Apathy is a killer and I’ve been quite apathetic of late. For instance when Google announced that they were integrating Adsense info into Analytics I thought, “yeah, great”, half heartedly signed up – and then duly forgot about it just as quick. Up until last Saturday I hadn’t looked at any data, now I have and I’ve discovered something important. If you spend the time to have a little look at your Adsense Analytics data it has the potential to significantly increase what you earn with Adsense!
Adsense On My Website
First of all, about my website. There seems to be a limitation in that you can only link your Adsense info into the Analytics profile for one website. I’m very glad then that I picked one of my oldest and most reliable websites. It’s a website that generates roughly $300-$400 each month with Adsense from around 2000 unique visitors a day. Not huge but it’s been steady like that for years. Hopefully soon you’ll be able to add this data to all your websites.
The Best Search Engine For Adsense Revenue
So what did I discover by delving into my Adsense data on Analytics? For a start Google is my worst performing search engine in terms of Adsense revenue. This is easy to check by going to the Traffic Sources > Search Engines report, selecting the Adsense Revenue tab and ordering by eCPM column. It’s not only the worst but it’s the worst by a country mile. For me Ask and Live are at least 10 times better, Yahoo is 3 times better. Putting this simply if I concentrated on attracting more Ask, Live and Yahoo search traffic I’d significantly increase my Adsense earnings. At the same time whilst improving my Google rankings may increase my traffic, in terms of Adsense money it’s a lot of work for little reward. It’s a similar story with click through rates (CTR). At best Google is 50% of my next worse performing search engine. So when it comes to search traffic and Adsense Google is more of a hindrance than a help.
What Referrers Generate The Most Adsense Money?
Next up I looked at my referrers and what is making me money. The report is under Content > Adsense >Top Adsense Referrers. This report excludes search data so only gives you referral traffic sources. Straight away in my stats I saw 2 sites that stuck out. Websites that I’d never targeted to get traffic from but which were both contributing significant amounts of Adsense revenue. Top of the list came images.google.com
Having Google’s Images website as top of my list of Adsense referrers was a shock to me. My website has hardly any images on it. I mean really, probably 10 at most (besides the template stuff). And yet in an average month the referral traffic from images.google.com is making me nearly as much in Adsense as the Google search traffic. My first task after finishing this post is to go and add at least 1 tagged image to each and every page of that website! Next up in terms of money was another Google property, groups.google.com
I’d never done anything to promote my content in the newsgroups. Obviously other people had cited some of my content as solutions to other peoples problems. It was a source of traffic that I didn’t even know I’d had because the raw number weren’t that high. So maybe it wasn’t bringing hundreds of visitors a day but my Adsense data showed that what traffic it did bring was VERY click happy.
That’s as far as I’ve got with my study of Adsense Analytics for now. Just those 2 reports have given me enough to think about and about 2 days worth of changes! What about you? Have you took the time to look at your Adsense data on Analytics? What is it telling you, care to share?
6 Responses to “Adsense Analytics – Who Wants To Make More Money?”
Keshav
April 1, 2009
Hi, I liked your article..
The similar problem i am facing with my Adsense Traffic. I am trying very hard to get some traffic but its not still significant.
Keshav’s last blog post..Make Money With PayPal
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