It's an Interesting Thing

Today, I got 85 pageviews according to Google AdSense (the folks who handle the advertising on the site), 44 according to statcounter, and 42 according to Google Analytics.

Now, 85 pageviews is quite astounding. My all time record is 55 according to Google Analytics. And never has AdSense disagreed with the other two by more than a couple views (They have different lagtimes, and some of them drop a cookie on me to ignore if I look at my own site, whereas others don't). So then I investigate further. I have two defined "channels" of ads on the site. The "ad box", which is up above the posts by the google search window in which actual ads are placed, and the "link box" which is down at the bottom of the right column and has context sensitive links to pages of pertinent links. I can get the stats individualy for both ad locations.

When I check it, I see my ad box has 85 pageviews, but my link box has only 42. Now, there is no way to actually display the ad box without also displaying the link box on my site. The only way I can think of that this could happen is if someone copies the java code from my page and drops it down on another page.

So that gets me to thinking. Hmmm... I know someone who redesigned his page today. And my little statcounter jobber told me that there were some interesting pageload hits, including one to my template, from a certain comcast site in Sunnyvale that also happens to be the last known IP of this person. So I take a gander at his new website design, including taking a peak at the page source, and I notice that the ad client codes for his ads and search box happen to be my ad client codes.

Odd how that works out. Now, maybe Google made a mistake and assigned him the same ad codes as me. But that'd be one hell of a coincidence, don't you think?