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Because programs aren't always up front about WHAT they are counting, it is often very hard to compare one to another. For every 10k hits I send to sponsors, I often see something closer to 7500-8000 reported.
Some of the losses I am sure are from the various leachers and theives, but much of the difference comes in the raw, unique, first page, second page, join page roulette that every program seems to play.
Even NATS, which is suppose to be a "standard" appears to be able to be manipulated to present somewhat different numbers on different programs. I am not sure why this is, I can't put my finger on it, but things don't always add up.
In the end, I think some programs feel they would lose webmasters if their true conversions were shown, and others are high end victims of toolbars and other click fraud systems. I also think that some programs end up with too many leaks in their tours on page one, and then count page two traffic.
It's pretty frustrating to deal with.
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