounding late reporting and relatively sluggish performance of the GA site as a while in the last 48 hours. G says that they got many more signups than they anticipated... I suspect it will smooth itself out in the next few days. We have about 20 client sites on GA, and it took at least 36 hours before we started seeing reports - much more than the "12 hour" window that G mentions in their GA FAQ... Cheers, Rob
A couple problems with that... Google doesn't track click destinations, only pages that actually have the JavaScript code on it. So the goal of "pagead2.googlesyndication.com" will never be seen because that URL will not be part of your stats. The other problem is even if Google did track the destination of the clicks, AdSense ads are actually within an IFRAME which becomes an incredibly complex thing to try and track a click within an IFRAME (without adding code to the IFRAME itself which of course isn't an option). But... it did give me an idea that I'm going to try and see if it works. I'll know tomorrow when I have today's reports available. If it works, I'll post a "how to".
I didn't think about the iframe but people have written Adsense tracking apps that do record all the Adsense clicks. I think you are right though and I won't see and results but maybe Google will surprise me.
Baited breath.. I am still getting a handle on the functionality of analytics... But that is certainly functionality I would be interested in. The reporting data is great... But since I don't sell anything, currently on any of my sites, I need some other things to track... Anyone do any kind of registration tracking for forums and such? My issue with that would be people who are already members... I guess I need to play around with it more... But looking forward to see if shawn comes up with something on adsense... or related items.