hunderdown - 5:48 pm on Nov 10, 2005 (gmt 0)

I think it's primarily a site redesign--I essentially added some subcategory pages to group articles that belonged together, and make them easier to find.

Also, I have an AdLinks block on my home page, which was a big earner from the time I put it up in June. But recently, say in September, it dropped off. From what I could tell, poorer targeting was affecting CTR. I used section targeting to nudge what was appearing and I think it's worked. Anyone with a page that isn't showing ads or adlinks that work as well as you would like, try this. You of course have to do it by hand (unless you globally insert tags to have AdSense ignore a navigation bar, for instance), but on a high-potential page it's worth the effort.

Re CTR: mine is between 5% and 20% and has been for over a year, ever since I moved the one adblock I use on most pages into a better position. I tend to think that you're right that AdSense looks at CTR--my theory is that if you have a very low CTR (under 2%, under 1%?) you get penalized in smart pricing. It's possible that they are also penalizing very high CTR. Certainly my CTR and EPC have been pretty stable over the past year. But the EPC stability is partly a product of averaging. My site has a very mixed bag of content and gets clicks that range VERY widely in value. They just tend to average out at about the same amount....