Overture and WebTrends

Reports not adding up

[lk125]

I have been monitoring a new key phrase I recently set up in my Overture account about a month ago. The click rate Overture reports is consistently higher than what Web Trends is reporting. For example Overture is reporting 8 clicks for the last week, while Web Trends is reporting only 3 clicks for that particular key phrase. I use Web Trends Log Analyzer Version 7.

Any ideas?

[Tropical Island]

I had exactly the same problem while using Sprinks. I called it "drive-by traffic". Usually occurs when the search term is number 1. What happens is someone clicks on your listing and leaves the page before it loads. I solved this problem in Sprinks by not being in number one posistion for terms that were causing the problem. I had a feeling that it was to do with affiliates trying to raise their click counts (revenue). I also use WebTrends.

[lk125]

Yeah I thought that as well as I had the #1 position for a couple of weeks, but I have since let it drop to 3 and even 4 where it does not show up in the top listings on most search engines, and I still get the difference in counts.

[jeremy goodrich]

If you can look through your raw log files, open them in a text browser, etc. and see if the numbers match up that way.

If they still don't at that point, tell overture that they need to credit your account, because the 'visitor' never arrived at your web site.

There will be an entry if they so much as issued a GET request for your site, even if they bailed before the page fully loaded...but if all they did was execute the overture redirect, then I could see how the numbers might not add up.

[seth_wilde]

How are you tracking the clicks with webtrends? Are you using a tracking url?

[lk125]

I will check through the raw log files, and yes I did set up a Overture tracking url.