How Accurate is Adsense's Click Count?

[rosetrees]

I recently (Saturday 12 Feb) added Adsense to a website (last week).

According to my Adsense report there has been one click, but according to my statcounter report there have been 8.

Again, according to statcounter, the clicks have come from Finland, California, Netherlands and London (those are the four with a little magnifying glass beside them in the attached screenshot). With four unidentified.

Has anyone else found this discrepancy? Should I email Google and ask them for an explanation?

Any thoughts are welcome.

[Chris The Traffic Blogger]

Maybe your stat counter is including clicks on the arrows for google ads that look between ads?

[rosetrees]

Originally Posted by Chris The Traffic Blogger

Maybe your stat counter is including clicks on the arrows for google ads that look between ads?

Possible, but have you ever known or seen anyone actually click on those arrows? I'm not sure that most ordinary internet users would know what they are for.

[Kay King]

Adsense ads often load slow in my experience - and that may be the reason there's a difference.

Google will show only where the page was actually displayed to the visitor. It MAY be statcounter counts a click whether the person stays for the site to load or clicks away.

kay

[JMichaelZ]

I am not exactly sure what they measure or how they get the information back into the dashboard for viewing, but it could be that they log different events and pass that informaton back through differing methods.

It is presented to the viewer as clicks, but it could be that the programs use different events that count as far as the software goes as clicks. Without control over the original input it would be hard to figure out which is inaccurate.

My guess would be though, that both are inaccurate to within a certain tolerance.

[jayalaxmi]

looks strange.i never come across this situation .i use addfreestats and they show clicks accurately

[rosetrees]

As an experiment, I think I might sign up with an alternative network and see if there are any obvious differences.

[Aki Fagno]

It's quite interesting. So far I haven't experienced that yet. But maybe you can directly contact Google and ask for clarification. That will answer and clear out everything.

[paulgl]

You have run into the problem with such things like statcounter.

Statcounter will count anything and everything it thinks is a click.

Google only counts real clicks.

In the end, all that matters is google stats anyway.

I have only used statcounter as a general guide, and for entertainment
purposes only.

If you contact google and they give you a real response, it would be
exactly what I said above. They might add that a person has to click
and stay for a certain amount of time.

I would not be the least worried about that. I would concentrate on
pumping up the targeted traffic to avoid zero days. Statcounter
would be the least of my concerns.

You can't argue with google in the end:

Rest assured that AdSense accounts are properly credited for all clicks and impressions we consider to be valid.

Paul

[InitialEffort]

Another big difference is Google won't give you credit for invalid clicks, or double clicks on the same ad by the same visitor in one session.

[lexilexi]

Haha @ clicks "we consider" valid. It's all about having good lawyers innit.

Presumably an "invalid click" can include one where someone clicked and then hit the back button straight away, if other words if it was an obvious accidental click.

I get some really weird adsense stats sometimes but I don't worry about it any more than sheer curiosity.... stuff like clicks that earn zero, and small-cent earnings from zero clicks...

[Dele]

Just what i started a thread on

=> Unreflected Adsense Clicks

But since i notice we both use Statcounter, probably it has to do with the way Statcounter counts adsense clicks.

It perhaps will be more credible to disparage Google if another site statistics tool were to corroborate our claims.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by lexilexi

Haha @ clicks "we consider" valid. It's all about having good lawyers innit.

Presumably an "invalid click" can include one where someone clicked and then hit the back button straight away, if other words if it was an obvious accidental click.

I get some really weird adsense stats sometimes but I don't worry about it any more than sheer curiosity.... stuff like clicks that earn zero, and small-cent earnings from zero clicks...

LOL! I agree with the second 2 points!

If you choose to use a free program, and by that you agree to all google's terms,
you really don't have much to say.

Google has to look after it's paying customers first and foremost. If they feel they
got a raw deal, you don't get credit.

Best thing to do, as I say over and over, pump up your targeted traffic by other
means than SERPs. The more targeted traffic you have, the more buyers you have.
The more buyers you have, the more targeted your adsense will be and your CPC
will increase. Also, less likely to get invalid or uncounted clicks. Don't put ad blocks
in places that are ripe for accidental clicks.

Paul

[jehzlau]

I also experienced that using statcounter, but I have believed that invalid clicks never make it to the real clicks stat on the adsense dashboard. As for me that would be just fine instead of Google trying to ban my adsense account because of invalid clicks, i'd' rather have it uncounted.

[jikanv]

Well, I have the same thing going on. I am also using statcounter and it shows clicks but adsense don't credit them. I am not sure if statcounter is the guilty one tho.

Here is why. I used to use adwords to get traffic to my site and with the same amount or even less pageloads I was always making money and getting the clicks that statcounter also showed, credited. Now I am not using adwords for quite a while now
and statcounter showing me the exit links but no credit from adsense. I think it's google's doing. This one site of mine gets about 3000 visitors a month and no credit from adsense. I think that is a bit weird. No?