Forum Moderators: martinibuster
As others have noted in the past it seems that Yahoo visitors don't click on AdSense Ads very much. I notice this phenomenon myself, but never thought how it could affect my AdSense earnings.
However, just last night I saw someone from Yahoo Corporate visiting one of my sites, and sure enough, they dramatically cut back on traffic to that site - I think they put some sort of filter on it. At any rate, I am now receiving only 1/10 of the traffic that I formerly got from Yahoo... and the surprising thing is my Google AdSense earnings has sky-rocketed.
Apparently the low click through rate from Yahoo visitors to that one site, had a negative impact on my AdSense earnings for ALL of my sites (three additional). So when Yahoo cut back on traffic it was supplying... my click through TOTAL Click Through Rate across all sites has increased by about 50%, and my TOTAL eCPM has increased by about thirty percent.
My question is, should I/we block ALL traffic from Yahoo... as "dead-beat" visitors from Yahoo tend to lower Google AdSense Earnings.
THANK YOU Yahoo! for providing me with this opprotunity to see analyze just how badly your traffic performed, and its coresp[onding negative impact it had on my AdSense earning. I should have realized it long ago myself.
Start another thread to propagate your wisdom! And do be sure to provide your advise on manners!
Before people start excluding Yahoo via their robots.txt, the above observation is explained by a well-known branch of psychology called 'attribution theory', which leads to over-interpretation of data/events. In fact, the original comments about Google and Yahoo's intentions are exemplar of a frequently occurring phenomenon called "Fundamental Attribution Error".
Also, the laws of statistics predict that in this forum there will be members whose Yahoo traffic correlates negatively with Adsense earnings: it is *bound* to happen for some. There will also be some who experience the opposite (and one or two have posted to that effect).
So, the meaning you draw from your data is a *perception*, but it is not a fact, and despite your experience the general rule could be the complete opposite.
This isn't to say that strange things don't happen, but the principle of Occam's Razor suggests that the relationship you see between Yahoo traffic and Adsense earnings is a statistical quirk, and nothing more.
Whatever they are or do doesn't matter as I still rank well and they send me traffic so I'll let you prosecute them for Yahoo-gate and I'll just sit here making my usual evil little laugh as I count my money.
The "last night" bit suggests you don't have a lot of stats gathered on this. Drawing any conclusions about Adsense earnings in such a short time frame is not wise. There are a lot of fluctuations and caveats ... in fact, in the last few hours Google could have dumped previously witheld clicks and earnings making a complete joke of the Yahoo theory of yours. Do yourself a favour: take a step back and reconsider your opinion.
Disclaimer: I have nothing to gain (or lose) whether you block Yahoo or not.
21_blue, nice post (msg 32). Very thoughful, very accurate.
490 Google Search
177 Self Referring / Bookmarker
111 Yahoo Search
31 MSN Search
14 blockedReferrer
13 AOL Search
I'm not too worried about anything past Google, to be honest.
Whew- I'm so relieved that I don't need to ponder this one any further! ; )
>My advise is to study which treats you best, and design accordingly. Hopefully you won't have to "sell your soul" to make money.
I shall keep an eye on the situation. If the evidence warrants it I'll do a site version for each engine and ban the others.
21_blue,
>So, the meaning you draw from your data is a *perception*, but it is not a fact, and despite your experience the general rule could be the complete opposite.
Quite.
If people are planning on beating up on someone smarter than they are (and I don't mean me) they should *read* whats posted most carefully. In fact they should parse it.
Look at what I wrote.
Notice especially the word 'correlates'.
I chose that word deliberately. I am generally very precise with my language. I didn't say 'caused'. If I'd wanted to say 'caused' I'd have said it. 'Correlates' means things like 'was associated with'. No causal relationship is implied.
Blue, the meaning you drew from my message was a *perception*, but what you percieved was not actually there when I wrote it, and despite your replying to it, the actual words I used meant something else almost entirely.
The above mistake is explained by a well-known branch of psychology called 'seeing what you want to see'.
:)
>but the principle of Occam's Razor
Oh don't start me on the logical holes in that old chestnut..
What if Yahoo is (along with downgrading your site) clicking your AS ads, and this is what accounts for your higher CTR?
Other sites I have that aren't as old have had steady declines in Yahoo traffic ever since I've added AdSense to them. Shame, shame on Yahoo for being so petty.
Ann
Older discussion on this:
[webmasterworld.com...]
I suspect that Yahoo tends to ban or penalized sites with AdSense on it. I have a site that I started in 1997. I added AdSense to it last fall and in the February shuffle Yahoo banned the site.
That's a pretty flimsy argument. If Yahoo were banning sites just because of AdSense ads, why would so many pages with AdSense ads be in the Yahoo index?
What a coincidence. In my post I also used the word 'correlates' and didn't say 'caused'. So you seem to be taking me to task for something I did not say.
Nevertheless, you make an important point that it is worth highlighting; correlation and causality are often confused.
Then you used the word 'correlates' to mean exactly what it meant when I said it, only you used it like the concept was news.
In case you've forgotten, after I said I noticed a 'correlation' heres what you said.
"Before people start excluding Yahoo via their robots.txt, the above observation is explained by a well-known branch of psychology called 'attribution theory', which leads to over-interpretation of data/events. In fact, the original comments about Google and Yahoo's intentions are exemplar of a frequently occurring phenomenon called "Fundamental Attribution Error".
Also, the laws of statistics predict that in this forum there will be members whose Yahoo traffic correlates negatively with Adsense earnings: it is *bound* to happen for some. There will also be some who experience the opposite (and one or two have posted to that effect).
So, the meaning you draw from your data is a *perception*, but it is not a fact, and despite your experience the general rule could be the complete opposite. "
When you used the phrase "the above observation" which observation of mine were you talking about?
And what exactly was the "meaning" I drew from my "data"?
Arrgh! I've got a headache now :(
Maybe take the site down and see what happens.
That's a pretty flimsy argument. If Yahoo were banning sites just because of AdSense ads, why would so many pages with AdSense ads be in the Yahoo index?
That's because Adsense is on so many sites. Although the secretivness prevents anyone from knowing what search engines are actually doing, it doesn't take a PHd to draw some valid conclusions.
So your CTR & eCPM has increased ...
but what about your TOTAL earnings!?
If they do it, that means they are over time going to compromise the quality of search engine results. If I go an search in yahoo and find only sites that run YPN that means some great related sites who run Adsense eventually are going to be left out. Visitors are going to realize that Google has better results in the search engine than Yahoo. Yahoo's traffic will suffer over time and they will lose visitor.
Now, does it make sense for Yahoo or any searc engine to penalise other sites or give their own preferential treatment?
In my opinion this is not a sound business practice.
I kind of doubt that any search engine would downgrade the results of a site that runs ads from a competitor progrm (such as Yahoo downgrading sites that run Adsense or vise versa).
If Yahoo wanted to corrupt its search results for competitive reasons, it wouldn't rank search.com #1, MSN search #2, and Google #3 for "search engine." :-)
If I go an search in yahoo and find only sites that run YPN that means some great related sites who run Adsense eventually are going to be left out. Visitors are going to realize that Google has better results in the search engine than Yahoo. Yahoo's traffic will suffer over time and they will lose visitor.
Let's face it, there has always been a strong tendency at Yahoo! to keep visitors within their network of services (aka their portal) - I would not be surprised if they find such behaviour beneficial for YPN as well.
Also, sites do not need to be banned to be penalized. Rather, YPN sites could be just preferred. That should be enough to monetize Yahoo! traffic (for Yahoo!).
No, that is not correct.
>When you used the phrase "the above observation" which observation
>of mine were you talking about?
>And what exactly was the "meaning" I drew from my "data"?
At the risk of giving oddsod severe migraine, the observation & meaning I was referring to were both the same thing: your statement that a loss of Yahoo traffic correlates with an increase in Adsense earnings.
The data I was referring to is assumed. I assume, because you said you 'checked', that you correlated Yahoo traffic and Adsense Earnings in your stats and came up with a negative number.
So, the negative number is 'data'. Making the general observation - that a loss of Yahoo traffic correlates with an increase in Adsense earnings - is an interpretation, ie: you are ascribing meaning to that data.
Such interpretations of data are made frequently on this forum but often have more of a psychological basis than genuine significance, and it is to that interpretation issue my post was addressed.
If I did not make the point in a diplomatic enough way, then I apologise. However, there is a potential danger that readers of this forum may be misled and think they can 'Block Traffic from Yahoo to Increase Earnings?'.
Making the case that there is such causality requires a different type of argument to the one I previously made, eg: a controlled study. But this would be pointless as it is predicated on a correlation that isn't actually there, which was the main message of my post.
>Have you tried banning google traffic as well?
Don't tempt me :)
Might as well ban its stupid bot for using more bandwidth than the traffic it sends.
Blue,
>So, the negative number is 'data'. Making the general observation - that a loss of Yahoo traffic correlates with an increase in Adsense earnings - is an interpretation, ie: you are ascribing meaning to that data
Are we using the same mean of 'correlates'? I'm using it to mean 'is associated with (on the data I looked at)'.
Which isn't a general observation, but a specific one.
Yes and No. To 'correlate' does have the general meaning of 'associated with'. However, you can't tell whether one set of data is associated with another set of data just by looking at it, for all sorts of reasons.
So statisticians have a tighter definition of 'correlate' so they can perform a specific test to see whether they are associated or not, and how strong that association is.
I dunno if this supports the poster's theory, but my CTR and CPM have fallen significantly as well. CPM fell from an average of $45 to only about $23. CTR also decreased by about 40%. Yahoo traffic for me was counterproductive for my Adsense.
They may not click as much as G visitors, but I don't think I'd block traffic from Y. I'd like every traffic I can get :o)
What I am seeing is, the Yahoo visitors that I received before when my site had much better web presense in Yahoo tended to click on AdSense ads less... which apparently lowered my EPC across my entire newtork (5 web sites).
However, now Yahoo searchers must find my pages further down in Yahoo SERPs, say 20-30 results down, and the fewer, DETERMINED searchers that made it that far (about 1/10 of the visitors that I received when my pages were in Top 10 Yahoo results).. and so far seem to be more apt to click on the AdSense Ads - same adevertsers & advertisements as when in top 10.
I reason that once people have expended so much time & effort searching for a particular topic, they are more willing to click on an advertisement to find what they are searching for, if they can't seem to find whatever it after viewing the content of 20 or 30 web sites.
So I am making about the same amount of money, even though I am only receing 1/10 the amount of traffic I had when my pages good be found on the first page of Yahoo results. I don't think I would want my pages to drop any further in Yahoo... as I can imagine that the odds of receiving visitors drop dramatically the further down the "food chain" your web site drops.
Users/ customers are always smart enough to justify the search result.
Yahoo visitors don't click on AdSense Ads very much
When I had google, yahoo and msn traffic, I had x ctr. When I lost google traffic, and still retained yahoo and msn traffic, I still had x ctr. Therefore, it is safe to say that all traffic is equal, regardless of where it comes from.
I suspect that Yahoo tends to ban or penalized sites with AdSense on it. I have a site that I started in 1997. I added AdSense to it last fall and in the February shuffle Yahoo banned the site.
Yahoo didn't ban me, in fact, if it wasnt for yahoo and msn, I wouldn't even be doing well in adsense. Where are you coming up with your conclusions? Just because it bans you doesn't mean that was the reason. Search engines are weird and unpredictable.
