Impressions in May 2008 are far higher than page views in traffic logs

[ThirdWheel]

Hi guys, LTRFTW, this one has got me stumped and I'm really hoping someone here can help.

I've been an AdSense user for many years, and never had a problem until now. Almost every day in May has seen my AdSense report show high and clearly incorrect impressions. These are only ever for one or two channels per day, and a different channel every day. I have my AdSense account set to allow my ads only to be shown on my site.

As well as analysing my web logs and using Google's Analytics, I have recently added a PHP routine in the header of every page that stores IP address, date, page and hits in MySQL. As there is no way onto any page on my site without executing this, so it should give me the absolute number of page views (including visits from bots).

At the time of writing this figure is < 2000, which is which is the total visits from 0000 HRS - 1000 HRS. I'm in the UK and my AdSense zeroes out and resets at 0800. By 0900 AdSense had already logged > 9000 impressions. All the erroneous hits are on one channel.

An average day should see 10000 java enabled page visits. This month has seen days where > 34000 ad impressions are logged, but I have no record of the additional 24000 page views on any of my stats.

To confuse me further, pages with ads only every have one ad unit on them, and any page with an ad unit also has a link unit. The link unit impressions are always fine and correspond with all my traffic logs.

I have emailed Google about this and been advised that if I have used their Allowed Sites then everything should be fine.

So like I say, I'm stumped. All I can make of it right now is either a) AdSense figures are wrong, but I've never see anyone complaining about impressions being too high, only too low OR b) Someone's ripped my AdSense code, but presumably the Allowed Sites feature should stop impressions being recorded.

If anyone has any ideas, or has experienced the same I'd welcome the comments.

Thanks,

Dick

[BrandNewDay]

I have no idea why this is happening. But isn't it possible that this could have an unwanted result? If Adsense stats record thousands of (fake) additional page views, yet your actual traffic and clicks stay the same, Adsense might consider this a decrease of your ctr and conversion rate. Is it possible this will trigger smart pricing and thus will decrease your earnings?

[ThirdWheel]

BND, yes you're right, that's one of the many concerns I have right now. CTR is obviously going through the floor and CPC is taking a hit as a result.

[ThirdWheel]

OK, the lack of replies suggests to me the cause of this problem lies outside of Google. My site is MySQL based, so could it be that my hosting company is using a reverse proxy to reduce bandwidth? If so, as some of my pages have some random content (images), any chance a reverse proxy could be continually reloading page(s) as the content appears to have been updated?

Anyone know if that's a possibility?

Thanks,

Dick

[Staffa]

Have you checked your log files for UA Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;1813), could be the culprit.

For more see : [webmasterworld.com...]

[ThirdWheel]

Thanks Staffa. Just checked May's log file, and it's loaded with that UA. I shall dig a little deeper ...

Many thanks,

Dick

[ThirdWheel]

That UA clocked 45000 entries in May's logs. Have used PHP to cloak adsense when it shows up in future, so shall watch stats with interest.

Staffa, if it turns out you're right you have no idea how grateful I'll be.

Dick

[Staffa]

You're welcome.
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