Unexpected high-paying clicks

About to take adsense off a certain page/channel and then...

[YesMom]

I was about to remove AdSense from a certain under-performing webpage that usually makes between 3 cents and $1.00 a day. I just checked the channel and I had a day where I had 3 total clicks and got over $7.00 average per click! Now I wish it had been just one click that day so I could see if it was a $20 click or 3 equal $7 ones.

I'd love to figure out what keyword or phrase triggered this ad... or what ad it was! I don't understand how this can happen when the bids for those keywords usually remain predictably low (or so I thought from the small payout and the consistent targetting).

Anyway, I will be leaving that page alone, to say the least.

Does this happen to anyone else?

[weblinkguy]

Check your server logs to see what keyword(s) were used to get to your site. If you use a program like Mach 5 Analyzer you'll be able to filter your search to a specific date, time, and page.

[YesMom]

Thanks, weblinkguy.

Actually, this particular page is not normally found with a search result, but a click from my larger site. Visitors are a targetted niche who might be interested in a week-long event I run in the summer. This event has a special project that involves building some history-related contraptions.

AdSense usually delivers ads for apparel and/or instructions for this historical topic. I'm thinking now the higher click(s) *may* have been from an ad for someone else's event that is unrelated to the other "history" keywords but targetting the same crowd for a different type of event. I see that ad is displaying, so there is a whole 'nuther keyword set!

If I find this to be the case, I can optimize for displaying other people's event ads, rather than the lower-paying history item ads. Assuming this is the case. I'm just afraid to touch anything now for fear of losing the right combination that triggered the higher paying clicks!

I'm a compulsive tweaker, so I have to be careful. ;-)

[hunderdown]

AdSense should serve up those high-paying ads, so long as people keep clicking on them. That's the way the system is supposed to work. So don't change the page. You'll get the best-performing ads--and clearly, based on past history, that new ad is the best-performing ad by far.

Of course, if the clicks don't convert, smart pricing could kick in and subsequent clicks may be discounted....

[YesMom]

Thanks for the advice hunterdown. I'm not going to touch it for now!

On another note, I just purchased a friend's website for $500. She needed some quick cash. I put up just one ad block to test it out... and just on the main page of this site of roughly 30 pages.

Well, the one page is doing better than all my smaller sites put together, but under $10 a day. I just had fun putting up a single block on all the other pages and not touching anything... just seeing what would display. I am quite surprised! Just this simple exercise revealed to me a keyword phrase I had NEVER considered. I am excited to see how the site performs over the next few weeks. It is a PR5 site that has been around for a few years and gets a small flow of steady traffic.

It will be my first experiment in not tweaking a site to death. ;-)