Measurement « The MyBlogLog Blog

23Feb/07

On MyBlogLog’s ad tracking…

There have been a number of recent posts 'round the blogosphere about
our ads tracking and we'd like to make a few clarifications:

1) Tracking outbound links is what caused us to launch MyBlogLog in the
first place. Ads are outbound links.

2) This feature was added after users requested it over and over...

3) This is not a Pro-only feature. Free users can look at their stats
page and under "What Readers Clicked" they'll see "Filter by: All | Ads
| Content".

4) Google has
acknowledged this feature (without protest). And, as opposed to the click-through
data that Google gives its customers, this info generated by MBL is
collected independently of the AdSense program which doesn't appear to
be considered confidential information under their terms of service.

UPDATE:

5) We did not nick our ad tracking from Jim Rutherfold's excellent Adsense Click Pepper for Mint. ~~I've included both of our code at the end of this post for you to compare~~ Posting ginormous code samples made for an ugly post, so I've pasted Jim's email response below. MyBlogLog wasn't the first person to figure out ad click tracking, and neither was Jim. But as anyone who's ever programmed (or even tried to figure out CSS to change their blog template) can attest, we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before. Jim's code was definitely the best, and we wanted to make sure that anyone who learned from our code knew that there was someone else whose kung fu was strong. Hence the linky love in the code.

From Jim Rutherford:

Thanks for the note! I did notice some trackbacks in my blog that
pointed to the issue of code "swiping". I have no problem with the
code you are using, and appreciate the reference to the my URL in your
source. Funny thing is that if you would have left the URL out of your
code, you wouldn't be under any criticism of swiping code - funny how
doing the right thing can come back to only bite you in the ass!

Borrowing and learning from other people's code is what makes
the web such a great platform to work on. I applaud the fact that you
had the decency to provide attribution.

Keep up the great work with your service,

Jim