If Google AdSense is reporting lesser pageviews than your stats program, you’re not alone.
If you’re a Google AdSense publisher, you might have noticed that the pageviews reported in your AdSense dashboard are lower than those shown in Blogger stats, JetPack Stats, StatCounter , Google Analytics or whatever other website statistics program you use.
This is not unusual, and is nothing to be alarmed about. Comparing the page views in AdSense with those in your web stats is not a like-for-like comparison.
Below are many valid reasons for discrepancies, as listed on HexCentral :
- AdSense won’t count page views if the visitor has installed an ad blocker or has disabled JavaScript.
- AdSense won’t count page views when no ads actually appear on the page. Keep in mind that, just because you can see the ads, that doesn’t mean that all your visitors can. If there are no ads available that match your content in a particular visitor’s country or region, then the visitor won’t see any ads and the impression won’t be counted by AdSense.
- Discrepancies can occur if the visitor navigates away from the page before it is fully loaded. Stats programs that get their data from the website’s log files (such as AWStats and Webalyzer) will count the impression as soon as the page starts to load. If the loading is interrupted before reaching the AdSense code, then AdSense won’t count the page. Conversely, if you are using a stats program that relies on code embedded in the page (such as Google Analytics or StatCounter), and if the interruption occurs after loading the AdSense code but before loading the stats code, then AdSense will count the page but the stats program won’t.
- Some stats programs (including Google Analytics) won’t count visitors who don’t have cookies enabled.
- If the visitor’s browser doesn’t support iframes (virtually all modern browsers do), AdSense won’t count the impression.
- You might have configured your stats program not to count impressions from your own IP address. These impressions will still be counted by AdSense.
- Your stats program might be counting pages that don’t have any AdSense code, such as a privacy statement or a contacts page.
- Stats programs that get their data from the website’s log files will count “non-viewed” traffic (such as visits from spiders or bots). AdSense only counts a visit if the page is actually viewed in a browser.
Taken together, these factors will tend to cause AdSense to report lower pageviews counts than the stats program.
Some publishers believe there’s a sinister motive in this, and worry about being short-changed by Google. This is clearly not the case. On the contrary, given the number of potential discrepancies that can occur, it would be surprising if AdSense and the stats program reported even roughly the same figures.
Differences Between PageViews and Impressions and Ad Impressions In Adsense Reports
Page view
A page view is what Google counts in your reports every time a user views a page displaying Google ads. Adsense will count one page view regardless of the number of ads displayed on that page. For example, if you have a page displaying three ad units and it is viewed twice, you will generate two page views.
Impressions
An impression is counted for each ad request where at least one ad has begun to download to the user’s device. It is the number of ad units (for content ads) or search queries (for search ads) that loaded ads.
Ad impressions
An ad impression is reported whenever an individual ad has begun to download to the user’s device. Different ad formats will display varying numbers of ads; for example, each time a vertical banner appears on your site, you’ll see two ad impressions in your reports.
In addition, keep in mind that the number of ads in any ad unit may vary depending on whether the ad unit is displaying standard text ads expanded text ads, or display ads.
You can check out the Adsense glossary for the meaning of Adsense terminologies.
NOTE:
Blogspot stats displays all views and not unique views. It count your own visits as well as visit from bots. You should create a Google Analytics account to get more accurate figures.
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