Finally, Adsense Tracking in Analytics

I was just saying a couple of weeks ago that I thought the level of integration between Adsense and Analytics was kinda sad. It looks like either someone was watching, I just have uncanny timing, or I'm getting old and time is starting to fly because I found a link I've been waiting to see when looking at my Adsense CP today.



Clicking that link took me to an account linking and setup wizard that took about 5 minutes to read and complete. It's basically just selecting which sites in the Analytics account should be tracked, picking a default site for the account linking.

The default site doesn't need any changes, but all other sites will need a tiny piece of Javascript added before any Adsense or Analytics code. It doesn't need to be added to every single ad, it can be added within the <head/> section one time, so if you have a template system going like I do you should be able to get away with a 5 minute one-page edit to affect the entire site.

It doesn't appear to work retroactively from the looks of the few hours worth of reporting I got and the fact that you have to add new Javascript to files.

Here's a screenshot of the new area in the Analytics CP



Out of everything I think the new "Top Adsense Content" part will be the most useful, with the "Top Adsense Referers" being a very close second.

The rabbit hole gots deeper than I thought, you can get per-page eCPM statistics, impressions, and all sorts of other goodies.

I just enabled this for ozzu, already found out some very interesting things about what parts of ozzu is making most of the money with regards to Adsense ads.

I'm guessing you were as surprised about what you saw with Ozzu as I was with my sites.

What I've seen seems to reconfirm the old saying that content should be interesting enough to draw people in, but also be vague enough to drive them away.

I see higher numbers with stuff I sorta half-assed together than I do with things I put a decent amount of effort into.

It doesn't matter as long as you are making money through adsense or getting unique traffic to your website.

Has anyone else using this noticed differences between the numbers reported in Analytics, and the numbers reported via the Adsense CP ?

I have.