Dick Logan

After noticing a discrepancy in the number of Adsense clicks reported in MyBlogLog stats compared to Google’s Adsense stats, I decided to do a little research on the problem. It turns out I’m not alone. I found at least four or five other bloggers with the same problem, lots of clicks reported on MyBlogLog but none credited on Google Adsense.

It turns out that because MyBlogLog tracks Adsense clicks, it may be a conflict in Google’s Terms of Service and a violation of Adsense rules, which are grounds for account cancellation. I have not, however, heard of anyone’s account being terminated so far for using MyBlogLog but I guess the possibility stands.

There are a couple of reasons why the disagreement in the number of clicks may be happening. Myself and a lot of other bloggers use digg and reddit to get our posts out into the world for people to see them. Whenever an article is submitted to these sites, there comes a huge gain of temporary traffic. I believe the best reason why the clicks are not counted is because Google’s anti-fraud system is at work. They notice an upsurge in traffic, and because of this, regards the clicks gained from it as fraudulent.

Another possibility that may be happening is that MyBlogLog tracking interferes with the Adsense code. When someone clicks on an ad it is reported to both my MyBlogLog and Adsense, and perhaps somewhere in there along the way the Adsense code becomes jumbled.

A third possibility is that MyBlogLog’s tracking code is simply wrong and inaccurate. Apparently if you’re using a non-Internet Explorer browser like firefox and reload the page with your cursor over the ad MyBlogLog will count that as a click.

Once I found out about this information I decided to play it safe and remove the MyBlogLog code from my website. Perhaps it might be a good idea for you to consider doing the same.