How to Track Arbitrage Traffic Sources with AdSense

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NOTE: Before you read this, please look into the "URL Channels" option in AdSense. Kyleirwin brought it up further down in the thread (give him some +rep), and it's a much smarter way of doing it.

So, everybody knows that Yahoo is the way to go for arbitrage, but for those of us still stuck with AdSense, here's a good way to figure out which traffic sources are helping, and which aren't. Hopefully it'll help some people out who couldn't do the code themselves, or just didn't think of trying it:

The Setup

You've started a new arbitrage site for blue widgets. You have ads up 7search, Searchfeed, and Miva. Your URL is http://www.blue-widget-arbitrage.com/


Configuring AdSense


In Adsense, create 3 new channels. Call them something like BlueWidget/7search, BlueWidget/Searchfeed, and BlueWidget/Miva. Then, go through the AdSense setup process to get code for an adblock. It doesn't really matter what setup you choose, as long as you do it once for each of your new channels. When you get the AdSense code, you'll see a pair of lines that look like this:

//2006-09-27: BlueWidget/7search
google_ad_channel ="1234567890";

Write down the ad channel id number associated with each ad channel. In the above code, the number would be 1234567890 for the BlueWidget/7search channel.

URL Modifications

For each traffic source, customize your destination URL to include a parameter indicating the source of the traffic.
So for 7search, it could look like this:
http://www.blue-widget-arbitrage.com/?engine=7search
For Searchfeed:
http://www.blue-widget-arbitrage.com/?engine=searchfeed
And finally Miva:
http://www.blue-widget-arbitrage.com/?engine=miva

PHP Code

Finally, you have to write a little code at the top of your landing page to set the correct channel:

<?php
$channel = "";
$engine = $HTTP_GET_VARS[engine];
if ($engine == "7search")
{
$channel="1234567890";
}
elseif ($engine == "searchfeed")
{
$channel="2345678901";
}
elseif ($engine == "miva")
{
$channel="3456789012";
}
?>

Of course, you must replace the numbers with the channel ID's you recorded above.

Then, in each AdSense adblock on the page, replace the google_ad_channel variable, which looks like this:
google_ad_channel ="6789012345";
with this:
google_ad_channel="<?php echo $channel; ?>";

That's it - you should now see each impression and click show up in the appropriate channel.

Hope that helps!
 


Sounds fine if you are testing which ppc engine converts best on your pages. But other than that, this stuff is for snails.
 
Why would you set up multiple domains to do the same thing, when you can just make it work with a little code? I'm not trying to say you're wrong - I honestly don't understand the benefit of doing it. You're good at arbitrage, so please let us know why it's better to use a separate domain for each search engine, in the same niche, than it is to use the same domain.
 
You can save yourself the code, and the time creating and copying all the channel ID's out of adsense. Just make copies of the page, name them differently, and use URL channels.
 
Huh - I never noticed the "URL Channels" option in AdSense. That's a much better way of handling this. Thanks for the explanation kyleirwin. Sorry to waste everybody's time.
 
If you guys can't spare $7 this is the wrong game for you.

Use URL channels and stop doing tracking for lame shit like this. Things can go wrong, it's a pain in the butt, etc. etc. etc.
 
Just wanted to say thanks. I was wondering how you could track arbitrage with code, but how do you track your azoogle conversions?
 
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