I have two sites, should I remove ads from the worse one?

Two sites, different topics, different CTR, what to do?

[mertero]

Hi guys.

I have two sites. One of them is my 'main' site, making most of the adsense money (about 90%), and this is the site I update and invest time into.

I have another site, on a different topic, at all. I hardly update it (It's an old-site, started as a hobby). The EPC is quite good, almost as good as my main site, and it has almost the same amount of visitors. But the clickrate is awful, and I hardly make any money out of it (Like I said, about 10% of all my monthly income).

My question is: Should I drop adsense in that other page? Do I get a "penalty" in google because of this lower CTR site?

Ron.

[Cakkie]

Interesting question, but I don't think anyone can tell for sure. Most people tend to believe that the SmartPricing feature of Google takes the CTR of a site in considderation when determining the CPC. Lower CTR would result in lower CPC.

The problem is that noone really knows, since G doesn't give much info about how smartpricing works. The only lead you have is the experience of others, who tend to support the idea that CTR is indeed involved with smartpricing.

Anyway, judging by what you are saying, you wouldn't loose much anyway by just trying, since the high-impression site doesn't give you much clicks. I'd say you just give it a try, compare a few weeks of data, and draw your conclusion.

[humblebeginnings]

Before you remove the Adsense code, why not first experiment with the ad placement and color. Perhaps you could get a better CTR with that...

[mertero]

Thanks guys.

Does anyone have any clue how often does the smart pricing gets updated? If I remove the adsense code, how much do I have to wait?

And I don't understand why smart-pricing will help me here. Because smart-pricing says that they adjust the click payment because less people buy after a click. But if my problem is low CTR, then I don't see why it should effect smart-pricing (which only counts people who already clicked but didn't "convert to sale" right?).

I'm trying different ad placement... but I don't seem to succeed so far ;-)

Ron.

[Cakkie]

A low CTR 'might indicate' that your site isn't relevant to the ads that are being shown. If the ads aren't relevant, a visitor from your site is less likely to actually buy something from the site the ads sent him to. (not sure though)

[mertero]

Cakkie,

Interesting. Didn't think of that...

It's always more complicated than you imagine ;-)

Ron.