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Clickbank / Google Analytics - massive disagreement!

by Thaddeus
6 replies
In the last 14 days:

Clickbank reports 304 hops to a specific sales page, from c.20 different affiliates.

Google Analytics report the same sales page has had 152 pageviews, 136 unique pageviews - from 38 different affiliates.

Something's not right. Any way you look at it, that's a massive discrepancy.

Has anyone else been here?

T
#analytics #clickbank #disagree #disagreement #google #massive #reports #wildly
  • Profile picture of the author Thaddeus
    And I don't think it's down to Robots and/or Spiders.

    Clickbank say they filter them out of the reports, but the additional list of Affiliates reported in the GA figures all look like legitimate hops that don't get mentioned in the Google Analytics report.

    This really makes me scratch my head. If anyone has any thoughts on even where to start looking I'd love to hear them.

    T
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    Oh wait, you might be on to something. Because i was just thinking about this the last days that spiders and bots are LIKELY counting as hops or clicks, for clickbank or CPA etc...once they follow your link.

    So...i can see there being a discrepancy if Analytics would filter out spiders?
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    • Profile picture of the author Thaddeus
      Humm.

      CB say explicitly somewhere in their Help files that they definitely filter out spiders etc.

      Haven't read that anywhere in GA, but I'm sure they do have a good go at it.

      The problem is that the extra 18 affiliates reported by GA all give hop names that look like real affiliates.

      Over the last I've never trusted CB - their conversion rate seems far too low for the traffic they send, compared to general affiliate traffic from other sources - and now this has really alarmed me. What's most annoying is I can't find any place to get direct tech support from them.
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  • Profile picture of the author williamstraus
    I've pretty much given up on even looking at CB Analytics. It seems like it's been broken for ever and every few weeks a new thread pops up here talking about how someone is confused by CB analytics.

    I've always noticed this with my CB Analytics:

    1. They under report (or just flat out don't report) hops that I know I'm sending to the vendor site.

    2. They are SLOW to catch up. I've seen hops tracked in my own analytics take 4hrs to show up in CB Analytics.

    I was going to give up on this altogether with ClickBank but I've done several test purchases with my affiliate links and it always seems to give me credit.

    I've also noticed getting commissions without hops! This has happened a lot to me!

    So I'm confident that ClickBank is crediting affiliates but that they in general just suck with tracking and analytics.

    Fix it CB!
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Normally I would recommend just sticking with GA, but those clowns have disabled search referral data which renders the application pretty much useless.
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    • Profile picture of the author Thaddeus
      OK, so CB analytics don't work. What a drag. If that doesn't work, what real evidence have we got that sales tracking DOES work? The odd experience isn't really large scale experimentation, William - and getting sales without hops is equally hopeless really. Do you have GA turned on? Do those sales match hops in there?

      What's more, when I google my product I have CB affiliate pages all over the web, but I get literally one sale a month, which means either they aren't tracking properly, or CB traffic sucks generally. (Which I don't really believe!)

      Haha! So I'm still unhappy. Great

      OK - as you say, maybe just stick with GA - but what do you mean, Ramone, that they have disabled search referral data?

      Is that the fact that they have removed keyword data from incoming traffic unless the visitor is logged into their Google account?

      I agree, that is such a huge black mark I can't believe they're serious about that. I'd be looking for other tools but GA were it not for the ENORMOUS power and flexibility of what's left. I just had User Flow turned on for my account and it's shown me some incredible things, that are going to be very much part of my development strategy for the new year.
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