Two purchases (that I have watched occur) have been made from the links on our site with Linkshare, and two from amazon.com affiliate. Neither affiliate program has given us credit for them.
There are proceses for which you can bring a particular purchase up for review, but if they are 0/4 of just the ones I am aware of intimately, why should I have any trust in them to ever give us credit for anything?
The links are all copy and pasted and they have our userid in the url when we hit the affiliate site (the UID is dropped in the url on the next click, but I would assume that data is stored in a session somewhere?)
Linkshare also supposedly tracks impressions, and the numbers they are showing are 1/10th or less of what google analytics is claiming for visitors.
Am I to believe that 90% of web viewers are using adblockers?
I am new to this stuff, so I guess the problem could be on my end, but I don’t know what else I am supposed to be doing… The links all seem to work fine and they list our UID properly…
Rabies,
I run a web design business and have several clients that use Analytics and AwStats together. In every single case, Analytics (as well as other services like Compete and QuantCast) show traffic that is about 80% less then what AwStats reports. And AwStats throws out all page views resulting from status codes, worms and spiders, so at to give you a more accurate report. One reason that they are the most accurate traffic reporting module out there as far as I have found over the years.
I also use Webalizer, another traffic module and it too, reports about 80% higher traffic than the others mentioned above.
The codes are placed correctly on all of the sites. I have been programming for over 20 years and web programming for 13, so I do know what I am doing. I would not be in business long if I did not. So that is not the problem.
As for page loading, all of them load inside of 10 seconds, most within 5-6 seconds. So, I find it highly unlikely that Analytics would consistently be choking before the page load got to the Analytics code on every single client site.
The one good thing about Analytics is that it allows you to tie it in with your AdSense reports and lets you know which pages are performing well and which pages are not when it comes to clicks and revenue. That is a very useful feature.
In summary, Analytics is useful for tracking page behavior and earnings as far as AdSense goes. The others are useless and charge an arm and a leg for numbers that are suspect. The really unfortunate thing is that most advertisers use those numbers when looking for either direct or affiliate advertising. To me, a lot of it is a sham.
Nos, you resurrected a 3 year old thread, and did it with claims that you have not backed up. What evidence do you have that Analytics is “off” and by so much? Don’t you know that Analytics is actually “Urchin”? This was/is one of the best enterprise level server stats packages. Google bought them out and turned it into Google Analytics.
My own experience shows Google showing HIGHER numbers than “WebStats” (which runs on my host provider). 20% more. So in other words, the opposite of your claim.
It’s possible you have not properly added the analytics code to every page of your site. It’s also possible that your pages are too slow, and therefore people click back before the page has even loaded the Analytics code at the bottom of the page.
It is because that services like Google Analytics (and other ones like Compete.com) and 100% USELESS when it comes to tracking your site’s true traffic.
On average, Analytics is off by a factor of 80% when it comes to true site traffic. For example, if your stat program (e.g. Awstats) is showing 100,000 visits to your site per month, I will lay you $20 that Analytics will only show 20,000 or so. Ditto for Compete.com etc. I see this on every single site I have ever used Analytics etc. on, from client sites to my personal ones. The only thing Analytics is good for is tying it into your AdSense account so you can see what pages are generating the most revenue. As for sites like Compete, they are only in it to soak money out of you. (And their prices are outrageous for such a useless metric).
If you do not have a site stat program via your host (Awstats is the most accurate and comprehensive) then I suggest that you request that your host install it for you.