How to use Google Adsense for site analysis

How to use Google Adsense for site analysis

Article first published as How to use Google Adsense for site analysis on Technorati.

There are many articles and posts written discussing using Google Analytics to track site performance and analyze visitors and their behaviors. It is a great free tool to use for site or a blog. It provides robust data to gauge traffic and audience.

Another tool by Google that I found to be very useful in determining traffic and audience interest, is AdSense. While it is also has been written about in terms of a way to make money for your site, it is rarely, if at all, mentioned as an analytics tool.

AdSense is relatively easy to set up for the site, especially if you are on Blogger or Wordpress platforms. However, what might not be widely known, is that it takes some time for the system to really work for your site. And that is because the algorithm take time to read and index your content and then “learn” the topic of your site and correctly assign advertisements based on that data. But when it finishes and sets up relevant ads, you can tell. You would see ads on your page that either pick up on keywords or overall topic of the site. Check out text ads on right hand side:

And once this happens, that is when you could use AdSense data to find out even more about your visitors interests. It is done through taking a look at the categories that the ads shown on the site fall under.

Here is how to do it:

1. Log into your AdSense account

2. At the top of the page, you will see this

3. Click on Allow & block ads. I know, it is not the most intuitive place to follow as right next to it, the page lists Performance reports. Though this is exactly why I thought this would be great info to share

4. Next you will see this page and heading ..

5. Click on the tag General categories

6. Now your view would look something like this

7. At this point I like to sort by the % Earnings column to see which of the categories yielded largest revenue percentage. You might have to click twice to get the highest one up on the top.

8. Clicking on the Category name would open up a dropdown menu of sub-categories that would show even more details on what type of ads convert best on your site

This is a great way to determine most valued or most interested categories for your viewers. Using this info you can adjust or come up with new content for your site. Also, if you are doing or starting out in affiliate marketing, this data can demonstrate which categories and advertisers you should align yourself with via the affiliate platform for best click through performance and revenue.

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