Tracking AdSense Responses

Anytime you track how well your AdSense strategy is actually doing,
you’re relying a little bit on science and a little bit on magic. True, the
only surefire way to determine what your AdSense revenues will be is to wait
until they’re processed and show up on the AdSense administration pages.
But that doesn’t tell you what works (and what doesn’t work) with the way
that you’ve set up your ads or the placement that you’re using for the ads.
If you want to know what trends seem to be influencing your revenue, here’s
another way to go about it. Tracking your Web site traffic — more specifically,
tracking what brings people to your site, what takes them away, and
what they do while they’re on your site — is the best way to get a feel for the
trends that affect your AdSense revenues. To track all that, you have to put in
some work or find a really good program.
Which of those options you decide to use is determined by you. What are
you more comfortable with? You can track everything and extract all that
information from the logs that are available on your server, or you can let
someone else do all the hard work for you so that all you have to do is take
a look at the data that’s been gathered.
Both ways have advantages and disadvantages. Ultimately what it comes
down to is whether a service (like Google Analytics) can provide all the data
that you need. Such a service might not, and if that’s the case, you have only
one option: Roll up your sleeves and do it on your lonesome.

Tracking Stats with Google Analytics

If you’re asking my opinion about the best programs to use for tracking Web
site statistics — go ahead! Ask. — Google Analytics is definitely #1 on my list.
It’s easy to use, it’s free, you don’t need access to your Web server, and you
don’t have to be an ubergeek to use it. Google Analytics also provides all the
statistics that I think you need. (I’ve been known to be wrong a time or two,
but just keep that between you and me.)
Google Analytics started life as Urchin Analytics. Urchin was one of the
premier Web site traffic statistics programs available on the Web — at an
expensive price. Then Google bought Urchin and made the program available
for free. The number of people who adopted it during the first few days of
release was overwhelming. Google actually had to close the program to new
users for a time to catch up with demand.
It’s no surprise that demand for such a powerful stats program was very
high, especially at a cost of exactly nothing. The statistics that are available
through Google Analytics will satisfy almost everyone looking for Web site
stats and are certainly enough to help you understand how your AdSense ads
are performing.
The thing about Google Analytics that’s different from a log analyzer like
AWStats is the way that visitors on your site are tracked. Log analyzers tend
to track visitors by IP address. Google Analytics actually tracks visitors by
placing a cookie — a small snippet of code that acts as a kind of software ID
collar — on the visitor’s hard drive. Then, each time the visitor comes to
your site, that cookie is recognized by Google Analytics.
The more Web-savvy among readers will immediately see the problem with
relying on cookies to get the job done. A cookie is only trackable as long as
it’s on the visitor’s hard drive. So, if a visitor comes to your site, clears out
his Internet history, and then returns to the site in the same day, that user is
tracked as two different users. Numbers can get a little screwy.
Most people don’t clean out Internet histories on a daily basis — some never
clean out them at all — but that’s one of the issues you should be aware of.
Google Analytics also can be fooled by people who set their browsers to
not accept cookies at all. It’s a privacy issue. Some believe that when a company
(any company) is tracking their movements on the Web, their privacy
is invaded. On principle, they edit their browser preferences so that the
browser won’t accept any cookies. (Editing your preferences is a snap to do,
in case you’re wondering.) I don’t necessarily buy into that school of thought,
but I can understand why some people would feel that way.
Regardless of whether you understand the anti-cookie stand of some folks,
the fact still remains that a percentage of your site visitors may have set up
their browsers to reject cookies. If that’s the case, Google Analytics can’t
track those people. It’s a small percentage, but again, enough that you should
be aware it’s a possibility.
Even with these issues, Google Analytics remains my favorite Web site traffic
statistics program. Because it’s free and easy to install, I recommend that
everyone at least try it for a month or two. If you don’t like it, you can always
move on to something else.
Intrinsically, the difference between log analyzers and programs like Google
Analytics mostly involves methodology. Which program you use is determined
by what you’re looking for. I much prefer programs like Google
Analytics over log analyzers because, as far as I’m concerned, the information
that I need is covered by Google Analytics. You may not feel that way,
and that’s okay. Just choose the program that works best to meet your specific
tracking needs.
Installing Google Analytics
Google Analytics, like all Google programs, is easy to install. It requires that
you register for the program and then install the tracking code. Easy-peasy.
Here are the basics for getting started with the program:
1. Point your browser to http://www.google.com/analytics.
The Google Analytics home page appears.
2. Click the Sign Up Now link.
A sign-up page appears.
3. If you already have a Google account, sign into Google Analytics with
that account. If you don’t have an account, register a new account
with Google.
4. After you sign in, click the Sign Up button
You’re taken to the New Account Signup page.
5. In the New Account Signup page, enter your Web site’s URL, an
account name (this can be any name you choose), your time zone location,
and your actual time zone into the appropriate text fields and
then click Continue.
6. In the new page that appears, enter your contact information (including
name, telephone number, and country) and then click Continue.
The User Agreement page appears.
7. Read through the user agreement, and if you agree with the terms of
service, select the Yes, I Agree to the Above Terms and Conditions
check box and then click Create New Account.
You now have an Analytics account, but you’re still not quite done. A new
page appears, displaying your tracking code, . This
snippet of code is how Google Analytics tracks the visitors to your Web
pages.
8. Copy the code provided and paste it into the HTML of your Web site
immediately before the body tag of the site.
Now, you’re really finished.
After you place the tracking code on your Web site, it could take a couple days
before you begin to see any statistics about the site on Google Analytics —
stuff like number of visitors, where they came from, and how long they stayed
on your site. Even then, the statistics aren’t really valuable beyond telling you
who’s been to your site. There’s nothing historical to compare the statistics
against.
Getting the real value of Google Analytics takes at least 30 days — long
enough to have enough information to compare timeframes and see what a
normal baseline for your site is.
After you allow enough time to establish a baseline, you can really tell what
tweaks are valuable in terms of bringing in more site traffic — and seeing
what may be pushing traffic off your site. For example, if you have a high percentage
of your visitors leaving your site on a specific page, you know that
there’s something about that page that could be turning your visitors off, so
you can tweak the page to try to hold them on the site longer.

Channeling with AdSense

When you’re tracking what works and what doesn’t in AdSense, you soon
discover that no single tracking method works best. Instead, a combination
of tracking technologies helps you gather all the data you need. In addition
to a Web site traffic statistics program , AdSense offers another method of tracking that can help you determine
which ads perform best — channels.
Google explains channels this way:
Channels enable you to view detailed reporting about the performance of
specific pages and ad units. By assigning a channel to a combination of
pages or ad units, you could track the performance of a leaderboard versus
a banner, or compare your motorcycle pages to your automobile pages. You
can even create a channel to track each of your separate domains, so you
can see where your clicks are coming from. While channels can be used to
track performance and revenue, they won’t have any effect on your earnings
or ad targeting.
The way you use channels is determined by how you want to track your ads
and by the revenues generated from those ads. You can track them by ad,
page, and even Web site — whatever works best for you. When you have that
information, you can cross-compare it to your Web site traffic statistics to
figure out even more about what’s working and what’s not.
AdSense offers two different types of channels: URL channels and custom
channels. URL channels track your AdSense ads by URL. You can track either
single pages or you can use the top URL (www.sitename.com) to track every
page within a Web site.
Custom channels allow you to track specific ads, according to parameters that
you define. You can use a single custom channel to track multiple ads on multiple
Web sites, as well.
When using channels to track your AdSense ads, the code that’s generated
for your ad differs slightly from what would be generated if you weren’t tracking
the ads with a specific channel. However, the code should still be pasted
into your Web site or blog in the same manner that you added code that isn’t
tracked by channels.
Creating AdSense channels is an easy enough procedure. When you’re creating
URL channels, have the specific URL that you want to track. If you want
to track a whole site under a single URL, the top-level Web address is the one
that you need to use. If you’re tracking a specific page on your Web site, be
sure you have the exact URL for the page that you want to track. With that
information in hand, here’s how you can create your first URL channel:
1. Log in to your AdSense account and go to the AdSense Setup tab.
2. Click the Channels link on the AdSense Setup tab.
You’re taken to the Channels overview page, as
3. Click the URL Channels link.
The page view refreshes to show URL channels that have been previously
created (if there are any).
4. Click the + Add New URL Channels link.
The page refreshes to show a form for entering URLs,
Enter the URLs that you want to track in the text box provided.
Make sure you only enter one URL per line.
To track a single page: Enter the full URL (example.com/sample.
html)
To track a script that generates multiple pages: Enter the full
path of the script, without the ? (example.com/sample.
asp?keyword=one)
To track all pages below a specific directory: Enter a partial URL
(example.com/sample)
To track only pages across a specific subdomain: Enter the subdomain
(sports.example.com)
To track all pages on a domain: Enter the domain name (www.
example.com)
To track all impressions and clicks across the domain (including
any existing subdomains): Enter the domain name without the www
(example.com)
6. After you enter the desired URLs, click the Add Channels button.
Now you have URL channels available to you if you want to use them to
track your ads.

Understanding Server Logs

Let me put it to you straight: The most difficult way to track traffic on your
Web site is through your server logs. Server logs are also the only way to get
certain types of in-depth detail about your site. I guess you need to know what
sever logs are though before I get too deep into what you can do with them.
A server log — more accurately a Web server log — is a group of files automatically
generated by a server that tracks statistics about the traffic on your
Web site. This group of files might contain information on where a user came
to your site from, what pages on your site she visited, how long she spent on
each site, and even more detailed information like what country she lives in
(or the country her Internet access account is registered in) and some of the
specifications about the browser she’s using.
Server logs are a complicated mess of facts and information that most people
just can’t read. Seriously. You have to be one step above a NASA geek to
understand all the gibberish contained in a server log.
Because most people won’t ever reach that level of geekiness, some programs
— log analyzers or log parsers — take all that data, analyze it, and then
spit out more understandable statistics. Programs like AWStats (which is
free, available at http://www.awstats.sourceforge.net) and Summary (which is
free to try but can be costly to own, available at http://www.summary.net) can give
you the information you seek from the raw data that the server collects.
Even though these programs are easier to use than trying to figure out server
logs on your own, they’re still not the easiest programs available. With
AWStats, for example, you get to track your Web site statistics, but you have
to have access to your Web server to use it. It’s also requires a little more
technical knowledge than some of the other Web site statistics programs
that are available — like Google Analytics. Still, if you’re ready to take on this
program, it can potentially provide very in-depth analyses of the data that is
collected in your server logs. I’m not ready to jump too deep into this pool
right now, though. You’ll find more information on AWStats in the “Installing
AWStats” section,
I’ll be honest with you. Working with log analyzers can sometimes seem
nearly as complicated as just trying to use the raw data coming from the
server. Most log analyzers require that code be added to your Web site or
Web server and then the reports have to be programmed before you can
receive them.
On the flip side, server log analyzers can allow you to parse server data in
ways that some other programs won’t let you. With this technology, you can
design reports that meet very specific needs (if you know how). For example,
if you need a report that not only tells you what page of your Web site that
visitors entered on but also what time of day they came to your site most
often, you can program a report to divulge that kind of information.
If you’re using a program like AWStats, the first thing to understand is that
log analyzers count visitors differently than analytics programs do — one like
Google Analytics, for example. AWStats looks at the IP address — the unique
numerical address of a computer on the Internet, kind of like a street address
for your house — of each site visitor. If one person visits your site a number
of different times, AWStats counts that as only a single visitor. By comparison,
a program like Google Analytics tracks computers by placing a cookie
on the hard drive. That means that if a user clears out his browser cache —
that’s a record of the sites the user visited using that computer — or if the
user logs in from another computer, Google Analytics counts him as more
than one visitor. Looking at IP addresses is a little more accurate because
even if a user clears his cache, the IP address for his computer remains the
same. (Logging in from a different computer is still a problem, but as far as I
know, there’s no way around that kind of user being counted more than once
with any stats program.)
Next, understand that programs like AWStats are more about the numbers
than what can actually be extrapolated from those numbers. For example,
with AWStats, Web crawlers are identified according to a list of crawlers
defined by the log analyzer. Usually, a person creates the list, and the program
then compares data against that list to determine which visits are
from Web crawlers and which are from real people. The problem with this
approach is that if the list of Web crawlers is not all-inclusive, a crawler could
be counted as a visitor. The result, then, is that the number of visitors can be
skewed. Because AWStats doesn’t look at things like where a visitor comes
from, it’s hard to tell what’s a crawler and what’s a visitor if the crawler
doesn’t appear on the list of excluded IP addresses.
On the other hand, Google Analytics does look at where visitors come from.
And Web crawlers have very specific origins, so it’s usually pretty easy to tell
which of your visitors are people and which are programs that are designed
to crawl a Web site.

Installing AWStats

AWStats is a free program that’s available from SourceForge. To download
the program, go to http://awstats.sourceforge.net. After you download
it, install it.
If you’re planning to use AWStats to track your Web site traffic statistics, you
must have access to your Web server. Unless you own that server (or your
company owns the server), you probably don’t have that access. If you’re
purchasing a hosting package from a Web site host, AWStats isn’t the right
program for you to track your statistics. If that’s the case, you need to use a
program, such as Google Analytics, that tracks your statistics without you
having to get access to your Web server.
Assuming you do have access to your Web server, here’s what you’d do to
install AWStats:
1. After you download AWStats (from http://awstats.sourceforge.
net), find the file and extract the AWStats package.
Whatever extraction program (for example, WinZip — available at www.
winzip.com) you use will have different instructions for the extraction
process, so refer to that program’s documentation if you’re not sure
how to use it.
2. If the installation process doesn’t start automatically (it should with
Windows Installer but it won’t with any other operating system),
locate the AWStats Tools Directory and double-click the awstats_
configure.pl script to begin the installation process.
Awstats_configure.pl tries to determine your current log format
from your Apache Web server configuration file, httpd.conf. (The
script asks for the path if it can’t find the file.)
3. If you use a common log, awstats_configure.pl suggests changing
that log to the NCSA combined/XLF/ELF format.
You can use your own custom log format, but this pre-defined log format
is often the best choice and makes setup easier.
If you answer yes, awstats_configure.pl modifies your httpd.
conf file, restarts Apache to apply the changes, and then creates a
new file called awstats.mysite.conf by copying the template file
awstats.model.conf.
These actions should occur automatically (though they may require
your confirmation in some areas).
4. To verify that the main parameters of your new configuration file
match your needs, open awstats.mysite.conf in your favorite text
editor — the file should be located on your hard drive and you can
use the search function of your computer to locate it — and make the
following changes, as required:
Verify the LogFile value. It should be the full path of your server
log file.
Verify the LogType value. It should be W for analyzing Web log files.
Check the LogFormat. It should be set to 1, although you can use a
custom log format if you don’t use the combined log format.
Set the SiteDomain parameter: It should be set to the main domain
name or the intranet Web server name used to reach the Web site
you want to analyze (for example: http://www.mysite.com). If you have
several possible names for the same site, use the main domain
name and add the others to the list in the HostAlias parameter.
5. When you’ve finished editing these elements, save the file to its original
location.
Installation and configuration are now finished and the wizard should
close automatically.
You may have to wait a couple days to see results from the log analyzer —
and you still have to figure out how the program works if you want to get
your results! After a couple days, however, you can begin creating stats
reports by going to http://www.myserver.mydomain/awstats/awstats.pl — it’s
a Web-based program. Just remember to replace myserver and mydomain
with your own server and domain information. It’s a pretty complicated process,
though, so I suggest that you read more about using the program by
going to http://awstats.sourceforge.net/docs/awstats_setup.
html.
Because Web crawlers change, a log analyzer can occasionally misinterpret a
Web crawler as a real person. It’s not a major mistake, but one of which you
should be aware.