If you don’t know, I have 2 blogs. This blog (jonespc.com), pretty much a PC tech oriented blog with tips and talk about PC’s, the internet, software, games etc. Then theres Jonzee.com which is a gadget, shopping and product information blog. The traffic I get on both blogs are pretty similar, but Jonzee.com gets a little more traffic. Every since Ive started, Ive gotten more adsense revenue at Jonzee.com than I do here. I attribute it to the type of traffic I get on each blog.

  • At Jonzee.com, I get a lot of search engine traffic. I talk about products so when people are buying those products and are looking for information, they tend to find Jonzee.com when searching. When dealing with people in general that are just looking for product information, you have a wide range of people. Many of them may not be techies, or geeks. So I get a lot of average non technical visitors. Those visitors are more likely to click on the adsense ads.
  • At JonesPC, I also get a lot of search engine traffic, but most of the people that would visit a PC/tech enthusiast website will be an enthusiast themselves. Those types of visitors tend to not click on adsense ads too quickly and it is obvious. So much so that I have pretty much removed most of the adsense from this blog (been thinking about adding them back). I’ll be honest, I have 2 adsense spots on this blog, the 200×200 block on the main page, and the link unit above the post on the individual post pages. I haven’t had a click on either of those spots in months.

Now I’m not breaking any click records, but I do tend to look to see how much I have made every couple of days. For the past several months, Ive been getting a steady flow of clicks and income at Jonzee.com on a daily basis. There are several other things I check. To see how things are going as far as my stats. There is always a difference in what Google is telling me (what I’m getting paid for) and what other stat sources are telling me.

For example, I could look at my adsense stats for the day, and it can say that I have had 10 clicks (these numbers are all hypothetical). I can then go to another source, say Mybloglog.com, and it will show that I have had 40 adsense clicks.

Where are the other 30 adsense clicks I should be getting paid for?

I know Google has some type of click fraud algorithm to stop people from getting paid for clicking their own stuff, but I definitely am not doing that. Some days, I can be at work all day. Away from my PC for 15-16 hours. I’m not clicking my own stuff, I wasn’t even near a computer.

Am I getting false positives in Google adsense that is keeping me from making the extra 30 cents?

Thinking about it even more, I see it this way. In the hypothetical situation I just mentioned, if those 40 clicks that are showing up is indeed correct, that means that someone has actually clicked on that ad. That website has gotten a visiter from my site, maybe even bought or signed up for something. Im sure that the site didn’t pay for the click if Google isnt acknowledging the click on my end, or did they?

If not, Google is actually ripping themselves off along with ripping me off. Google may not have counted those extra clicks, but the site still got the benefit of a visitor. Google missed an opportunity of charging them (and paying me).

When the movie 300 came out, I did a lot of reading about the Spartans cause I was interested and wanted to know more. One thing I read is that Sparta had 2 kings. The reason they had 2 kings is because of their way of life. In Sparta, military, power, and the use of force was a way of life. Having 2 kings helped keep things in check. If one king did something wrong, the other was always there to call him on it. So, if any dirt was being done, they had to be really good at it to think they would get away with it. What we have right now is the opposite. Google has no competition, nothing to keep them in check so they can do whatever they way and we all have to suck it up.

If there was some real competition in the ad space for Google, there wouldn’t be as many click fraud false positives with no explanation. If the hypothetical situation I talked about above were to happen on a consistent basis, people would leave Google alone and try out the competition. If enough people would leave Google alone because of Click fraud false positives, Google would do more to make sure that those false positives wouldnt happen as much. Each ad company would keep each other in check just like having the 2 kings in Sparta kept things in check.