Forum Moderators: martinibuster
What if AdSense gave your site a score and then tied that score to your earnings per click. Your score could adjust slowly over time based on a combination of advertiser satisfaction and comment (i.e. desirability of your page), conversion rate to the degree it could reasonably be estimated, and your own history as a webmaster with AdSense.
Subpages added to your site would inherit the current site score to start, and then track up or down based on performance. When dynamic site or page nature casts doubt, assume the site average(?)
Adding new sites could similarly assume your "average" score across all sites as a starting point - rewarding good publishers while making those with less-than-stellar-histories work hard to prove themselves.
Lets say you apply for adsense with site1. They review it (autmatically or whatever) and score you a 4/10. You start earning measely money. Over time your performance shows thru, and it moves up to a 6 - you earn better money. You add site2, which starts at a 6, and moves up or down slowly based on site performance. Add a bunch of sites that eventualy underperform, and your starting point for new sites goes down. Keep building successful sites, and each new site will start out of the gate earning good money.
Unlike the SE game, I see this as a case where knowing as much as possible about what makes a site good is a plus for everyone involved.
Like search, successful publishers will not want to risk their successful enterprises by introducing poor quality of unacceptable sites.
Such a system may be what it takes to separate the pro publishers from the opportunists.... while preserving G's flexibility to change what they feel is good or what their advertisers feel is good, as they go along.
Google isn't telling us what the publishers page "score" is, but they are apparently adjusting EPC according to how well a page is expected to convert for the advertisers.
Build pages that draw people more likely to convert and you get more money on an EPC basis.
It is part of it, but not the same. You assume you draw the visitors organically... what if they are sent as traffic? A page designed to convert is not the same as a page designed to draw visitors that convert and that difference is missing, and desired by G and advertisers.
Scenario 1: I attract 1 million visitors becuase of my relevant content. Some portion clicks on adsense.
Scenario 2: I route 1 million visitors a day via redirects to a web page that has nothing but nonsense and adsense on it... sure it converts (adsense clicks) very highly (the user is anxious to move on because the page is meaningless) but it is not desireable for advertisers (no real targeting).
Under scenario 1, I get paid in some proportion to G's expectation of my site's liklihood for conversion, whatever that means. Under scenario 2 supposed to be the same deal, but with such a high CTR I am paid much more, even though my site is less desireable.
Now add a PUBLIC AdSense rank. Scenario 1 would get a lower score than scenario 2. It can make money through volume, but it has to work even harder on that volume (harder per click than the site of scenario 1). It makes sense, no? of course their may be certain adertisers that WANT shear volume, and they should say so and get assigned to those sites...
If webmasters wanted to improve their SCORE inorder to improve earnings, they would need to improve their site, not just improve the factors that lead to higher payouts (the current game).
Scenario 2: I route 1 million visitors a day via redirects to a web page that has nothing but nonsense and adsense on it... sure it converts (adsense clicks) very highly (the user is anxious to move on because the page is meaningless) but it is not desireable for advertisers (no real targeting).
That's a real issue, and (as ken_b has pointed out) it's one of the problems that "Smart Pricing" was designed to address.
Smart Pricing uses advertiser conversion data to tdetermine how much value a given type of content has for the advertiser. The advertiser then gets a discount from the nominal bid according to the value assigned by Google's Smart Pricing algorithm. In an ideal world, Google would have conversion data available for all advertisers and publishers, but in the meantime, we can assume that it has a large body of data to use in calculating Smart Pricing. And as time goes by, it's reasonable to assume that the algorithm will be more site-specific than it may be right now.
BTW, here's how Google defines a "conversion":
"In online advertising, a conversion occurs when a click on your ad leads directly to user behavior you deem valuable, such as a purchase, signup, page view, or lead."
Back to your idea of a public AdSense PageRank: I don't think that's likely to happen for two reasons:
1) It would be a useful feedback tool for "AdSense optimisers" who are more interested in gaming the system than in publishing Web sites. (As it is, Google's founders probably wish they'd never published their PageRank thesis or included a PageRank gauge in the Google Toolbar!)
2) It would go against the underlying principle of AdSense, which is to help publishers monetize existing content with a "set and forget" advertising solution while giving advertisers a way to reach audiences that are interested in what they have to sell.
