Sooper CTR

Google now afraid to show that channel

[Nick Jachelson]

I finally decided to install a link unit on my front page, which had no ads before. Well, lo and behold, for the first time ever, in that unit Google actually put links that are relavant to my site's content and would be of interest to my visitors.

In fact, I got a ridiculous CTR of as much as 20% - 25% on that channel. The only problem is that Google doesn't display it most of the time, just showing the link-unit-style PSAs. What's going on? Is it just afraid of the high CTR?

[jimbeetle]

Nah, Google wants clicks, that's how it makes its bucks. Probably just a shortage of appropriate ad inventory.

[Frequent]

I have a few very targeted pages on one site that only show one link in my link unit. Since I don't believe there is such a thing as an expanded link unit I can only assume that there simply isn't much inventory available.

Freq---

[OptiRex]

I'm averaging over 50% with Adlinks now, an easy way to check ad inventory for your keywords is simply to type them in and check through the Google SERPs and see how many ads are shown on the righthand side.

If it only shows a couple or maximum down to the bottom of the page then there is very little inventory however if they spread over two or three pages of results then there should be plenty.

I assume you had the "search style" box?

If so, that's usually on less used pages when Adsense can't serve the appropriate links fast enough or, again, when there is insufficient inventory.