Has Google Analytics Helped You with Adsense? If so, how?

Using Google Analytics to help improve Adsense.

[bouncybunny]

I have never bothered adding Google Analytics code to my sites. They are mainly static HTML, and this is mainly laziness on my part.

I use my server stats package, but I'm now kind of interested in the more detail that Analytics might offer my sites in general.

As regards Adsense, I was wondering if anyone has found Analytics useful, If so, how have you used it to improve your earnings? If not, what problems have you found?

[IanCP]

Nope, bears no resemblance to reality. Haven't looked for months and months though.

[elguapo]

Yes -- my main use of it is to look at the pages that bring me the most Adsense revenues, and the best sources of traffic for my Adsense revenues.

Given that my site is a one stop information for a certain target market, the site tackles numerous topics. Through Analytics, I get to know which topic really works well -- and so I create more content on that topic.

Also, I get to know which traffic source is bringing me most Adsense revenue, so I make sure that I focus my marketing efforts on those traffic sources.

Analytics is a very useful tool, if you actually choose to use it

[Elsmarc]

I'm with elguapo - I know what people are looking at, what is popular and many other things. I've used different log file programs over the years as well and find them useful. Each has it's own 'slant' which you have to understand and they never match up exactly. My main resources for traffic and related data on/for my sites are Analytics, AWStats at the server level and Quantcast. There are other tools out there as well (many sites use Sitemeter, for example). As elguapo says - These are useful tools IF you use them. One of the keys is monitoring various trends rather than focusing on a specific short term number.

[HuskyPup]

I sort of used them however like IanCP I found they bore no relation to reality, by that I mean GA and AdSense for that matter, count framed Google image referrals from social network nuisance sites as genuine page impressions therefore their metrics are out by a couple hundred of thousand pages a month alone.

I removed all GA stuff a month ago, removed AdSense from those pages which were being plagued by the nuisance sites and have seen my eCPM jump 50%. The earnings are still the same however the false page impressions no longer register.

[bouncybunny]

That's all interesting. And indeed, I had envisioned that GA would be especially useful for pinpointing key pages, subject areas and referrals that brought in the most money.

The points about referral from social networking sites is also interesting. I have used Urchin in the past, which seems a bit more customisable that GA. If I remember rightly (and I could be wrong here) Urchin allows you to filter out data which you want to exclude. Can you not do similar things with GA?

(On a side note, is social networking traffic so negative that it warrants the removal of Adsense ads? Isn't any link a good one (within reason)? And, if it were that bad, couldn't you simply redirect or block referrals from social networking sites?)

[HuskyPup]

(On a side note, is social networking traffic so negative that it warrants the removal of Adsense ads? Isn't any link a good one (within reason)? And, if it were that bad, couldn't you simply redirect or block referrals from social networking sites?)

The problem is that these are not real visitors whatsoever. Google images are framed on the offending site, the user searches for the image they want and then select and preview that image on a test page. When they click on my image it clearly states on that site that my image is not available so then they move on to another one however this act alone creates a page impression according to GA and AdSense.

If they come to my site direct I don't allow hotlinking and if they attempt to they end up with a Google or Bing search page depending which site they are on.

These false page impressions inflate numbers quite horrendously and skew metrics so badly it's just not worth the hassle of having so many false impressions. So far this month my two most popular images have had just over 152,000 requests, just imagine the bandwidth if I were to allow them, with my redirect it is just 29.20 MB.

So to answer your question, for me the link isn't worth having.

[bouncybunny]

Ah OK. In the case of images I see your point. For whole pages, however, even if within an annoying frameset, I'd still be inclined to call tat a successful referral.

[alika]

is social networking traffic so negative

One organization I work with gets upwards of 10,000 visitors every month from Facebook alone. I won't call that negative -- even if you say 20% of that are bots or what have you.

Social networking is a broad spectrum. My biggest source of Adsense revenues for example are the question and answer sites, or social search, or however you call it.

Think of social networks not solely for the traffic it brings you -- but for communicating to your audience and peers, branding and getting your name out there, and showing people that you're an expert in the field.

In Twitter, for example, I got an offer to produce (not just guest) in a radio show -- it's not direct traffic, but in the overall scheme of things, could get the word out about your business. And opportunities like that can steamroll into other opportunities, which could eventually increase your traffic and hopefully increase your Adsense revenues