I really find some of the newer AdWords/AdSense ads spooky!!!!!  Look at this picture of my last blog post on difference between how visits are counted in two web analytics packages.

I just want to make it clear I have nothing to do with that picture – it’s being streamed by AdSense and in this case – it’s clearly not applicable to my post but it did get clicked on.  IN other words, the Advertising is effective in getting me jarred and clicking on the Ad but because it’s upsetting me to see the picture – I don’t think it you’d get much of a positive response (I guess it depends on who the picture is of).

However, the possibility exists that by running a picture next to my blog post – people who read the post will associate the picture with my post and that can have un-intended consequences of deminishing the value they put on the post.  

If I had my way I would not allow photos to appear as ads right near the top of the blog post – it conveys the impression it’s either the author of the blog post or the subject of the post.

For my last blog in the month of August 2006 I’m covering the difference between two popular web analytics packages in how they define  "visits" to a site.

No two web analytics programs will count traffic in exactly the same way – and usually, even two versions of the same web analytics programs count traffic differently.  I was reminded of that today when I got hold of my web stats for another blog during all of August using AwStats.

At the same time, I started using Performacing about 2 weeks ago.

While I started the Art blog 2 months ago and the traffic is beginning to pick up – the two packages I’m comparing count visits differently; the top numbers are from AwStats while the bottom is from Performacing.

Honestly, which numbers would you follow?  Why?

Avinash Kaushik has one of the best posts on Google Analytics and AdWords that I’ve read; he cleared up some concerns many are having with allowing Google to collect your Web Analtyics and PPC Advertising.

Here’s the main reason why Google would have a hard time making sense of your Analytics and PPC data:

"Most of you who read this blog, and I, actually work with Analytics tools and I think we can safely say that this is a non-trivial challenge to overcome even when we use dedicated analytics tools and just for one company. Think integration of WebTrends and Omniture and ClickTracks etc with our PPC data and getting even half decent insights fast enough. It is really complicated, no matter how you look at it.

If we can’t even do it well for one company, ours, for Google to do it for the rest of the world and all the different business models and acquisition strategies is a non-trivial challenge.  Even though there are examples of extremely efficient arbitrage, specifically in the foreign currency markets, I am skeptical that it is “easy” for Google to find “insights” and do so in a timely manner to over charge us and do so while balancing that against real ROI Google would get for itself.

I also left a comment on Avinash’s blog saying I’m not really worried about Google merging Google Analytics and AdWords to get more information about each user, for the reasons mentioned above.