Tracked clicks in affiliate software not consistent with Google Analytics

[Adamovich]

Hi guys,

I came across an interesting data inconsistency yesterday and I wanted to check if any of you had a similar experience at any time in the past.

I know that different affiliate software providers measure or define "clicks" differently and that the data can't always be translated directly into link clicks tracked on Google Analytics.

But yesterday (February 9th) I noticed that ALL affiliate software showed on average 100 times more clicks/impressions than I can see on GA. It's like someone copied all tracking links on my site and crawled them thousands of times with a bot, but not through my domain.

Has any of you seen anything similar before?

[Strider1973]

Maybe the affiliate software counts banner impressions as "clicks"?

Or maybe Google filters out non-human traffic?

Or both?

[PaulEchere]

I can see something similar with my links, although certainly not to the degree that you are describing. Clicks numbers tracked by affiliate programs are usually 10%-20%, but I never actually looked into why that might exactly be.

[universal4]

But yesterday (February 9th) I noticed that ALL affiliate software showed on average 100 times more clicks/impressions than I can see on GA. It's like someone copied all tracking links on my site and crawled them thousands of times with a bot, but not through my domain.

Has any of you seen anything similar before?

This probably most likely WAS bots. If the clicks showed in some of the myaffiliates software programs, you may or may not see a pattern of the ip they came from, to help prove or disprove that theory.

Also be aware that some link checkers (such as some of the many plugins that run regular checks on your site links) will also follow all the links on your site. (I have seen at least one combination where the followed links show as the server ip at one particular affiliateprogram.)

Many of the site scrapers and many pretending to be "seo" programs are nothing more then scrape 100% of your pages, and follow every single link they see, even if the same external link is followed 100 times.

Analytics may have done a better job of ignoring many of those "follows" by ip or browser footprint.

Rick
Universal4