Ever a reason to try to drop CTR?

Big increase in CTR, should it be reduced?

[wackybrit]

I have AdSense on my blog (about nothing in particular, just whatever I'm doing, but not spam/automated). I only have ads on the individual archive pages which Google picks up, but these pages receive the most visits, all from search engine traffic.

I used to have a skyscraper down the far right side of the page, and I'd make X per day (I'd love to share but Google won't let me). I read some advice here and decided to try a horizontal AdSense bar just above the content of each blog entry but BELOW the title. Bam, earnings and CTR quadrupled, and have stayed that way!

I have now made some other minor changes that have sent it up a little more (2 wide banners and a link bar, all spread out).. perhaps to 5x-6x.. Should I be worried? Will Google freak out at the sudden changes? My CTR is now not wildly higher than some I have seen leaked out here, but is near the top end. My page meets all the conditions, but I want to avoid a touchy Google, if possible.

At what CTR should you start freaking out and perhaps deliberately make your ads less effective?

[John Carpenter]

At what CTR should you start freaking out and perhaps deliberately make your ads less effective?

I would consider two factors:

1) eCPM (this is the real indicator of your success, not CTR).

2) CTR over, say, 50% would make me think that there is nothing interesting on my site except the ads. Some may argue that ads may be good exit points, but I wouldn't really like such a high CTR. If regular visitors clicked the ads as often, it might even cause click fraud altert. Anyway, eCPM is what really matters to me.