23.4. Tracking Adsense

If the last section inspired you to tinker with your Adsense placement, colour etc, then this piece of software may well be the best investment you ever made, since it allows you to see exactly what effect your changes have.

How useful would it be to you if you knew exactly which ads people were clicking on your site? If one particular advertiser gets a lot of clicks, see whether they have an affiliate program, and sign up for it. Replace Adsense ads for an affiliate link to that merchant.

How useful would it be if you knew which ad formats got the most clickthroughs? You can fine tune your adsense ads, changing those that dont convert to a format that does.

How useful would it be to know exactly which pages were getting clicks, and how many? Create more content on the same topic to increase your Adsense revenue.

This software does all of this, and so much more.

This software allows you to know all of the data relating to your adsense ads – information that Google wont give you.

This software allows you to fine tune your Adsense campaigns so that you squeeze every last cent out of your pages.

If you want to see an overview of the software in action, there is an excellent video on the site showing some of the many features, and check out those amazing bonuses!

WARNING: You need a MySQL database to install the script, but installation is very easy.

My conclusions after playing with this script for while:

The information this script provides allows you to increase your Adsense conversions and income by tweaking, and knowing exactly what effect that tweaking had on clickthroughs and income.

This tool provides the kind of information that Google should have provided.

You can use the script on all of your domains, simply by installing it on one domain, and adding a single line of code to all pages (across multiple domains) you want to track.

I have added the tracking code to 5 of my own domains so far.

I can make changes to Adsense ads on one domain (I use Server side includes for Adsense ads, so I can make rapid changes to the ads on the whole site, in seconds, including upload).

What I have found has been very interesting. What works well on one site, does not necessarily work well on all domains. It seems to depend on the niche, colour schemes of the site etc etc. I always thought that a rectangular ad at the top left of the article was the one to go for, and on some sites it is. But, one of the other ad formats has consistently out-performed the rectangular ad, being responsible for 65% of clicks. I am not sure how much I can tell you because Google do have strict rules about sharing information on Adsense revenue.

Also, the conversion rates for ad formats depend on more than just the ad format itself. It will depend on the colours used, placement on the page, etc,etc. This is where testing and tracking comes in. You can setup different ads on various pages of the same site, and then see which pages get the highest conversion rates. This can help identify which ad formats work best on individual pages, and even sites as a whole.

This tool is one of my best purchases this year. If you are trying to work on your Adsense income, don’t work blind!

My only reservation with this script is that it provides so much information that it can be daunting for beginners. However, the information it provides is essential to serious Adsense webmasters, and I cannot recommend this script highly enough.

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