Adding Adsense loses rankings?

I had always dismissed the thought, but ...

[internetheaven]

For four years one of my sites has relied solely on a personal advertising program I run on it. A few days ago I thought I'd dabble with adsense so added an adsense search box to one of the internal pages that is visited a fair bit.

Three days after adding it I've dropped down several places across many of my top ranking keywords. For some of them we have been No. 1-3 for over two years! Any thoughts on other factors that might have influenced it?

[europeforvisitors]

I've only ever seen adsense ads on the new york times site stuffed down the bottom of article pages. If they are such good quality for them why aren't they on the main, most highly visited pages of their sites, and then, above the fold with the other adverts?

The ads are below the fold because the ads above the fold pay better, and also because display advertisers prefer ads above the fold.

And the ads aren't on the NYT's "most highly visited" pages because they're contextual ads that are designed for--and that work best--on pages about specific topics.

That is what I meant by lower quality, final attempt advertising.

It isn't "final attempt" advertising; it's "incremental income" contextual advertising. And in any case, I was responding to your suggestion that sites with AdSense don't have enough value for other advertising. Clearly, sites like nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com do have plenty of value to both advertisers and readers (as one can deduce from their other ads and their editorial reputations).

[sahm]

I have been using Adsense since it first started. My site has been going up and down since the "950 penalty" first hit, but I don't think this has anything to do with having Adsense ads on my site. My site still ranks #1 in Google for many search terms.