Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I'm amazed I got any clicks at all! Either a lot of overoptimistic generic advertisers just joined google or targetting is out.
Not by much in my industry, but enough to make a difference of 70-100% I should think.
My industry is quite competitive, so there is no shortage of advertisers, but I should imagine if there weren't, that is - if it was a subject with only three or four big players, they'd have been drowned out by all the generic advertisers.
And, I think there was nothing wrong with the Adsense Preview Tool. I think it went away just to hang its head in shame..
Once again, my situation was the same as yours. But my site was in Spanish.
I've just started blocking dozens of ads.
I just banned over 50. I wouldn't mind, I only have 60 pages!
And it explains the appalling CTR lately.
I'm amazed I got any clicks at all! Either a lot of overoptimistic generic advertisers just joined google or targetting is out.
Are you looking at the ads in the preview tool, or what you can see on your site?
In the past, the preview tool didn't show ads that I could see on the page, and did show ads for sites I had already blocked! Yes, the geo-targetting option was correctly clicked.
I prefer to check my site and see the actual ads, rather than block what the adsense preview tool indicates *might* show.
I'm hoping this up-to-now-fairly-useless tool now works properly and that they have fixed the above faults. I haven't had time to test it properly yet.
I use both. Eyeballs for UK stuff, and the preview for abroad. My customers are from all over the english speaking world - I can't rely on just what I can see from here!
The preview is accurate enough - though sometimes it shows advertisers I've never even seen. Sometimes it shows the already banished too, but only for a couple of days - unless they change their url a tiny bit. They are sneaky like that.
I have a peculiar technique too. Might be of interest to anyone planning a little pruning..
I have two text ads at the top of my pages and two at the bottom.
So I go into the preview tool and, assuming four dead-on accurate targeted ads aren't right at the top of the tool, I'll aim to get two out of the top four ads in the preview tool exactly right, and two reasonable alternatives (a product solving the same problem).
But I also have to take into account the fact I don't want to ban an advertiser who is high paying and a good fit for another page.
So if there are only two relevant ads showing in the preview tool, between the top one and the bottom one I might do a lot of pruning. Sometimes not quite so much. Its a judgement call.
Anyway, when in doubt I prune the advertisers from the bottom of the preview tool upwards, unless they are so low down I figure they'll never get to show - I don't want to waste a ban slot.
I know google will mess around with the positions the ads are displayed, and thats fine. I'm just playing the percentages.
Won't banning off-topic ads reduce your eCPM in the long run? You are reducing competition (and hence price).
Whereas, if you take the short-term hit and leave it to the Adsense bot to sort out, poor CTR ads will get removed within a short space of time, and/or have to make higher bids, thereby driving the price up?
