Discounted clicks

[nickreynolds]

I have a number of different sites with varying ctr.
I was looking at my stats on one particular site with statcounter. This allows me to see exit link activity. I find that according to stacounter the number of ads clicked is approximately 3x the report in adsense reports. Now I realise that some could be accidental clicks and that clicks may be discounted if the person goes straight back to my site and clicks another link.

Nevertheless the discrepancy seems very large. As say I have other sites which don't have nearly such a big difference and I can't see anything about this one particular site that makes it any different.

I use different sized ad units and the discrepancy exists across different sized units. My page ctr is reported by adsense to be around 1.5%

Any thoughts on:
- is statcounter likely to be accurate in its reporting of exit links?
- anything I could try to change this

Ps there are no fraudulent clicks or anything dodgy that could produce that effect. Traffic almost entirely from organic search with just a little bit via relevant links from other sites.

[netmeg]

StatCounter isn't in the least accurate when it comes to exit links. They won't guarantee they're accurate, Google says they aren't accurate, and my own experience (over several years and hundreds of thousands of clicks) says they aren't either. If I went by StatCounter, there are thousands of clicks I don't get paid for, AND I get paid for thousands of clicks that don't register in StatCounter at all.

Even Google Analytics isn't entirely accurate when it comes to AdSense clicks.

Not only that, just because you register a click doesn't mean you're going to end up getting paid for it (invalid activity, placement issues, whatever)

And I'm sure that's all by design. Google doesn't want you getting any insights into AdSense that they don't give you themselves.

You can try going down that road, but it probably won't lead to anywhere constructive.

[ember]

In the end, you just have to accept the clicks that Google gives you.

[nickreynolds]

Ok - good to hear that the statcounter stats are not usually accurate for exit links clicks.
While I appreciate that you have to accept the clicks that Google gives you, it might have been worth analysing why there were so many discounted clicks and if there was anything that I could do about that.