analytics doesnt track data from adsense link units

according to google help pages

[elsewhen]

according to their help pages:

What kinds of AdSense ads does Analytics track?

Analytics tracks clicks, impressions, and earnings for your standard AdSense for content ad units. This includes both text and image ads shown through AdSense for content, but it doesn't include link units, referral units, video units, or AdSense for mobile units.

this seems to be a glaring omission, one that i hope they will soon fill.

[netmeg]

Well it kind of makes sense. We can put the GA code on our sites and it will track the click on the link unit, but the actual *money click* is on the second page when it comes to link units, and that page is on Google's servers, and thus wouldn't have our code on it. There might be ways to do it, but possibly they wanted to get the easy ones out first.

[elsewhen]

the lack of tracking link-unit revenue can have a great impact on delivering actionable data. here's an extreme example to make the point:

suppose i have a site with only two pages, both with link units and regular ad units. suppose that both pages show the same amount of revenue in analytics. suppose further that one of the pages also has huge link unit revenue (but this wont be shown in analytics) whereas the other has almost none.

the webmaster will take this data and assume that both pages were equally worthwhile from a revenue standpoint.

if the link-unit revenue was incorporated, the webmaster would learn that one of the pages greatly outperformed the other (which it did), and therefore she should consider expanding it, or adding similar pages.

as far as how this could be reported in the interface, the revenue for link-unit clicks can just be linked to the page on which it originated.

unfortunately, this omission will likely cast significant doubt into the data for webmasters who use link units.

[netmeg]

You don't have to tell me, I have quite a few websites that *only* display link units, no ad blocks.

But I do recognize that delivering link unit information would be more of a technical challenge, and all things being equal, I'd rather they give us what they gave us than have nothing until the link unit stats are figured out.

[koan]

How about tracking what keywords in adlinks were clicked?

[netmeg]

There's a third party way to do that - do a google search on asclick - but from what I've seen, it's not terribly reliable.