What you could use click statistics for:
- you can see how many clicks an ad gets
- see how many click a link of your gets on Twitter (just an example) (see Method 2)
- if you have an ad in two places (image or link, but most probably link because who would want to put the same image ad twice?), you can see how many clicks each of them gets, so you can compare and re-think where to have your ads placed
- you have links to some of your posts in a few places and want to know which one drives the most traffic to that article
- the third method is for Google Adsense, integrated in Google Analytics and helps you see more about the people who click, like where they come from (referrer, search engine and so on)
Method 1: the only website that shortens urls and allows you to see the click statistics:
http://cli.gs is the only website that i know of, which shortens URL's for which you can view click stats. You need an account (free) for this. Can be used with UrlbarExt Firefox addon for generating link automatically. To use the stats, you need to edit it's syntax in the UrlbarExt Preferences: Tiny tab. Make cli.gs default, in the api field enter:
http://cli.gs/api/v1/cligs/createand in the arguments field:
url=%?url%&key=<your_api_key>&appid=77and replace <your_api_key> with you api key which you can get from http://cli.gs, after you have an account and login.
Method 2, for clicking any link / ad (except adsense):
You need an account (free) on histats.com and install the initial code on your website (either visible or invisible, but make sure it's the one using java-script), then go to Special > Manage Special Pages / Click and under "Manage CLICK COUNT", add a title for that link and it's url:
Then click “Insert”, and you will receive a new link, which you'll have to place instead of the original one. And… voila :)
Method 3, Google Adsense click stats (analytics), which it is said to be the only way to also track click in Firefox, not just Internet Explorer:
You will of course need a Google Analytics account, where you have to create a new “Goal”:
-in the URL field, enter: /asclick
-in the NAME field, enter: AdClick
-make sure "case-sensitive" is not checked!
Then you save this file on your computer: astrack.js and upload it to a host, either on you host, googlepages.com or whatever, then enter the below code in you website source, after Google Analytics' tracking code (above should be just fine):
<script src="http://path_to_astrack/astrack.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
