Robert_Charlton - 10:02 pm on Oct 10, 2003 (gmt 0)

From the Google faq page...

Why a visible image when everyone else uses an invisible one? Google has chosen to use a visible Google Site Stats image for the conversation tracking process to make this process apparent to users. Our goal is not to place our brand or promote our company on your web pages; however, we feel that it is important to be honest with and respect the privacy of users being tracked.

Hmmmmmm.... Generally, I respect Google a lot, but does this sound just a little disingenuous? I don't see anything on Google.com alerting us that our searches are being tracked. How is this situation different? I think they're counting on milli-seconds of eyeball exposure here.

The wording of Google's privacy policy with regard to advertisers' data suggests that while they're not tracking you personally, they may be tracking ROI info in the aggregate.

GoToast, Conversion Logic, and other tracking tools don't have this schizzy fox/henhouse situation built into them. Your info is your info.

On the other hand, when the Google tool tracks AdSense clicks, it will be the only tool I can imagine that will be able to do this. I suppose at that point you could say to yourself that if Google doesn't get the ROI info from you, it will get it from other advertisers, so you might as well use the tool.

If you're alone in your keywords, maybe you should skew your Return data low, so they'll see you're losing money on every click and that their minimums are too high. ;)