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Several Adsense webmasters use link units to monetize their sites because they perform well, sometimes even better than ad units. It has been difficult to track performance of link units until now.

Google recently added advanced reporting exclusively to track link units. To get reports for your link units, go to Advanced Reports. Under “Choose Units” you will see three options - Ad Units, Link Units and Combined. Before this feature was added, all we got was Combined reports. Now click on Link Units. On the left under Show data by you will see four options - Page, Link Unit, Individual Link & Individual Ad.

These new options can give you a wealth of data. It took me some time to figure out the mechanics of link unit reporting. Once you figure them out it, it can help you use your link units wisely or dump them altogether.

Listed below is a table which shows you what data each of the above option gives you.

To understand what the terminologies used in this report mean you simple need to understand how a link unit works on your site.

Page
When a page with link units is displayed it records a page impression no matter how many link units you have on your page. For example if our page has two link units - one 120×90 link unit and one 468×15 link unit, the page impression will be 1. Page CTR and Page eCPM is then calculated from this data.

Link Unit
Now in our example page we have two link units. So the Link Unit Impressions is 2. Link Unit CTR & Link Unit eCPM is calculated accordingly.

Individual Link
Next: each link unit can have 4-5 title links. Each Individual Link counts as a Link Impression. So suppose one page has two link units - one displaying 4 links and another displaying 5, our total individual link impressions is 9.

Individual Ad
Clicking on these title links on our page leads to another result page where individual ads are displayed. These initial clicks on the title links are referred as Link Clicks. Link clicks don’t generate revenue for you. Clicks on ads referred as just “Clicks” in the above reports are the final monetized clicks. These clicks are made on the results ad page.

You will note that for a particular period of time or channel the clicks and earnings will remain the same.

What do you with all this data?

Now that we know what all the reports mean, what do you do with all the data? Advanced reports of link units can be used to fine tune your link units. As of now webmasters used channels to track performance. Now with results-page click tracking, CTR and individual ad tracking you can find out how your link units are converting. For example, you can find out which type and/or placement of link unit gives you more relevant links and therefore more ad clicks (clicks that give you money). A low converting link unit can be removed from your page and replaced with alternatives.

If you think there are more ways to learn from advanced link unit reports, do add in your comment.

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