How inaccurate are AdSense stats?

[RedBar]

Tuesday 18th March 2014 I had a visitor on one of my sites from Romania for almost 25 minutes.

Acccording to Google:

Total PVs for site 179
PVs from Romania 3

According to my stats:

Total PVs for site 467
PVs from Romania 199

This was a genuine widget trade visitor from Romania, a potential new customer not a bot, why the huge discrepancy? I've checked the entire 467 reported visitors on that site and all appear completely normal and genuine.

I've seen discrepancies before however this really does take the biscuit.

[webcentric]

Guess it depend on what generated "my stats" e.g. server log files, some other analytics program, etc.

Here is some info from Google regarding discrepancies between Adsense and Google Analytics. Maybe some clues there.

[support.google.com ]

[netmeg]

Do you have AdSense on every page of your site?

[RedBar]

@netmeg - On that site, yes, and specifically for that section a 728 x 90 banner at the top and bottom of each page.

[Howzitza]

Two things comes to mind...
Adsense timezone might be different from Analytics timezone?
Adsense pageviews are only counting Pageviews of pages with Adsense ads in it. Ring a bell?

[RedBar]

Adsense timezone might be different from Analytics timezone?

Nope, that's been accounted for.

Adsense pageviews are only counting Pageviews of pages with Adsense ads in it. Ring a bell?

Every page had two ads on them. I also wondered about PVs with AdSense on them but surely out of 199 pages there would have been more than 3 ad impressions?

Only a couple of weeks ago I questioned here whether AdSense still only recognised PVs when a new ad was served but with no response. I've checked through G's Q&As yet cannot seem to get the answer about this.

Does anyone know or have a link?

[avalon37]

Yesterday I created a new page and a new AdSense ad unit for it. Last night I checked AdSense and saw that it had received something like 20 pageviews. This morning when I logged in, in the reporting section it's as if that ad unit didn't exist - shows no pageviews yesterday. But looking at today's reporting it is showing some pageviews already today. Bizarre.

[avalon37]

Now 2 hours later, the pageviews for the new ad unit are gone again....WTF?

[netmeg]

Well they did say they'd be removing impressions for invalid traffic; I assumed that was only for when there were invalid clicks too, but maybe they're taking out the impressions when there are no clicks? Beats me.

[wa desert rat]

Well they did say they'd be removing impressions for invalid traffic; I assumed that was only for when there were invalid clicks too, but maybe they're taking out the impressions when there are no clicks? Beats me.

I have a site that gets very little traffic (it's my own fault as I have not updated the content very well lately) but has two adsense ad on it. When there are no pageviews or clicks that site does not even appear in the Reports. It's only when someone visits the page that it shows a page view.

But I haven't noticed any page views being taken back. So I dunno either.

WDR

[avalon37]

My situation with ad unit pageviews appearing/disappearing continues. There are never clicks involved - so not sure why pageviews would disappear? There is nothing shady going on on my site. This is becoming very frustrating and the stuff that leads many of us to distrust AdSense stats.

AdTrafficQuality - can you please chime in?

[mack]

Something that may explain a little of this is server loading at the adsense data center. Each server will have a specific amount of data. This data will replicate across the network, but whilst this happening you may see different data depending on what server your request gets sent to. This is a speculative guess, but it would explain some cases of fluctuating earnings.

Mack.

[avalon37]

Thanks for the input Mack. The fact is that something is broken with AdSense pageviews. Yesterday I checked this particular ad unit from multiple devices at various homes - various IP addresses. And AdSense ads shows no pageviews? Yeah right Google.

[eek2121]

1) Adsense operates on a delay. Stats can be delayed by minutes or hours.

2) Adblocking users don't show up in adsense

3) Any machine that google 'knows' is you won't show up in adsense.

[avalon37]

Thanks eek2121. My problem, and likely others, doesn't fall into any of those 3 scenarios though.

[RedBar]

@eek2121

Hmmm...did you read my OP?

Acccording to Google:

Total PVs for site 179
PVs from Romania 3

According to my stats:

Total PVs for site 467
PVs from Romania 199

G's metrics have not changed since then.

And, BTW, since then the Romanian company has placed a very large and continuing order after having reviewed ALL those pages, asking us for the non-watermarked images and uploading them to their site for their local market. Value to me in excess of USD 2 million for the remainder of this year.

Honestly, G hasn't a freakin' clue what's going on in the world, they think they do, but they haven't!

[SnowLeppard]

2) Adblocking users don't show up in adsense

or Analytics in some cases?

There are so many ads before Youtube videos in the past while, perhaps it is pushing people over the edge (i.e. being so frustrated that they install adblocker)