Blogging Basics - Where Are My Hits Coming From?

Blogger's new feature offers a lot of information previously available only through third party sites, so do you still need StatCounter? I think so.

If your blog is monetized (meaning you have ads showing on your blog), knowing where the ad hits are coming from is valuable information. Google Adsense reports are informative insofar as they show which blog or individual posts the ad clicks are coming from, but it doesn't tell you which ads were actually clicked on, just that an ad was clicked.

Blogger stats will show you what posts were viewed and demographic information such as country of origin and what browser the reader used, but provides no information about any ads that may have been clicked. If you have more than one ad in various positions on your blog, it helps to know which ad locations are being noticed and resulting in clicks; StatCounter can give you that information.

Setting Up Google Adsense Reports
If your blog is monetized with Adsense, make sure to add the URL of your blog in order to pick up the data specific to that blog. You can also add the URL of each individual blogs post, or just certain posts that you'd like to get more data from. To do that, log in to your Adsense home page, click on the Performance Reports tab, then URL Channels in the left sidebar. Just below the graph, click on Add URLs to Track, then add the URL to your blog home page, and any individual posts you want to monitor. If you want to start off small to see how it works, just add the main blog URL to start with; you can add more URLs at any time.

Your Adsense account home page shows the number of ad clicks received, but now with specific URLs entered you can see which blog (or blog post) had ads clicked. Click the View full reports link, then URL Channels in the left sidebar. The landing page will show you how many page views and ad clicks were tabulated for each blog (or blog post) that you entered a URL for. Armed with that information, you can go to StatCounter and see which ads were actually clicked.

Setting Up StatCounter for Your Blog
In order to get statistical information about your blog with StatCounter, you need to enter the code on the blog. Register with StatCounter then from My Projects, click on Add New Project, which brings up a form. When entering information for your blog, put your IP in the space labeled for IP Blocking so it doesn't register hits from your own computer (you can find your IP here). Clicking Configure and Install Code allows you to choose how you want StatCounter information to appear on your blog.

You may have seen some sites that have a counter at the bottom that shows how many hits have been registered in total. If you don't want that sort of information visible on your blog or site, choose the invisible counter option. Copy the resulting code on the next page and head back to your blog to install the counter.

Installing StatCounter on Blogger
To put your stat counter on your blog hosted at blogger, go to the design page of your blog and pick a spot to add a gadget (I usually put it on the bottom somewhere where it won't interfere with the rest of the layout). Click to add an HTML/Java Script gadget and paste the StatCounter code into the box. If you give it a title, it will show up on your blog even if your stat counter is invisible, so I recommend leaving the title blank. Click save and you're done.

Where Are the Ad Clicks Coming From?
Now that you've set up both Adsense and StatCounter with your blog information, you've got everything you need to see which blogs (and if you've added the information, which individual blog posts) are drawing the ad clicks, and which ads your readers are clicking on.

Starting with Adsense, if your home page shows some ads were clicked, look further to view full reports, then URL Channels in the left sidebar. The resulting report will tell you which specific blog or post got what number of ad clicks. Go to StatCounter and click on the project with the same name (your blog name); the page that follows has a lot of information to digest, so play around with the rest of the data if you'd like, but don't lose track of what we're concerned with today - which ads were clicked on.

In the left sidebar, click on Exit Link Activity, which shows where your reader went after looking at your blog. If someone clicked on a Google Adsense ad, the URL will look similar to http://googleads. g.doubleclick.net/; if you click that link on StatCounter, it will show you the exact ad that your reader clicked on. If you see a trend on the type of ads that are getting clicks, you can better position the ads on your blog.

Note: Since Adsense reports and StatCounter update on their own schedule, you won't see information in real-time. If Adsense shows that you have ad clicks, you may not see that on your StatCounter report for several hours.