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Spike in Clickthroughs... should I be worried?

         

zulufox

2:54 am on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I stopped work on my site a month ago to work on moving it to a Linux CMS (from ASP), no changes or new content has been added to my site in over a month.

For the last few days, my clickthrough rate as jumped 300-400%! However my number of visitors has remained pretty much the same.

I can see absolutely no reason of this increase, unless my site jumped to the top on a keyword I dont check.

Just to be clear, my site is about a humanitarian issue and doesnt sell anything, and has absolutely no competition, so there is 0 chance someone is trying to get me banned from adsense.

Out of paranoia I have emailed adsense just to make it clear to them im not clicking my own ads.

Should I be paranoid? Have you experienced a temporary spike like this?

I'm pretty knew and adsense is 100% of my site revenue (which isnt very much, but it pays for hosting), so im paranoid im gonna get banned

loanuniverse

3:04 am on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Maybe a missguided visitor thinking that this would help instead of hurting. For such a big jump, I think it was a good idea to contact Google and be proactive. On the other hand, if the site does not have more than a hundred visitors a day, the CTR jump could be statistically insignificant. But 300% to 400% is kind of high.

I would also not worry about not hearing back, but save the sent email just in case.

Jenstar

3:32 am on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Any chance that previous PSAs are showing targeted? That could result in a jump in CTR.

zulufox

3:40 am on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



no I had them showing a CJ ad.

UKFord

6:22 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'd be expecting that e-mail. Sorry to say.

Yidaki

6:28 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>I'd be expecting that e-mail.

Don't make him scared for nothing!

If you don't have something to hide, just ask them what's going on.

I emailed the adsense staff last week to ask if they see suspicious activity at my account. They investigated and replied they found nothing. Better safe than sorry. And why being paranoid if a quick email can clear everything!?

onfire

6:49 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Better safe than sorry and being proactive is better than doing nothing at all.

Nothing to fear from shooting off an email asking them to check your account out.

Give it a few days, they are a busy team, and with the recent changes in TOS and the new features the inbox is full for sure.

jhood

8:49 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I am having the same experience as zulufox. The clickthrough rate has tripled today. I have been in the program since last summer and get fairly high impressions -- mid-5 figures per day, big enough across a wide variety of topics to smooth out most spikes, and thus, our CTR has been relatively constant since the program began.

The CTR has been fluctuating more widely than usual the last week or so (since the most recent update) so, to look on the bright side, perhaps ad and/or search targeting has improved.

Like zulufox, our site does not sell anything, so it would not be a commercial competitor attacking us.

At any rate, I immediately e-mailed AdSense to point it out to them and would advise zulufox to do the same.

varya

9:01 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I think there may be something wrong with the stats today.

My impressions are obviously way behind.

What I find really odd, is that although impressions and clicks have been increasing throughout the day, ctr has been exactly the same (and a strangely high number, at that).

And my impressions and clicks have an odd relationship with each other. They've all been the same digit. As a purely hypothetical example, 55 impressions and 5 clicks, next update, 77 impressions and 7 clicks.

onfire

9:10 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



varya

I think there may be something wrong with the stats today. My impressions are obviously way behind


I would not worry so much, i am seeing the same, but the game is not over until the end of the day, and this is when they meet up together and clock off together,

Then and only then can you can see for sure what your impressions, CTR, and earnings were for that day.

thsung

9:23 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)



I logged into my stats and I freaked out! Luckily, I'm not the only one on the same boat. Should I also send an email to Google?

robho

9:30 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I logged into my stats and I freaked out!

During the (pacific time) day the stats are essentially meaningless, wait until at least a few hours after the end of the day to get a real figure.

Impression counting is way down at the moment (less than half of what it should be), but clicks are only a bit down (for me) so CTR does look "interesting" so far. This happens a lot, ignore the "today" figures.

If it happens for more than a few days, using end of day figures (like for the original poster), that's a different matter. Maybe the change of search results at Yahoo is giving you (Zulufox) better targetted visitors from there?

Yidaki

9:34 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Sorry - again - you realy compare daily figures? I *might* see a trend after comparing at least two saturdays (two weeks stats, better four weeks or even two months) but never from day to day. I'm realy puzzled ...

Just to illustrate how useless it is to compare hourly / daily numbers: my current ctr for today is slightly above standard (2/3 of the day still open). My earnings are already 100% above standard. So what? Next saturday will tell.

markus007

9:46 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Yidaki that only holds true if you have less then a few hundred clicks a day.

Yidaki

10:03 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>that only holds true if you have less then a few hundred clicks a day

Erm, nope. Why? I have a few hundred.

richmondsteve

11:07 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



zulufox wrote:
no I had them showing a CJ ad.

2 points.

1. My reported AdSense impressions is lagging actual impressions by a huge factor today. Others are reporting the same. I suspect clicks are being updated much more quickly today than impressions for whatever reason.

2. A big shift in the percentage of impressions showing PSAs or AAs (your CJ ad) *will* affect reported CTR. That's because Google's reported CTR is somewhat misleading. It's paying ad clicks divided by *all* impressions, where all impressions is paying ads + PSAs + AAs.

robho

11:12 pm on Feb 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I *might* see a trend after comparing at least two saturdays ... but never from day to day.

Agreed day-to-day variations are usually not worth bothering with, within say 50% to 200% of normal, but something far outside that for several days (as for Zulufox) would be worth looking into, without waiting a week or two.

zulufox

9:02 pm on Feb 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



just an update... google emailed me back saying that they had validated the clicks made and everything is ok!

more money for me!