What is a healthy click through rate?

mine is very low - on average 2% to 3%

[uk_webber]

I am making an ok profit (for a newbie) from adsense but feel I could do a lot better. I am getting around 1000 page impressions a day and only getting 20-30 click throughs.

Is this par for the course or should I start thinking about the placement of the ads, colour changes etc?

[rj87uk]

I think you should always be experimenting with colour changes and placement. If you run a fourm then regulars may get used to the ads and forget so you should always be trying new things.

2% - 3% it depends on what type of wbesite you have. but that does seem a little low and i would be trying new things.

Good luck.

[eyezshine]

I've tried all formats but the best performing is the large rectangle format.

I place it directly above the content or surround the rectangle with content. and it gets the highest CTR

The colors don't make too much difference but as far as I can tell, the standard "Mother Earth" works the best for my sites.

I get at least double the CTR with the 336x280 Large rectangle than any other format. One site I have get's up to 15% CTR. But across all my sites I average about 6-7%

[Staale]

thats seems really heigh to me, but then again im running a forum. (Just 0,1-0,3 CTR..)

[Never_again]

uk_webber:

I'm sure you will be hearing what I'm about to relate, but don't be discouraged and keep working at improving "your" site with the objective of improving your AdSense CTR and income.

As for your question on CTR, there is no way anyone can tell you what is "par for the course." There are simply to many variables that determine what your CTR will be and all those variables will be different for me. In other words, a 1% CTR may be an exceptional rate for one site, but very poor for another.

If you can find someone who has a very similar site profile, you "may" be able to compare and get some meaningful information.

[uk_webber]

My site has heavy content and is price comparison. I guess like you guys say it is all about experimentation.

I have to admit that after 9 months of hard graft on two sites it is good to see some decent monetary results at last!

Should be a good new year...

[europeforvisitors]

Clickthrough rates on my site are all over the place, from sub-single digits to double digits, depending on the topic and the type of content. Photo galleries earn very little, for example, while articles on some destinations or travel topics have clickthrough rates and CPMs that amaze me. That's perfectly normal, and the only number that really matters is the one on the monthly Google check that's preceded by a dollar sign. :-)

AdWordsAdvisor (the Google rep on the AdWords forum) once mentioned a networkwide CTR; I've forgotten the number, but I don't think it was any higher than your 2 to 3 percent, and it may have been lower.

[cagey1]

To put things into a little prespective, if you were an Adwords advertiser (instead of an Adsense publisher), you would be quite happy with 2% to 3% CTR.

[eyezshine]

I think it just depends on how good google is at serving the right ad's on the right pages.

I think their ad serving algo is similar to their search engine algo.

Basically if your page ranks well on google search for your keyword then google will serve the right kind of ad's for that page which will result in higher CTR's.

If google's search robot can't tell what your page is about then the adsense robot won't either and they will in turn serve the wrong ad's for the page and you will get low CTR's.

I have a site that wasn't optimized well and the adsense ad's were off the wall wrong for the pages and that site got a very low CTR.

I wish google would let us tell them what the page was about by inserting a keyword in their html code which would make it alot easier for them to serve the right ad's for the pages.

[europeforvisitors]

I think it just depends on how good google is at serving the right ad's on the right pages.

That's certainly part of it, but the nature of the content and the audience play a role, too. On my site, for example, photo galleries don't perform as well as travel articles about destinations, cruises, hotels, etc. do. Why? Probably because photo galleries attract a lot of armchair travelers and schoolchildren in addition to travelers, while practical how-to travel articles and reviews are likely to be read mostly by people who are actively planning trips.

By the way, I agree that keyword "hints" (positive, negative, or both) would be useful on pages that consistently display poorly matched ads. This has been discussed on the forum in the past, and I recall that someone mentioned being part of a Google beta test that involved hints and keywords. Also, some premium partners already have the ability to supply hints.

[rookiecrd1]

I get about 200,000 impressions per day and only 220 or so clicks. If I was geeting 2% (4000 clicks) I'd be a millionaire :)