How Accurate is Adsense's Click Count?

by 14 replies
17
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.
#search engine optimization #accurate #adsense #click #count
  • Maybe your stat counter is including clicks on the arrows for google ads that look between ads?
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
      • [2] replies
  • 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.
    • [1] reply
    • 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:
      Paul
  • 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.
  • 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...
    • [1] reply
    • 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
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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?
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