Sunday, January 13th, 2008
MyBlogLog’s misreported adsense clicks
I use mybloglog to keep track of activity on my blog. This includes statistics on links that a user clicks on. The idea behind tracking this is pretty simple. A user clicks on a link or an ad which then gets recorded by mybloglog as an anonymous click same concept as google’s adsense tracking system.
The problem here is that mybloglog misreports adsense clicks - if a user leaves the mouse on the advertisement area, and then uses the keyboard to go back (like say backspace), this gets recorded as a “click”! Mybloglog records one click belonging to the advertisement.
So there will be times when I would be checking out my stats and seeing 15 clicks on a certain ad. I think “man, awesome! this will help with my hosting woes” I go check out adsense, and there’s a big fat 0 under clicks. Frustrated, I think to myself that maybe google is ripping me off! But on the contrary, the rip off here is mybloglog’s buggy tracking system.
I looked around and see other people trying to make sense of it, but a random comment on some blog that I can’t remember mentioned that going back or closing the window while your mouse is on advertising space adds to the user clicks statistics. So I tried it out and presto, that’s exactly what’s been happening.
I feel ripped off. This “statistics feature” was a big point I was sold on when I had first seen mybloglog. It’s frustrating that it doesn’t work as it should.