Google AdSense Page View Statistics

by Ron Kurtus (revised 21 January 2018)

Google AdSense page view statistics give you an idea of the effectiveness of your efforts to optimize your web traffic and revenue gained through AdSense.

In examining the statistics, you may notice that the number of AdSense page views differs dramatically from that listed on your website statistics, as taken from the server log. Of course, this assumes you have at least one Google ad on every one of your web pages.

One reason for this that many listed page views in your log are caused by webbots and not human users. Since advertisers pay for advertising space, as well as click-throughs, Google is careful to assure that humans are involved in the page views.

Questions you may have include:

What other files are counted as page views?
How many page views are form non-humans?
Why are Google's statistics better than your website stats?

This lesson will answer those questions.

Google lists page views by humans

Since Google obtains its revenue from advertisers, they want to assure those advertisers that page views are actually made by a human who will see the ad. Thus, Google has developed a high quality system to analyze the indications when pages with their ads are actually viewed.

Non-humans

A big factor in the difference between your web stats and the AdSense numbers is that fact that a surprising number of "visitors" you receive are not from humans but rather from webbots.

The School for Champions website stats show about 10% of page views as webbots or spiders. Others claim as many as 50% page views from webbots.

The AdSense page view statistics for the School for Champions website is about 50% - 60% of the server log stats. Some other people report AdSense stats of only 20% of the server stats.

You can verify this by checking your host statistics log for the top visiting IP addresses. You may find that many are webbots or addresses that cannot be accessed. They could be other search engines or even e-mail harvesters. There are a number of Web data scrapers or Internet robots commercially available, where people are accessing your web pages for reasons other than viewing your content.

AdSense requires JavaScript

It is estimated that about 7% of browsers have JavaScript disabled, either for security reasons or to prevent ads from displaying. Some specific audiences may result in an even higher percentage.

AdSense requires JavaScript to display the ads. For the viewers with disabled, the page view will record on your server stats but will no be reflected in the Adsense stats.

Page views in server log not valid

AdSense does not count external items such as favicons and Flash in its count of page views. It does not count views when the browser has JavaScript disabled. And finally, Adsense filters out page views made by nonhumans. This makes it a more valid measurement for their advertisers.

Counting page views is important for gaining advertising revenue. However, statistics in your server log are not really valid for advertising purposes.

Other items may also be logged in as page views when a web page is accessed. For instance, your website favicon is also counted as a page impression. Besides that, dynamic resources and Flash animations may also be counted as separate page views by the server.

Summary

Google AdSense page views typically differ dramatically from those on your server log. One reason is that some actions are counted as page views in your log and not in AdSense. Another reason is that many listed page views are caused by webbots and not human users. Since advertisers pay for advertising space, as well as click-throughs, Google is careful to assure that humans are involved in the page views.

Careful analysis is important