Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I came up with a theory that smart pricing was not really all that smart and tried to figure out what the bot does to determine your "smart pricing"
I think that there is an algo that ties in your poor performing pages and uses them to weight your site for worthiness.
The more pages you track the lower your quality (to the bot).
On the 2nd I deleted all custom channels and saw a 400% jump in income. Went through the 4th of July weekend with better than average earnings. Daily income going up by 2 to 8 dollars a day.
Ctr and ecpm are doing better but slowly, with ecpm rocking down and up.
Payout per click went up from 3 to 9 cents and had 5 .19 cent clicks on search...unheard of in the past. (my average payout per click was 8 cents for my niche)
Noticed better ads began showing up that had not been there before and no crap ads that I could find.
Things slowed down and started rocking so I thought, "hummm, mr bot has found another way". So I started going though my site page by page and changing out the channel ads for regular ones and adding them to pages that did not have them...more page views...:), and have seen the ctr and epcm renew their upward creep.
This weekend was higher than the weekends I've been having for several months now.
For me it is working, I still have over 800 pages left to examine and check for adsense channel ads, (doing this in alphabetical order.)
I am not saying anyone else should do this, that is your choice. All I am saying is it is working for me and judging by the payout and the better ads I can tell the worth of my sites have gone up.
In any case, if supporters of Ann's theory subject it to rigorous testing, then over time the matter will be decided one way or the other.
Unless I'm mistaken, I thought Ann said she added AdLinks to her pages while at the same time she removed all the custom channel info. Perhaps those AdLinks are responsible for the increase in her earnings - that seems plausible, right?
[edited by: Play_Bach at 11:12 pm (utc) on Aug. 4, 2006]
You must have the same impressions, visitors, adds, pageloads, and clicks everyday to prove your hypothesis. With these such many factors to be considered, it can't be done. No mathematician can come into the right conclusion with these factors.
Just thank ADSENSE for whatever you may have. It is better than nothing whether .01 or 1.00$ per click.
I have given you my theories, given you my results along the way and, not having any idea what you want from me other than the things I have said in here, I know not what will satisfy your doubting minds. I also do not care whether you doubt me or not or whether you try it or not, I am happy and thought I was sharing a positive experience with all of you.
Truthfully? I wish I had kept it to myself...I will not again divulge any such information for certain people to attack me on such a personal level as I have been in the entire forum. Even referring back to my "idea" after I posted in another thread.
I also said I DO NOT BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES. Nor do I believe that Google is trying to "trick" us into using custom channels.
MY theory is simply they have not looked at the situation and seen there might be a problem to fix so, since there is no problem then, They say 'Here is a new toy that will help your site'. AND I believe they sincerely mean for it to help us BUT the problem still exists and needs attention.
If anyone is interested, my ave. daily income is now 3 times what it ended with in July.
Ann
In order to work out why it works, we need to adopt a scientific approach. Hence my suggestion several pages back that we looked at
I'm not suggesting we look at your stats alone - I'm suggesting that all those who have tried this experiment and found it to work focus on these points, and contribute their results so that we can try and get an overview of what changes happen.
Nobody expects you, or any other member here to understand what happens at the 'plex. After all, Google themselves are pretty clueless on that one pretty well all of the time. Look at just how knowledgeable they are about what is and isn't contextual in other providors offerings and their inability to make a consistent decision on that. What we are asking is for people to cut out the sniping on both sides and adopt a scientific approach to trying to see what might be happening here.
You were good enough to share your ideas. We all appreciate this! Trying to look results everyone has had and analyse them objectively isn't an sleight on anyone, nor is it a display of doubt. It's simply trying to get information out of everybody in order to try and understand this.
Just wanted to clarify things. On your first post (July 17th), you said:
On the 2nd I deleted all custom channels and saw a 400% jump in income.
I take it that you deleted ALL channels from your account tracking BUT that the "google_ad_channel =#######" codes are still on ALL your webpages (at that time), am I correct?
This means you haven't applied ANY changes to your website(s), from July 2 to 17th, and you saw a 400% jump in income?
Ctr and ecpm are doing better but slowly, with ecpm rocking down and up.Payout per click went up from 3 to 9 cents and had 5 .19 cent clicks on search...unheard of in the past. (my average payout per click was 8 cents for my niche)
Noticed better ads began showing up that had not been there before and no crap ads that I could find.
Again these happened without changes to any of your webpages?
I asked because I have 3 different channels per page (3 ad blocks) - too many impressions for too few clicks! Also my filter list is getting full of crap :)
I would like to hear how others are fairing and how they did or did not do it and what kind of results they had.
Of course I am not ruling out that it could be some other factors at work here but I know what started it off.
I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what you guys and girls wanted of me. It is a relief to know you want something from others. LOL
I posted a few posts back the actual sequence of changes I made.
Ann
Read my posts on page 10 of this thread.
I uploaded the channel changes the 2nd After I changed the ads to no channel...I kept the same type of ad but generated a fresh one.
LATER I put 1 adlink unit on every free page I could so as to increase page views.
Please read the posts as most questions like this have already been answered.
Ann
You must have the same impressions, visitors, adds, pageloads, and clicks everyday to prove your hypothesis. With these such many factors to be considered, it can't be done. No mathematician can come into the right conclusion with these factors.
Thats not quite true. There are proceedures for dealing with more than one variable at once.
However.
After yesterday and today's appalling ad targeting leading to my CTR being through the floor I've had it with Adsense.
They are demoted to the bottom of the page until they can prove their worthiness.
In their place I've put Adbrite. I'm not expecting Adbrite to outperform Adsense instantly - they are not contextual (mind you neither was Adsense lately) but I would like to build up some nice looking stats from their network ads so that I can attract some regular site specific advertisers.
So I guess my participation in the experiment is over.
I have another smart pricing idea. I've had fairly consistant earnings until one ad started appearing on my site. When I visited this site, it was one of those call to action (fill in email and contact details). Since that point my earnings were down (impressions were slightly higher 5% but consistant growth) and clickthroughs the same.
I placed this ad on the blocked list and viola the earnings have returned to normal.
Many people are blocking MFA sites but I would like to suggest blocking landing paging with a specific action (like filling out a contact form) that probably would result in many visitors not filling out these forms. I believe they trigger smart pricing when a large percentage of people do not fill out these type of forms.
Yesterday was not all that great but today has started off good. Even with yesterdays performance I still had a better Friday than I've had for weeks and weeks. Something may be up at the 'plex because several people have been reporting poor targeting possibly another hiccup. ;) I hardly ever look at my ads other than checking them once in awhile in the preview tool, a far cry from before as I was fighting them daily just to keep the trash out.
Now I am actually planning my pages and will be writing and adding to the mix. At least I feel more encouraged to do so with the turn around of my income. Beats the heck out of those depressing figures I have been working with before the changes.
Ann
However, it's had positive consequences because I cleaned up my channels and I'm trying some new ideas that will increase the bottom line...
Just thank ADSENSE for whatever you may have.
A bit over the top aren't we there? Its a business, not a religion. Are you another Manchurian Fan? I see the usual suspects have yet to show up.
Lo and behold - both my CTR and CPM doubled within 24 hours and has held steady at that rate for all this time.
My impressions and click through rate are about the same, however, I am getting higher paying ads - thus my bottom line increase by 25%.
Just a thought why it works for some and for others. My theory is that both Ann and myself have sites with lots of pages and are content fill.
Most of my pages (220) on one site and (120) on the other offer at least 500 word content with several images. Make of it what you may?
Thanks Ann - you are a gem.
... both my CTR and CPM doubled...
My impressions and click through rate are about the same...
So your CTR doubled and yet it remained the same? What are you talking about?
Meant to read - My daily impressions for every day of the week have remained about the same.
If adsense is a business for you then so be it. For me it's not. I have a website that's not intended for adsense and I've just put adsense in it and I thank Google about the 20$ a day I am getting now.
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[edited by: martinibuster at 9:03 am (utc) on Aug. 7, 2006]
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If you are so disdainful of the people in here why do you bother posting. Please use courtesy as that is supposed to be the ww way. We try to help others not just come in to sneer...of course, if you haven't anything to be helpful with....
Ann
if my first post in this thread bothers you then you must have realized that your NEW FOUND EXPERIMENT IS A FLAWED and mere speculations without the constant data that you needed.
however if my second post bothers you about MFA sites, then I conclude that you own one of those MFA sites.
Ann merely reported something she did that changed her fortunes. Nobody knows if it works, or why but people are investigating. No conclusions have been drawn yet. I'm hoping that there might be some data coming forward that means we can see what might be happening, but as yet there isn't any. But clearly it has worked for other people too - somehow.
If you have been around here a while you would realise something. Namely that what works to increase fortunes often flies in the face of conventional wisdom - or what Google tell you. For example, a year ago people were sneered at for blocking MFA sites to increase income. Now it's an accepted practice and Google are getting in on the act by using the QS algo. It was also madness to remove ad blocks at one point. Now people accept that it actually does increase revenue if you do it right.
Ann's suggestion is new. We KNOW why blocking MFA's and removing surplus blocks work. We don't yet know why this works, or even if it works. It may be that in some specific situations it will work if only we knew what they were.
Therefore I'd suggest YET AGAIN that we try and desist from the flaming of the idea, and try and gather some data. Let the thread run in the right direction and we might be able to get a handle on this. The flaming only detracts from the process of evidence gathering - people don't want to post data at the risk of being sneered at.
I also conclude something about you but in the interest of politeness I won't say...but hey, I'm sure you've heard it all before. :) So happy posting and flaming, whatever turns you on.
Yawn, I think I will go to bed now...g'night
Ann
Removing custom channels hasn't led to an increase in CTR, and I still get really crap days along with some really good ones. That's the nature of Adsense. BUT, the one thing that has stayed constant is EPC - the amount paid per click - which has improved dramatically since removing the custom channels.
Whether this is solely down to Ann's idea or whether there are other factors involved, I've no idea. What's more, I don't really care! Earnings are on the up, and that's what matters :)
Thanks Ann!
Traffic will always vary. AdWords bid levels never stop fluctuating. You get the idea.
The main point is that Ann conducted her experiment and shared her findings.
Whether the data is related or not remains to be seen, but isn't this what WWW is for in the first place? To share experiences and determine commonalities? How many nuggets of info have we discovered by doing exactly that over time?
I find it really surprising that some folks are quicker to disparage than to focus on the positive.
I've now created one new channel for the best, highest-earning part of the site to see if that makes a difference.
I know five days isn't long but I have been haemorrhaging money left right and centre since the "test" began.
Warning: be VERY careful with this, you can get your fingers burnt.
Day 1 - Lower CTR, eCPM.
Day 2 - Even lower CTR, eCPM.
Day 3 - Worst day in 3 months, started to get very worried at this point and considering adding channels back in.
Day 4 - CTR up slightly, nice eCPM but not incredible. Let's give it one more day then.
Day 5 - CTR up 2%, same eCPM as day before. Finger off the panic button.
Day 6 - CTR up a further 1%, eCPM up a further 40%. Me like.
Day 7 - Same as day before.
Today is looking just as strong. Overall thoughts? Hard to know whether this would have happened if I hadn't done the test but the last 3 days have been among the strongest in 3 months. And this occuring in the same week I had my lowest day in 3 months. The AdSense rollercoaster ride continues :) For the moment channels are staying off my site.
I stress it's only a theory, so please feel free to laugh. Also, sorry if anyone's beat me to it - I'm not going to read the entire thread to find out!
There are two big questions here. How does it work, and why does it only work for some?
I don't think anybody believes that removing channels will cause smart pricing to go into a flurry and dish out more cash. I think most people would tend to think that IF it works, it's because removing the channels has made something else react.
It seems to me that for those it has worked for, higher ctr, better paying ads or both are what they have in common. Removing channels can't trigger better ads, or cause visitors to click more ads. So what else might be happening.
We know that to get the bot to re-spider the page you can change the ad type and that will call the spider back. What if the spider has several depths of spidering? IE changes to a page might trigger a little light spidering, and new pages or drastic changes might trigger a host of spiders trampling all over the page.
It could also be that in established sites the spider is set to light spider, and the past data is used to keep the traffic down and allow the bot to concentrate heavily on new sites. Ann's site and my site have been online and with adsense a while. Therefore any changes we make may well only provoke minor action from the spider.
My theory is that removing the channels is a major, drastic change so the bots then do intensive crawling to re-evaluate the site and build new data on it. It may be that our fortunes from that point depend on the re-evaluation of our site.
In Ann's case it might be that the re-evaluation of her site content meant that Google decided to show different ads. Different ads may be better paying, or more relevant hence better ctr.
In my case, the re-evaluation may be that the new data was not too different from the previous data hence no change.
It's possible that putting the channels back slowly would not unduly disturb the bot. Smart pricing may well look at the improvement caused by better / higher paying ads and shine favourably.
As I said, it's only a theory, but in my mind it's a possible explanation for what we seem to be seeing.
But what about the AdLinks she put in at the same time she removed the channels - this to me is a variable that for some reason is being overlooked here yet makes sense as a possible explanation for an earnings increase. Had Ann ONLY done the channels in her test, then it would be easier for me to discount the role all those AdLinks might be having on her bottom line and get on board that custom channels were indeed somehow responsible for the boost. How about it Ann, could you remove the AdLinks and let us know what happens to your earnings? :-)
[edited by: Play_Bach at 4:29 pm (utc) on Aug. 7, 2006]
Which shows me, quite conclusively, that "user's channel data", however absurd it seems, is somewhere in the overall algo.
I actually believe there's something to david's theory and my thoughts were going in that direction even as I was doing the test. In some ways, your site's stats get re-zeroed and, to my mind, it's pretty much 50/50 whether your post-channel fortunes go up or down.
We need to find out what it is that determines whether you go up or down. I've used AS on large sites since July 2003.
I don't think anybody believes that removing channels will cause smart pricing to go into a flurry and dish out more cash.
BTW your suggested mechanism is very similar to the one I posted back in msg #3028147 (LOL, I hate this new numbering system).
