I have been experimenting with tracking Adsense clicks in order to increase the earnings on my sites. After reading this post about tracking Adsense clicks via javascript, I decided to give it a try on one of my sites. I did a quick search on hotscripts to find a decent tracking script, and I have been pleasantly surprised with the results.

Two nights ago, I installed the Contextual Tracker script on my site. Setting up the script is very easy. Installation involves changing a few parameters in the configuration script, running a set of SQL commands to install some mySQL tables, and inserting a few lines of javascript into the header of your site. Once you have installed the script, you can log in to an admin section to see your stats in real time.
Benefits of Adsense Click Tracking

1. See the URL ads users have clicked on. This is HUGE. Knowing which ads visitors respond to allows you to better target the content of your site. For example, on my cliff notes site I thought that most of the Adsense clicks would be related to term papers. It turns out that most of the Adsense clicks I have seen so far are going to CampusI (an online bookstore), Blish.com, and Barronsmag.com. I am a bit confused about clicks going to Barron’s which is a financial publication, but I will continue to investigate this. AdBrite has this feature for their run of network ads, but I would kill for this feature to be built into Adsense and YPN.
2. Protect yourself against clickfraud. The program tracks the IP address of users who click on your ads. If you see a large volume of clicks from a particular IP address, it would be a good idea to contact Google and let them know about the problem. If you are not proactive about the situation, Google may think that you are trying to scam the system and ban your account.
3. Know exactly which pages users clicked on your Adsense ads. I found this very useful on my site with thousand of pages. I always assumed that most of my Adsense clicks came from the homepage of the site. However, most of the clicks appear to be coming from the search pages and pages devoted to individual books. With this data, I was able to quickly identify pages that accounted for most of my Adsense clicks.

I will continue to experiment with Adsense click tracking. In a later post, I will write about using Google Analytics to do more detailed tracking and analysis of Adsense clicks.