Forum Moderators: martinibuster
A decent tourist site should give you (at least) triple figures daily.
As far as I can see, apart from the small matter to getting punters to visit your own site to start with, the skill then lies in :-1. Upping the CTR (I have been able to get a steady improvement by better ad placing on the page), toyng with banner v skyscraper relative to page layout, ...
2. Getting a higher value of ad clicked on. Again better targeting by Google (and I would like to think myself) have given a marked improvement.
If you have just started, then aim at doubling your present CTR and doubling your average CPC. Both targets are perfectly achievable and turn what would have been $25 into $100
I thought it was an excellent post and wanted to spin it off to ask people to share their tricks for upping the CTR.
I've been able to up CTR from 0.7% to 1.1% by changing ad placement from totally hidden to totally obvious, but to get a huge jump? No idea. Other than some text saying,
Hey Dear Visitor, Look at this cool new feature we've implemented, it's called AdSense from Google.But on how many pages can you put that?
No doubt you could get a high CTR but how many visitors for this set of keywords? Not exactly viagra is it?
No-one would make a fortune out of such a miniscule niche.
Afraid you prove my point, apart from yourself there are not going to be a queue of punters looking for "poweroid + Bernoulli numbers"
You are never going to average 50% click through when that stat disappears into the total stats for a large site. No large site can sustain that sort of CTR legitimately, period.
I am impressed that you know about Bernoulli numbers though, and Google returns 6 results for the search ;)
Who exactly do you think would pay good money for clicks on those keywords (except you know who!)
Advertisers are only paying for commercially viable keywords!
This combination of keywords has probably been used more in the last few minutes than the previous x months (years?)
If there had been Adsense ads on those pages it would probably have triggered a Google fraud alert!
If there had been Adsense ads on those pages it would probably have triggered a Google fraud alert!
You have a site selling new Porsche Boxster Cars (fictitious example).
AdSense wasn't designed for e-commerce sites; its focus is on content sites, which is why Google uses the terms "content ads" and "publishers" when promoting its content-partner and AdSense programs. The TOS don't specifically exclude commercial sites, but Google may well feel that--when a commercial site shows a statistically questionable clickthrough rate--the "where there's smoke, there's fire" rule should apply. (After all, nearly all of Google's problems with spam and other "aggressive SEO' techniques are caused by commercial sites, so Google may be predisposed to assume the worst for that reason.)
>> there are not going to be a queue of punters looking for "poweroid + Bernoulli numbers"
Cornwall, I'm afraid you are confusing CTR with impressions. There may not be a lot of people looking for that keyword but the ones that do are very highly likely to click on the Adsense ads they see on the result pages.
That combination of keywords may get your page only 10 impressions over the whole year BUT it's entirely possible that 3-5 of those visitors click on the Adsense ads as the easy way to get out of reading a lot of heavy text not broken up with any images or tables :-)
CTR of 50% - Bingo!
>> and the CTR will be subsumed into the average CTR for the site
No, it won't, not if you don't have Adsense on other pages in your site. It's quite possible to have them on just the "boring" pages :-)
ap_rhys & Loanuniverse, it's funny, it's true, but it's also sad. If they were running Adsense they would have got kicked out purely as a result of my post here.
I know also that advertisers, affiliates and some ad networks sometime dont allow forum sites. And i remember at one stage hearing that advertisers hated "sticky sites" or sites with large page views. The best for advertisers seem to be those where people come in once, and click on their link, rather than lingring around. Whether this was based on CPM rather than CPC models im not sure, but if the former, its understandable. Maybe it also applies to others?
I agree with Europe that Adsense is partyicularly tailored to content sites, with fairly static rather than interactive content. I was a bit surprised at the broad range of sites that were approved by Adsense, but i guess they were going for a big splash and exposure as fast as possible.
Of course that's no excuse for removing sites without explanation, though the TOS is very clear that it is part of the terms and conditions. Im sure there are many that may feel ill-disposed to google as a result, amd many of these may be opinion leaders among webmasters like say Mosley.
Are they using "fraudulent clicks" maybe to describe a multitude of dysfunctionalities in sites that due to their function (such as forums, commercial sites, community sites) just dont seem to be providing good return to advertisers for their money?
(I'm not criticising any of these types of sites, but wonder whether Adsense was really "designed" for them)
Are they using "fraudulent clicks" maybe to describe a multitude of dysfunctionalities in sites that due to their function (such as forums, commercial sites, community sites) just dont seem to be providing good return to advertisers for their money?
If they are doing that it is highly unethical. You can't call someone a thief just because you don't want to do business with them. And it can't be your corporate policy to use that as an excuse to not pay them.
I don't suspect Google will do either. What I do believe though is that they do have to get their act together in detecting the fraudulent activity and recognising the false alarms.
[design-agency.com...]
Experiment. Modify. Check. It's a good way to get more targeted ads for your pages and better CTR.
As for the topic of discussion, I put the Adsense code only on pages with targeted ads, and use other advertising methods on the other pages. It has proven to work pretty well so far, and it feels secure to keep other advertising networks running, Adsense is still just a baby. :)
My first post here, greet me. :P
yes, all those running similar scripts, (and there must be dozens now), are not being paid and advertisers refunded. I'm not sure its against the TOS (though if it's modified code as Martin says then yes it'd definitely against the TOS) but its definitely against the spirit..
Surely if Google is refunding webmasters then we would have seen a comment or two in that forum as I am sure Google would or should tell its Adwords partners that they are doing a good job and because of their excellent algo etc have discovered fraudulent clicks and so are refunding their account by X. Good PR I would imagine.
Of course many Adwords people do not check their account each day although perhaps they should but I imagine many here watch their accounts on a regular basis.
I find it interesting that many are talking about fraudulent clicks etc and that Google is going to refund but I see little in the Adwords forum that indicates that a as many Adwords users fear of fraudulent clicks or that they have been refunded.
Keep in mind that all advertisers are smart and they are watching the threads in this board.
Also, most participants in the Adwords forum are "small players". As I knew, some of them already disabled "Adsense" choice because they have not established confidence in this program due to the "fraudulent clicks".
So my CTR would improve a lot by removing ads from my main 800 pages or redesigning them so that they get real, relevant ads.
