Improbable way to increase CTR

[robsynnott]

One of my sites is a thing that lets users input the lyrics of a song; it then tells them the name and artist of that song. Yesterday, due to a computer failure with an affiliate who's products I include on a dynamic basis, the search started taking about 10minutes per query. Highest CTR I've ever seen :P. The secret to success seems to be making your site slow and useless, so that your users flee as soon as they're able :D.

[petra]

Thats also the secret to getting booted out of the program ;)

[oddsod]

Thats also the secret to getting booted out of the program

I missed that bit in the TOS :)

[petra]

Site Responsiveness
Sites must respond adequately to support requests and enquiries of their users.

[oddsod]

Ah, one of those subjective things?

I don't recommend that design is poor but I certainly would advocate that if you have an image heavy design you should really make it bottom heavy through use of stacked tables or your other preferred design choice. And, if you have to show some text above the fold to keep the user busy till the rest loads... then why not have your ads in there?

[petra]

Isn't that bordering on "made for adsense"? If you open the flood gates...

[entropicus]

I think Petra has a point, but on one hand, one has to wonder how serious G would take these (lesser, perhaps borderline) violations, when they seem to let more serious ones go, ie., all those scraper sites.

[diamondgrl]

Yes, this helps prove what some of us have been saying, which is that sometimes users click on ads because they are frustrated by the utter worthlessness of the site they are on and are desperate to get off.

Of course, this kind of comment usually generates outrage from the people who create sites that have utterly no meaning or purpose and think that having ads as their only true content on their search-engine-spam pages is somehow helping the world.