Adsense impressions suspiciously low

Less than 20% of server page requests

[Matt Probert]

Without giving specifics, I am concerned that of the pages requested from my server, which contain Adsense adverts, less than 20% are being recorded by Google as "page impressions" (this is after filtering out spider requests for pages).

Can it really be that 80% of the users that come to my site don't have Javascript enabled?

I am not convinced....

Matt

[edited by: Matt_Probert at 5:05 pm (utc) on Jan. 16, 2007]

[hunderdown]

You seem to be suggesting that Google is cheating. Any alternative explanations? (for example, people leaving the page when it is only partly loaded, and thus not counted as an impression by Google).

FWIW, I haven't encountered such a discrepancy, so I wonder why you are experiencing it and I'm not. Pages on my site are static html.

[iwannano1]

May be..

a) Site visitors blocking ad and redirecting to localhost
b) Lack of inventory for your site
c) You are replacing ad with 3rd party ad instead of PSA

[jomaxx]

Add a tracking image generated by a snippet of Javascript. That'll give you a much better idea of how much human traffic you've really got. Few people (<10%) have Javascript disabled or block AdSense ads.

[wyweb]

I've always seen a difference in what adsense reports and what my logs show with adsense being significantly lower.

It's never been that big of a difference though.

[bhartzer]

less than 20% are being recorded by Google as "page impressions"

Most likely your visitors are being served PSA ads. I would specify an alternative URL and display either your own ad there or someone else's ad (from another ad program). This will let you see for yourself how many PSAs are being displayed.

[BigDave]

Sounds like you are only filtering out the spiders that admit they are spiders. Various scrapers and spambots pretend (poorly) that they are users.

[joelgreen]

b) Lack of inventory for your site
c) You are replacing ad with 3rd party ad instead of PSA

Per richmondsteve, psas or publisher-defined Alternate Ads are counted.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Vali]

make sure you don't have one of those http request chats on the site.
If you do, apache will record those page views, but since no ads are there, google won't.