Find How Many Visitors Are Not Seeing Ads on your Website

Adblocking software like AdBlock Plus have become mainstream and now pose a significant threat to web businesses that are dependent on online advertisements. The problem is so severe that Google and Amazon are paying the writers of AdBlock Plus to whitelist their ads. This may be seen as some kind of extortion but with billions of dollars at stake, the advertising companies have chosen to take the more profitable route.

It is estimated that ~5% of website visitors are blocking ads (PDF report) and the situation could be far worse for websites that have a more tech-savvy audience. If you are curious to know how many people visiting your own site are blocking AdSense and other ads, here’s a little trick.

Track Adblock Users with Google Analytics

Open your website template and copy-paste the snippet below before the closing body. This code will detect the presence of adblocking software on the visitor’s browser and, if found, an event gets logged into your Google Analytics account.

<script> 
  
  window.onload = function() { 
  
    // Delay to allow the async Google Ads to load
    setTimeout(function() { 
      
      // Get the first AdSense ad unit on the page
      var ad = document.querySelector("ins.adsbygoogle");
      
      // If the ads are not loaded, track the event
      if (ad && ad.innerHTML.replace(/\s/g, "").length == 0) {

        if (typeof ga !== 'undefined') {

            // Log an event in Universal Analytics
            ga('send', 'event', 'Adblock', 'Yes'); 

        } else if (typeof _gaq !== 'undefined') {

            // Log an event in old Google Analytics
            _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Adblock', 'Yes']);

        }
      }
    }, 2000); // Run ad block detection 2 minutes after page load
  }; 
  
</script>

The snippet works for both Universal Analytics and the older version of Google Analytics tracker that used the _gaq object. As a web publisher, your only option is to serve alternate content to AdBlock users so the visitors at least see some content in place of the ads.

One big caveat though – it will fail if the ad blocking extension installed on the visitor’s computer has blocked Google Analytics as well. Some of the popular choices like μBlock, NoScript and Ghostery do block Google Analytics so the approach won’t work and you may have to build your own in-house solution – like downloading an image hosted on your own server and then counting the hits to that image through the Apache server logs.

Also see: Use Google Analytics without JavaScript

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The story, Find How Many Visitors Are Not Seeing Ads on your Website , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 17/02/2015 under Google AdSense, Google Analytics, Internet.

Edit the Text and Images of your PDF file in the Browser

If you need to make changes in an existing PDF file, you need to get hold of the original document that was used to create the PDF, make the edits in the source document and export it as a PDF again. This is the best option since the document’s layout and formatting will be preserved in the new PDF file and you don’t even need an external PDF editor like Adobe Acrobat.

However, if you do not have access to the source document, you can still edit your PDF files in the browser using the free Word app. It may not be able to handle PDF files with complex layouts, or PDFs that are mostly comprised of charts and images but for text based PDF, Word is a probably a good options for fixing typos or manipulating text and images in PDFs. See example.

Edit PDF Files with Word Online

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can edit the content of PDF files inside the Word web app.

1. Go to onedrive.com and sign-in with your Microsoft account. While you are logged in, drag a PDF file from the desktop onto the OneDrive website to upload it.


2. After the PDF file is uploaded, double-click to open the PDF file in the Word online app. Remember you are looking at the PDF file and it is not editable yet.


3. Click the Edit in Word button to open the PDF file for editing. Say yes when OneDrive asks for your permissions to convert the PDF into Word format (it makes a copy so your original PDF is unaltered).


4. Once the file is converted to PDF, click the Edit button to open the converted document in the Word app for editing.

Since you now editing the PDF as a standard Word document, you can edit it to your heart’s content. You can add images, change the logo, modify the text or apply different formatting, add tables and more. Once you are done, go to the File menu and choose Save As to download it as a PDF file again.

Also, Word Online is free (like Google Docs) and you do not need a Microsoft Office 365 license nor you need to install any of the Office software on your desktop to make quick edits to PDF files. The only limitation is that the layout of paragraphs, tables, or images in the PDF may be lost after conversion and thus may require effort to recreate the original layout.

A similar option – see OCR with Google Docs – is available in Google Docs as well but it may not be enabled by default. Also, in my limited testing, Word did a better job of converting PDF for editing.

If you are using Google Docs, go to Settings and turn on the option that says “Convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format.” Now upload the PDF to your Google Drive, right-click the uploaded file and choose “Open With – Google Docs” in the contextual menu.

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The story, Edit the Text and Images of your PDF file in the Browser , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 17/02/2015 under Microsoft Word, PDF, Internet.