Forum Moderators: martinibuster
When combined with a large amount of PSA's and declining CTR this does not look good.
> When combined with a large amount of PSA's
If you are showing PSAs, you use Google optional alternate ad, where you can specify an HTML page that shows other content when Adsense can't find adverts for the page.
For instance, on some sites I have Amazon products, on another I have CJ affiliate stuff and on a third I simply promote a "bargain" page of my site (which gets a lot of conversions).
Actual results were kind of surprising (comparing the two halves of the month). Total clicks went up, and CTR almost doubled, which is more than it should have increased just by my taking out that low CTR page. EPC went UP 15%. Coupled with the better CTR, which resulted in almost 50% more clicks total, my overall earnings increased nicely, by over 50%.
Somehow, taking the AdSense ads off the home page seems to have affected visitor behavior as well as the AdSense algorithms, making them more likely to click on the ads than they used to be. Of course, this could just be a temporary effect.
The net result is that my AdSense earnings, which had been drifting downward since a peak in March, started to go up again. At the beginning of this month, I moved my ads (4 ad vertical) from the right to the left side of the page, and so far, CTR has gone up a further 20%. If that holds up, July will be my best month so far...
I guess my point is, if you're not happy with the results you've been getting, don't be afraid to experiment. Make changes, track them with channels, keep them if they work, and drop them if they don't.
That makes it somewhat difficult for some of us to see how changes affect earnings, since you never know whether it's something YOU did, or just how strongly the air conditioning blew through the Google building that day...
Incidentally, I also saw a notable increase in EPC and CTR during the last half of the month, but not due to any placement or style changes...
You said: "Incidentally, I also saw a notable increase in EPC and CTR during the last half of the month, but not due to any placement or style changes..."
Sigh. So if my site was affected similarly, the increases I experienced might have had nothing to do with the work I did, or might have been only partly to do with them.
What as it Churchill said? "An enigma wrapped in a mystery..." There was more, but that's a good description of the workings of AdSense!