Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Does SmartPricing effects certain pages only? or whole website? or a whole AdSense account?
I had a few tricky things going on a domain which earned me alot initially, but then Smart Pricing stopped my monkey business ;-)
Now the same domain has become a very very informative website and a very genuine one with many informative articles and everything SEOed and bla bla. And I am going to launch it on a good scale now. It will concentrate over AdSense and affiliates only - NO OTHER PURPOSE.
Should I change the domain and then launch it? Or is it okay to launch cause I have stopped malicious activities.
So if you have Adsense on several websites through one account and one of them gets smart priced, all your other websites will face the same penalty if they are under the same Adsense account.
The question is - is there a process to remove a smart pricing penalty once it has been assigned?
Relaunch. It may take a while for AdSense to recognize the changes, so leave it alone for a while once it's online.
but then Smart Pricing stopped my monkey business ;-)
Glad to know that smart pricing recognizes -- and discounts -- monkey business activities. Repent and sin no more! :o)
My term of "penalty" was from the publisher's view point - if my account gets smart priced, then I get a lower payout on the clicks that come from the ads on my site.
Even if you do get refreshed, it seems consistent with how Google does other things, that Google keeps a history of an account and would keep a history of it being smart priced and that would carry weight in future evaluation of your site.
That's my guess (which could be wrong).
Not disputing that you were told this, but this could be extraordinarily inefficient in many cases.
As soon as advertisers start swapping stats on conversions from different sites they might get a universal block list for those sites that don't convert.
Even if there were a "universal block list" (which would be an enormous undertaking, and difficult to keep up to date), it wouldn't be very useful unless Google boosted the limit on blocked domains. Also, sites convert at different rates for different advertisers, so a "universal block list" might not offer any benefits over smart pricing.
It will be interesting to see whether Google gives more controls to CPC advertisers or whether site-targeted CPM ads will become the medium of choice for advertisers who want a say in where their ads appear.
A GoogleTeam member confirmed to me that smartpricing impacts the entire account.
That seems odd, given the number of people who say that different websites targeting the same keywords get different returns. If the entire account gets smartpriced, "blue widgets" should return the same average CPC across the account. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that things aren't lining up.
Tushar, launch the site and don't worry. My own site's revenues have a three- or four-week cycle, which I suspect is due to rapid fluctuations in my visitors' conversion rate. (I get few enough clicks that it doesn't take much to create a statistical spike.) If Adsense can re-smartprice my site twice over the course of a month, your site should get reevaluated quickly and do just fine.
A GoogleTeam member confirmed to me that smartpricing impacts the entire account.
CommonSense, I just wanted to clarify that you meant this as you wrote it.
If so, it is a pretty substantial piece of information. That question has been posted here several times and always faded as no one could say for sure.
A GoogleTeam member confirmed to me that smartpricing impacts the entire account.
Fortunately I've seen zero evidence of this. I have 20 some odd websites in my network and nearly 2 years with adsense on all of them. Some of these sites have obviously been smartpriced. Google was correct in doing so in my opinion and I weathered the loss in silence. Other sites of mine have suffered the ebb and flow of inconsistent earnings but have always eventually returned to previous levels. To subject an entire account to a set valuation based on the performance, or non-performance, of one or even a few of the websites involved would be quite wrong.
I believe google can tell the difference, but then I don't have the ear of any team members either so I suppose that in spite of the evidence I could be totally wrong.
To subject an entire account to a set valuation based on the performance, or non-performance, of one or even a few of the websites involved would be quite wrong.
Not necessarily. It all comes down to statistical probability, which is what smart pricing is all about. For example, if an accountholder has 19 sites that convert poorly, there's a good likelyhood that a 20th site will also convert poorly, and it isn't unreasonable for Google to grant an advertiser discount for that site until new (and more favorable) conversion data is available.
Also, smart pricing is only one piece of the earnings puzzle. Payout percentage could be another factor. Let's say that John Doe has 10 scraper sites and one useful site that's a labor of love. It would make perfect sense for Google to reduce the payout percentage for Mr. Doe's whole account (not just the 10 scraper sites) as a way of rewarding behavior that it likes and discouraging behavior that it dislikes.
It's unlikely that either smart pricing or the compensation formula are as simple as many forum members seem to believe. Why shouldn't smart pricing and the compensation formula be complex like Google's search algorithm? That way, Google can make life more difficult for competitors while protecting the interests of advertisers and promoting the types of content that it considers beneficial to Google Search, to users, and to the Web as a whole.
It's supposedly partly based on the reason for matching ads to the page, so it could even vary ad by ad.
...until new (and more favorable) conversion data is available
you're convinced that it isn't? Available to whom?
Or maybe I did see it and didn't know what I was looking at - with me that's always possible.
I don't care to engage in idle speculation
Google doesn't reveal the inner workings of smart pricing, so if you have no interest in hypotheses and possibilities, you've come to the wrong place. :-)
...if you have no interest in hypotheses and possibilities, you've come to the wrong place. :-)
Oh, there's much more to be learned here than hypotheses and possibilities so I suppose I'm in the right place after all. I simply prefer facts.
To each his own, eh?
-That Google uses complex algos to calculate it
-For the most part, this algo is automated, but that there can be some human editor evaluation (especially in top ranking sites in competitive categories)
-Conversion data from ads on my site are compared against the performance of those ads on the search network
-There is a "performance discount multiplier" that is applied to an entire adsense account based upon the conversion of ads on your site vs the search network
- You can refresh your smartpricing discount multiplier, but Google keeps a history of your performance of your account.
For me, this has led me to:
- Ensure I have good, original content on my sites
- Make sure that all my sites that have adsense on them are good quality sites
- Stay away from black hat spammy techniques
- Focus on what can I provide that will really be of benefit
Like you said, my opinion is not fact-based, but just hypothetical. I could have it all wrong.
As far as who to believe, I have found that europeforvisitors postings have been very insightful and valuable to listen to.
I wonder is adsense advisor would care to enlighten us on that? (a shot in the dark, whistling in the park, hoping for a ray of light or just a silly lark)
Thank you.
[adwords.google.com...]
wyweb, I don't have any knowledge of how smartpricing works.
I know. You threw me when you said google team member though. That's what got me to jump in here in the first place.
Oh well...
It costs 10% of the purchase price, it's a really great guarantee, but I can't tell you what it covers"
They've been doing it for ages in insurance business - you buy "cover" thinking you are covered, but they have such a huge list of exceptions that they keep in small print that insurance these days is not really an insurance: its the opportunity to put claim forward, subject to insurer's acception.
How 'smart' was that pricing?
How 'smart' was that pricing?
I feel that that is very smart pricing. Most all content should be worth 4.50 a click imjo (in my jealous opinion)
Can you imagine buying a 30K car from a dealership ...
A better analogy would be airline fares, which can change from minute to minute--sometimes drastically--under the control of yield-management software.
