I say they don't want to give information that's not core-business to the adsense program....

It's been their strategy from day one.... I don't see that changing soon... and i can see why... ;)

I'm just thinking that if free services like sitemeter can tell you about an individual visitor, why can't Google with a similar service?

That's like going to the supermarket and complaining that you can't get a haircut there.

Actually I find it slightly surprising that click tracking isn't prohibited altogether. There's no possibility of Google providing this kind of information, because in some cases individuals could be personally identifiable. That would be a huge privacy issue.

you can get a haircut at my local wal-mart :)

Just curious as to why they don't provide more info, especially if it might help us to improve pages (for example, tell us which pages are the highest earners... channels are good but not enough).

jomaxx,

How would click-tracking be a privacy issue. People have dealt with cookies for how many years now? And cookies are even more telling.

Basically there are a lot of other things that are far more within the webmaster's remit to control that have a greater effect on eCPM (like ad placement, colours etc) - the results of which are easy enough to track under the current system.

When you go down to the level of tracking individual clicks and individual pages the numbers you are talking about are so small as to skew the results significantly. Google is probably (also) rightly concerned about helping the click fraudsters if they were to provide this sort of detailed information to everyone.

It's still possible to track individual pages with channels though.

Basically there are a lot of other things that are far more within the webmaster's remit to control that have a greater effect on eCPM

I'll disagree with that philosophy. Tweaking is at best limited and tactical. Knowing which advertisers pay you best and most is strategic information with wide-ranging implications for any advertisement-funded publication.

If you went to any paper magazine publisher and said "I'm going to handle all the hassle of booking ads for you -- but I'm just going to give you a check every month and not tell you which advertisers paid how much." they would think you were nuts.

I probably waste 6 hours a month trying to infer details about my advertiser base; Google could, if they chose, give me a report that would let me absorb the same information (only more accurately) in about 15 minutes of reading.

How would click-tracking be a privacy issue

1. Based on the IP address or other information such as registration info, the individual doing the clicking could well be personally identifiable by the publisher.

2. Google is going to tell us that a particular surfer clicked on an ad for "gay dating" or "pregnancy tests" or "alcoholics unanimous" or whatever? How is this NOT a privacy issue?

I don't disagree that cookie tracking data is also very revealing.

Knowing which advertisers pay you best and most is strategic information with wide-ranging implications for any advertisement-funded publication.

Well it's easy with Google - on the CPC side of ads the ones that pay the best per a click are at the top of the first ad on the page, the ones with lower bids are below them etc. If Google released the kind of information you want people would arrange their own deals with advertisers instead (even though yes this is against the programme policies of Google Adsense). Part of why Google gets the cut they do is to deal with the billing, the statistics, the ad serving as well as being a brand that carries a lot more weight than a website run by a one-man band. If you did what Google did yourself, you'd soon find the labour costs come to more than the difference between what Google is paying you and what the advertisers are paying them.

Google does plenty - "heat map", various pages of tips, case studies etc to help webmasters improve their revenue. Offering statistics such as user 1 today clicked an ad targeted to blue widgets that took them to a page about blue widgets isn't going to help you increase revenue. What does help you increase revenue is using channels to see which pages are making you the most and either creating more on this topic or tweaking them.

In the end though as webmasters we're dependent not just on Google for advertisers but Google in the first place for visitors. However SEO is a topic for another forum really...

Or even if they weren't as specific as visitors or individual clicks, how about which pages perform the best?

Just a "top 10" or "top 50" pages list with most clicks..."page a - 200 clicks, page b - 186 clicks" etc... so you can see which pages are bringin in the most clicks, highest eCPM, etc. Yes, I realize channels can do this, but when you have hundreds of pages it is time-consuming to make a channel for each one, and if you have more than 200 pages, it's not possible...

That is very easy to do with channels though (assuming you have <200 pages on your website). Once you have set up the channels, come back the next day, go to advanced reports, choose channel data, then all and group by channel. You should then be able to sort the list by page impressions, clicks, CTR, eCPM or earnings by clicking on those particular words. Clicking a second time on the same word sorts the list in the opposite direction.

Google does plenty - "heat map", various pages of tips, case studies etc to help webmasters improve their revenue.

Just a nitpick: By doing that they're not helping just webmasters but primarily themselves. The more a publisher earns, the more Google earns.

I have about 500 pgs of content though....