Friday, February 13, 2009

«Finally Linked AdSense and Analytics»

I finally got the option available to me to link Google AdSense and Google Analytics. I've only been waiting since they announced it in October of last year. I know Google rolls out updates slowly to their users, but come on... That took 5 months!

It probably would have been longer if I didn't run across their AdSense / Analytics interest form. The link to this form can also be found at the top of the Official AdSense blog.

So I have them linked. I should be able to get more detailed information about the performance of my ads now. Although at the time of writing this, no data is showing up in my Analytics account about AdSense yet.

One little thing that threw me for a bit during the linking process: They ask you to chose a primary domain to link to. All other domains other than the primary must have an additional bit of code inserted in. I was thinking that since I use a few subdomains (extras, www, and pictures) that I'd need this little code snippet. However, I couldn't find it anywhere.

Turns out that by "different domains", they really meant different profiles in Analytics. I track all my subdomains under the same profile in analytics, so I should be good. I shouldn't need to add any extra code anywhere.

You might be wondering why I even have ads. Well, they're primarily to pay for my domain name and monthly hosting costs. "But wait!" you say to yourself, "Blogger is a free service! There's no hosting costs involved!" Well, you're right... Sorta.

I pay (through GoDaddy) for my domain name. I also have a hosting account through GoDaddy that hosts the Games section, as well as all the images you see here on the blog. I did not like the limitations of the built-in image hosting that blogger provides. And yes, I do make enough from the ads to cover my costs.


  1. At least they aren't as bad as Valve in regards to time...

  2. Google often seem to make it very difficult to find some of their developments. I have never understood this.

    As for your ads - I don't see anything wrong in people having ads on their blogs. I have them. As long as they are reasonable both in number and type for the type of blog you are running then good luck to you.

  3. @ Bunc: Yes, I'm not sure why they do either. Also, Google has very poor customer support. They even make it tough to find the help forums for their various products.

  4. They have actually made the help forums worse recently. they closed down all their old forums and have new style forums - it's much harder to find stuff. I guess they were trying to control spam posts but they have solved one problem and just made it worse.

    Their customer support is non-existent. Self help is their model really. If it was any other corporation they would have gone out of business the way they treat their customers.

  5. @ Bunc: Both points are very true. The new help forum style does suck, and they have NO customer support.

    About the only thing you can do is add to the list of people complaining about a particular problem and hope someone at Google notices there is a problem.


Thanks for taking the time to comment.


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