I just got invited and set up with Analytics, and while it is an excellent stats tool, I find some areas of the program lacking from the point of view of an advertiser.
For instance, one of the reasons I picked Adwords over various other PPC advertising methods was to their claims of anti-clickfraud methods. Google also mentions how if you suspect clickfraud in your account, that you can report it to their investigation team and receive credit in the case of clickfraud.
Well that's great, but how do I suspect clickfraud if I can't monitor who is clicking my ads? Then I read about Analytics, which is supposed to be a beefed up version of Urchin (which I've used before and can track IP addresses and domains). So I sign up for Analytics and in the meantime trust that Google is doing their job on preventing clickfraud.
5 months pass and I get my invite, and happily start using Analytics thinking that I'll finally be able to track who is clicking my ads.
Well, not quite. After talking with a Google representative, it became apparent that the IP address logging feature was taken out of Urchin for Google Analytics for reasons unknown. Analytics does still retain the Domain that users are on which is good, but it logs all users (there is no way to view the Domains of the users who are finding my site by the ad).
Does anyone else find this odd? That we are supposed to put all our faith into Google's mysterious clickfraud prevention techniques? The "Domain" stats being implemented, but not for adwords clicks, seems like an overlook on their part and perhaps will be implemented in the future. But the removal of IP loggin? They seem to have gone to lengths to prevent the advertiser from knowing where clicks are coming from.
Perhaps people have found other methods within Analytics or otherwise, that will allow the tracking of users who click on Adwords' ads? I mean, I already have Urchin running on my site, but how can I differentiate a normal click from an Adwords click, any ideas?
Essentially right now, Analytics is offering me nothing other than pie charts and graphs of data already available to me in Adwords itself...
