Linking AdSense to Analytics (not) helping to improve revenue

Any suggestions to make this work?

[mlemos]

I was going to reply to the other topic with claims about how linking AdSense to Analytics helped boosting AdSense revenue, but I thought my lack of results with this linking would deserve a separate topic, as I suspect that I am not alone.

Is it just me, or anybody else agrees that Google Analytics s*cks in many aspects? No offense meant to Google product manager and developers. I am just a bit frustrated with the results that I am not getting from Analytics despite Google keeps pushing us to improve our revenue linking AdSense with Analytics.

One thing that always discouraged me from using it, is that Analytics Flash user interface is so heavy and slow that I usually run out of patience before I get anywhere that can provide me any useful information to improve my AdSense revenue.

Has Google ever thought about dropping altogether that Flash based slow user interface of Analytics, in favor of a totally AJAX based fluid user interface?

Nowadays I use both Analytics and Sitemeter. When I want to check my site audience, Analytics has been totally useless.

Sitemeter is so much more simple and give you details up to the hour, even in the free version. It generates simple but objective charts one click away from the dashboard. Despite the Sitemeter charts are image based, it renders much, much faster than Analytics fancy Flash charts.

If a much smaller company like Sitemeter can provide almost realtime statistics, why can't Google do the same with Analytics? It is certainly not for the lack of money.

I usually follow most Google recommendations on AdSense, so I linked my AdSense account and gave analytics another chance. Maybe I have not studied the subject enough, but I failed to see a clear path between linking AdSense to Analytics and do something to make it help me improving my Adense sites revenue. I admit I may be missing something obvious here, maybe something I did not read but I should.

Anybody with a positive experience could care to explain in a few steps what are the most obvious things to do to improve AdSense revenue benefiting from Analytics?

[thinker]

Analytics helps me figure out how the user navigates my site, and where they tend to leave. By fixing these issues, visitors stay on my site longer, and as a result view and click on more ads. In addition, it helps me figure out where quality traffic is coming from, and I attempt to satisfy the needs of those users by customizing my site to their needs.

I have found analytics far from useless. It runs extremely fast on my system - could your slow performance be a connection speed or hardware issue?

[BillyS]

If you don't like Analytics, then just buy something you think is better.

I agree with thinker on the performance issue too. Maybe you've got a slow connection or computer. Analytics runs just fine on my machine - no worries there.

[netchicken1]

Oh come on, did you really expect analytics to help with your income?

I think analytics is awesome, especially how I can see the exact income each page generates without having to use channels. It revealed entire new areas of my site that I never realized were generating income.

[mlemos]

Thinker, when I say Analytics is useless I mean that for simple statistics, even the free Sitemeter provides a faster user interface, so I prefer it.

For complex things like drawing useful conclusions from linking AdSense to Analytics, Analytics AdSense pages information did not get me anywhere.

That is what Google has been preaching us, link our AdSense account to the Analytics account. I did not find any useful information in Analytics that I did not know before linking to the AdSense account. That is my point.

As for connection speed, I have a 4Mbps cable broadband connection. It is the same connection that I use to access Sitemeter. So it is not of the connection nor my hardware.

It seems the problem is that Analytics Flash charts make it slower than the simple image based Sitemeter charts.

BTW, I am not sure if your exit pages assertion is correct. What I found out a long time ago is that exit pages gets me a greater click-through rate than on non-exit pages. It makes much more sense, because on exit pages the user is leaving the site anyway, so may as well exit clicking the ads.

[asinah]

I login every day in the morning to check which keywords paid most. Once a month I will filter pages that didnt generated any income and on those pages I remove adsense completly and sell advertising space (graphic banners) directly.

[johnnie]

asinah, that is a brilliant idea :D

[koan]

Analytics is an outstanding free service, but it is not meant to be like Sitemeter, so stop trying to use it a such. Analytics is for long term analysis and it's up to your imagination to figure out how to use it for Adsense improvements. To check my traffic in the last hours, for example, I use something like BBclone.

[thinker]

"BTW, I am not sure if your exit pages assertion is correct. What I found out a long time ago is that exit pages gets me a greater click-through rate than on non-exit pages."

Interesting, thanks for the heads up. I had not thought of it that way before. On the other hand, all users exit at some point, right? So even if visitors stayed longer, there would still be a higher CTR on exit pages, with more ad impressions in the meantime. Unless, of course, they stay so long they need to leave the computer and just shut down :-) ...

[leapforward]

We made a quick $50/day in extra revenue by linking and "using" analytics. We have a relatively large site with over 300,000 pages. Using analytics, we found many pages that had a large number of page views (adsense impressions), with zero or low revenue and a high bounce rate. We then changed the adsense implementation on these pages and boom, those pages started generating an incremental $50/day (we setup an extra channel just for the optimization).

We now rinse and repeat this exercise every few weeks.