RonS - 5:05 am on May 19, 2005 (gmt 0)

Let's recap:
I had a some negative content on my site when they announced the new AdWords negative campaign filter.

I put that content on another domain I own, and updated all references to it on the original site. This way the content is available to my visitors, but should an AdWords advertiser not like it, they won't ban the rest of my site.

For the first couple of days, earnings were consistent with prior experience. Then the search engines figured it out, and the only visitors to the negative content are people who find it through backlinks and links from the original site; about 50% of normal visits.

Amazingly, revenue from this content has dropped to 0. Not figuratively, but literally 0. NO clicks.

Amazingly, it appears that the only revenue generated by this content was by people searching for the content (the typical query was just the widget name, and my content was always top 5), FINDING THE NEGATIVE CONTENT, and clicking through to the advertisers' websites anyway! I am LM[bodypart]O.

And crying at the same time. This content accounted for nearly 10% of my revenue.

Now here's the kicker: Since the search engines dropped that content, the last three days has seen my CTR and eCPM climb.

<headshake>