View Full Version : Clickthrough reports
Hi
Is anyone missing any clickthroughs (clicks) in there account Reports?
I clicked through to 4 seperate merchants via 2 of my Live V3 client sites between the hours of 12.00am and 12.30am this morning (Tue 25th August), I checked my account Click ref report and found no sign of these clicks?? yet I have clicked on several more since 9.30 this same morning and they all report.
I submitted a ticket to support asking why these clicks are not showing in my account under click ref report?
http://www.affiliatewindow.com/affiliates/clickref_report.php?timeScale=today
http://www.affiliatewindow.com/affiliates/clickref_report.php?timeScale=week
This was their reply:
The click ref report will not report on click throughs, only when a transaction has occurred.
Kind regards,
Jacky Cox
Partnerships
What????????? A confusing response! to say the least
Do clicks not report during these early hours??? is that what she meant?
Anyway my server access logs are cleaned up and do not go back as far as 12.30am
Will have to just keep my eye on these reports!
I think what she meant was:
"I am not going to bother asking someone who actually knows"
Clickref reports show the clickthroughs from your links. IF there is a transaction associated with that clickthrough, the sales value and commission will appear next to it. If there isn't, you'll get zero values.
Doesn't matter whether theres a sale or not, that report should show you all the clickthroughs and the associated clickrefs. If there is no clickref, you'll get "n/a" in it's place.
The only reasons I can think of why your clicks haven't appeared is that they have not tracked through your account.
This could be because your goto.php wasn't sending the correct affid at the time you clicked through. Dont know why that could be though, maybe you were playing at the time.
On my V1 and 2, I hard code the aff id into the top of the file so it will always be sent correctly.
Clicks have been showing in my account throughout the day up until 12.00AM.
Clickthroughs made between the hours of 12.00 - 12.30 AM are definitely not showing in my account, I know because I am the one clicking through, I click through in the day time and they report, I do nothing different (haven’t played with any files especially goto.php) but click through after 12.00 AM and they do not report on any click ref report - Daily, Weekly, Monthly!
I checked my account clickref_report.php?timeScale=today at 9.30 and again at 10.00am it shows No records available, for the specified date range..
Surely something is amiss?
Anybody else missing clicks on their reports?
I grabbed my access logs from my server showing these clickthroughs so I will raise another ticket today and see what happens.
Hi Iarna,
Sorry to hear that there is some kind of trouble.
Please PM me all of the details (aff ID, times/dates etc.) or direct me towards the ticket number (if that has all of the details) and I will take a look at this.
Cheers
Hi George,
The ticket number is 34798
I have PM'd you my server logs.
could this be the same problem as my Ticket Number: 34124 where an actual order with MicroDirect did not result in any commission? If the click thrus are not being registered then that would account for no commissions being paid on sales?
If the click thrus are not being registered then that would account for no commissions being paid on sales?
If this is true then there is a serious problem that needs fixing asap.
There were no reports for clicks made after 12.00am until I don’t know when? I was clicking until 12.30am but can’t stay up all night (morning I should say) clicking my goto.php links.
Lots of people still shop through these hours!
Just checked my account it shows recent clicks, maybe from support checking my GOTO link is working properly?
But 2.30pm and still no sign of the 11 clicks I made from 2 sites in the early hours.
I guess that rules out any kind of delay in these reports as it has now been 14 hours.
Still awaiting a reply from support!
35-40 clicks since 00:00
It is now 1:00am and nothing showing in my account as yet!
I can't keep staying up these hours checking if tracking is working properly is anyone else having this problem?
I visited Amoochi.co.uk which I think is a new V3 install and clicked through to these sites:
Toys r us - 4 clicks
Home and garden gifts - 4 clicks
Confetti - 4 clicks
Bizzy balloons - 7 clicks
The time was at 00:24 today
I wonder if he could check his account to see if they are reported.
Support said they have passed it on to their tech team!
Following your clicks to Amoochi...
You definately did them after midnight, right?
Not that it matter mind, they have certainly not registered as clicks or impressions. Which I have to say, i've found more than a little worrying having read this thread...
So with that...
I decided to do a little experiment of my own, using 3 seperate companies, 1 of which i've made several sales from before, one which I get regular clickthru's from and one which i've never even had an impression from.
The first part of the experiment is 10 clickthru's each from my v2 client and 5 clickthru's each from my v3 client.
I'll monitor the 3 companies over the course of the morning, but so far, nothing has registered on the actual reports parts of AWs, but they have shown up on the quota bits of the shopwindow toolset.
It's not looking good...
Hi all,
So what we are saying is that from midnight to 9am nothing being clicked is showing up in reports? Is this isolated to v3 or v2 as well?
This is currently with development.
Cheers
I stayed up until 01:00 and clicked through to 2 sites at 01:01 and stayed up a little longer and checked my account at 01:40 These clicks have reported.
It seems that clicks made between the hours of 00:00 and 01:00 are not reporting in my account.
I really can't keep staying up this late and checking, I really need my beauty sleep.
Hi Iarna,
OK so we can limit it to between midnight and 1am.
You really do not need to keep staying up to check this every night :D Now that we are aware of the problem that you are having we can look into it.
Am I correct in thinking that this is isolated to v3?
Cheers
It just so happens I checked my V1 installs too.
V1 clicks not reporting
My server access log:
These are my clicks:
Here is a click to Boots.com
[27/Aug/2009:00:17:02 +0100] "GET /goto.php?p=42605954&a=!!My aff id removed!!&m=2041 HTTP/1.1" 302 5 "http://www.!!My site name removed!!.co.uk/category/125/Vitamins-and-Supplements.html".........
Here is a click to Maximuscle
[27/Aug/2009:00:17:12 +0100] "GET /goto.php?p=8612032&a=!!My aff id removed!!&m=1495 HTTP/1.1" 302 5 "http://www.!!My site name removed!!.co.uk/category/125/Vitamins-and-Supplements.html".........
I have removed my site name and aff ID but I can assure you that they are showing correctly in the logs and working just fine
Neither of these clicks are reported in my account I have checked both day and week reports and start date from the 26-27th I have checked by merchant.
I have just updated my support ticket with the same details as my last post, could they please check my account click ref reports and confirm to me that these clicks are not there.
Hi guys,
Just to calm everyones nerves here, this is not a tracking issue. We are reporting all clicks in the database.
What is actually happening is that our servers are reporting in GMT standard time and your servers are logging as follows: [26/Aug/2009:00:27:26 +0100] so we record this as [25/Aug/2009:23:27:26].
This is why it gives the impression that between the exact hours of 00:00 and 01:00 there are no clicks, when in fact there is but they are recorded for the previous day as 23:00 to 23:59.
We are still looking deeper into this issue.
Cheers
I have just updated my support ticket with the same details as my last post, could they please check my account click ref reports and confirm to me that these clicks are not there.
Hi,
Can I request that we just go through one channel for this because at the moment we have two members of staff separately looking into and chasing the same thing :D
Also, just to note, reports will not update straight away, it may take about half an hour for a click to show up.
Ending action on this thread as we believe this to be a server time thing. To be looked into further if needs be in your ticket, Iarna :) and if any else is worried then please raise a ticket to have this looked into.
Cheers
Hi guys,
Just to calm everyones nerves here, this is not a tracking issue. We are reporting all clicks in the database.
What is actually happening is that our servers are reporting in GMT standard time and your servers are logging as follows: [26/Aug/2009:00:27:26 +0100] so we record this as [25/Aug/2009:23:27:26].
This is why it gives the impression that between the exact hours of 00:00 and 01:00 there are no clicks, when in fact there is but they are recorded for the previous day as 23:00 to 23:59.
Cheers
I have checked mutiple reports.
Neither of these clicks are reported in my account I have checked both day and week reports and start dates from the 26-27th I have checked by merchant.
Hey I'm not trying to open a can of worms here I am just trying to get an explanation! But I have had no response from my ticket on this.:confused:
Enough said anyway Thanks George
Hi Iarna,
I have had no response from my ticket on this.
I have responded twice on the ticket and Vishal has once today :confused:
Ticket number 34798 has had three AW responses today alone.
I can confirm that Vishal is going to look into this further with the development team as he takes over on this enquiry but please appreciate that he also has umpteen other tickets to handle too :D
Cheers
Following your clicks to Amoochi...
You definately did them after midnight, right?
Not that it matter mind, they have certainly not registered as clicks or impressions. Which I have to say, i've found more than a little worrying having read this thread...
Hi Amoochi
I hope you don't mind but could you please check to see if the clicks I have made have reported yet? in either todays or the previous days CSV.
I really hope you don't mind I Just need to know that this is'nt just me.
Toys r us - 4 clicks
Home and garden gifts - 4 clicks
Confetti - 4 clicks
Bizzy balloons - 7 clicks
I clicked these at 00:24 27/8/09
Thanks
Hi Amoochi
I hope you don't mind but could you please check to see if the clicks I have made have reported yet? in either todays or the previous days CSV.
I really hope you don't mind I Just need to know that this is'nt just me.
Toys r us - 4 clicks
Home and garden gifts - 4 clicks
Confetti - 4 clicks
Bizzy balloons - 7 clicks
I clicked these at 00:24 27/8/09
Thanks
The tests that I performed this morning have given me the exact amount of clickthru's I performed and would have expected to see with a fully functioning system.
However, all of the companies you have highlighted, together with the amount of clicks you have mentioned are completely wrong, either showing no clicks at all, or only 1 or 2 clicks and it doesn't matter if I just report today or do it for the last week.
I also cross checked with my tests from v2 and v3 and all the clicks I did worked fine on both v2 and v3 on two seperate sites.
There is definately something amiss though, as I have since done a few other clicks on merchants that had recieved 0 clickthru's at that point and the results vary, some have shown up, a lot however haven't shown.
I think SWs seriously needs to look very closely at this, I think sales are almost definately getting lost in the system here, due to something not working as it should, or something other that's been missed. But the simple fact that any clickthru's at all aren't showing up is enough to make affiliates that may be effected very VERY nervous, considering it's not just sales lost, but also inclusion in the actual system itself that are at stake.
I think SWs seriously needs to look very closely at this, I think sales are almost definately getting lost in the system here
Hello all,
I have looked at this personally and I can tell you that all of the clicks that Iarna performed earlier have been showing up in our database. Nothing is being lost. We have the utmost confident in our tracking solution.
When clicks are registered in the database they are then copied and pasted into another database to form your reports. It is here where one or two of the clicks seem to be dropped but only dropped from your reports, not from our database. This is also why it takes half an hour or so for a click made to show up in a clickref report because it is copied and pasted at intervals.
All of this means that the clicks (if they resulted in a sale) would still grant you a commission.
Our development teams, as I have made clear during the last couple of weeks, are horrendously busy on other projects right now. This makes it difficult for us to steal their time away. We are managing to grab windows here and there which is how we found out about the whole server time business earlier but then they were back onto other projects.
I, and a member of Technical Services, are chasing this, rest assured, and once we can secure more development time we will be able to look into this further.
We will then locate all of these phantom clicks and find out why they are not being ported over into your reports.
Regards
Nothing is being lost.
I think that is the main thing that needed to be known with this, as it is a peace of mind thing.
It only takes one person to think/know/suspect something not being tracked and then everyone else reading goes checks their own and even if nothing is out of order, you end up digging very deep looking for issues, as any lost clicks could be lost sales.
I have to say, i've used the system to make purchases myself dozens of times over the years and of all that time, i've only ever not got commission from 1 merchant for my purchase and that was down to human error, not system error. But that's not to say sales that I did not make personally may have been lost due to tracking issues or bad merchant coding or whatever, but I do feel generally confident when it comes to that side of things.
I have looked at this personally and I can tell you that all of the clicks that Iarna performed earlier have been showing up in our database. Nothing is being lost. We have the utmost confident in our tracking solution.
If this is the case then OK everything is fine.
It is here where one or two of the clicks seem to be dropped but only dropped from your reports
My reports are missing more than just one or two
Several would be more precise.
Amoochi many thanks for your reply.
I have looked at this personally and I can tell you that all of the clicks that Iarna performed earlier have been showing up in our database. Nothing is being lost. We have the utmost confident in our tracking solution.
I wasn’t trying to question the Trustworthiness of the tracking system or whether or not clicks or sales are not being tracked.
All I wanted to know was why I cannot see several clickthroughs in my reports.
Which you seem to have answered, here on this forum.
Thank you for that.
Several clicks were missing from them so I was obviously concerned as would any other affiliate who noticed this problem. I have submitted logs, times and everything else asked for by support who I know may be very busy but have given me these responses:
“The click ref report will not report on click throughs, only when a transaction has occurred”.
“This is to do with server times”.
When this
When clicks are registered in the database they are then copied and pasted into another database to form your reports. It is here where one or two of the clicks seem to be dropped but only dropped from your reports, not from our database.
Would have been fine albeit a little worrying "An inaccurate report is still an inaccurate report", but hey solved!!
Thank you George -x-
Would have been fine albeit a little worrying "An inaccurate report is still an inaccurate report", but hey solved!!
Thank you George -x-
If there are still clicks missing, it is something that needs resolving. Lost/missing/misplaced clicks no matter where they are occuring, points to an issue going on somewhere and therefore is something that needs looking at and fixing, regardless of whether it is in one database and being stored correctly at the point of entry or not. The fact that they aren't all showing up on our end is still a concern.
Hi guys,
“This is to do with server times”.
The server times were causing the initial irregularities as the two servers (ours and yours) were operating on different time zones (BST and GMT).
It was at this point (when we were checking the database) that we matched up those first three discrepancies from the ticket.
Hastily, we put this down solely to the server time issue but it does now appear deeper than that as one of those three from the ticket has gone AWOL.
I have added the rest of your logs to the development queue and have been assured that this has now found its way to a developer :D
The fact that they aren't all showing up on our end is still a concern.
I second that as this is going to lead to you guys having skewed reports. We are still looking into it so please bear with us.
I understand that this is frustrating but we will get to the bottom of the issue.
Cheers
Cheers George.
I can finally get an early night:D
Bluesplayer
12-01-10, 20:49
Is this still an ongoing issue as I have noticed that clicks are not being recorded from my store now either!
Hello Bluesplayer,
Welcome back, been a long time since we last saw you around :)
This clickref issue was an issue to do with a certain time of the day that clicks were happening. Do you know when the clickrefs were being made?
There was a delayed catch up on the clickref report earlier this year when we transferred it to a new reporting service, however, that cleared up and caught up with itself. It is possible that this is just a delay from that.
I do see clicks reported in the report in your account so any more information on the clicks would be useful.
Bluesplayer
13-01-10, 12:30
Hi George
I ran some click tests yesterday and will probably do some more today. I noticed that they appeared after about an hour or so - but I don't think all of them did. How are clicks recorded? Every click or a new click is recorded after a period of time? I also have made 2 purchases lately - one to Pixmania and another to Micro Direct but no sales commission? Pixmania I have bought from before so maybe the cookie doesn't apply anymore but it was quite some time ago. Micro Direct I don't think I have bought from before so I can't see why that transaction wasn't recorded. Are sales instantly viewable or is there delay before the shop - in this case - Micro Direct - records it? Not much commission is involved but I just want peace of mind with regard to my new shop I am hard at work on. I am expecting a fair bit of traffic on this new shop as the rest of my site is incredibly busy.
Regards
Bluesplayer
Hi Bluesplayer,
In regards to dropped commissions, that is not something that I can help with. For those, you will need to send a ticket request to the Affiliate Window Technical Services team (this can be done via the affiliate admin area). Provide them with as much detail as possible including order references and that will significantly reduce turn-around time, otherwise things go back and forth piecing all the information together.
As for the tracking everything is recorded roughly as follows:
The affiliate will redirect the user via a click to a merchant. The redirect will trigger a cookie (HTTP & Flash cookie) to be created and also an eTag request to store the information regarding the click and affiliate etc.
With that done the consumer will be redirected to the merchant page and a small tracking tag is fired to store the cookie with the merchant. On the sales page a sales tracking tag is triggered to store the order and this is sent to AW to match it up with the original cookie.
Some times sales or clicks, whilst they are recorded, might not show instantaneously especially if there are high loads on the servers but the reports do catch up within the hour.
For more information on tracking please see the wiki (http://wiki.affiliatewindow.com/index.php/FAQ_Affiliate_Guide#How_does_Affiliate_Window_trac k_sales.3F).
Bluesplayer
14-01-10, 11:39
Hi George
I altered a setting in my shop admin to add merchant id's to the url - just to see. I noticed then that google links to products were failing and users were being sent to the home page instead of the product so I switched it off. Might be that was upsetting the tracking process - doubt it though.
I will probably - and need too - run some product purchasing tests with this new shop to make sure everything is functioning ok. I think I did use the shop to make the last purchase from Microdirect. Is there anyway you can check on a product url from my shop to see whether there is anything wrong with it?
Still not sure whether all links are being recorded though and will run more tests on this too. It seems that every time I click on a link it should be recorded - right? Does this occur even if you visit a site, close it and then reclick to get back there straight away?
Regards
Hello Blues,
I can confirm that cookies are dropping correctly from the domain in your signature (database driven shop).
I would advise carrying out a test transaction or raising an Affiliate Window ticket to assist you if you do fear that tracking is not working.
In the meantime be sure to make Affiliate Window aware of the MicroDirect dropped transaction as this will help root out any issues if it turns out to be related.
As for recording clicks, the clickref report will of course only record clicks where the clickref was present and if that is on all outbound links from your install then they should be recorded. Let me just reiterate that this data is not live/real-time and will take a few moments to process through the system.
Regards
Bluesplayer
14-01-10, 13:03
Thanks George
I have sent a ticket to Affiliate Window. I made a mistake with regard to Pixmania - it was Novatech I bought a base unit from. Anyways I have raised issues with both orders to find out why no commission has been paid. It is for peace of mind really to know my tracking is ok as there isn't much money involved.
Regards