Do you ever recover from smart pricing?

and how long does it last...

[goodwin]

My site is 10 months old, and CPC was OK until last 10 days or so... I think I've been smart-priced. CPC dropped cca 40% for no reason, but the traffic continues to increase each month... and earnings went down...

What should I do?
Do you ever recover from smart pricing?
How long does it last?

Thanks...

[hunderdown]

Smart pricing, as far as I can tell, is updated constantly. You can go down, stay level, go up, bounce around.

I had a steady decline after smart pricing was introduced in spring 2004. Lasted until September, when I started playing around.

It took time, but my average EPC is now higher than it was when smart pricing first hit.

So yes, in my experience, you can reverse it.

[danimal]

it's epc, not cpc.

what does your channel data tell you when it comes to comparing various topics and page designs? is the epc higher for some things but not others? what exactly has changed in the last few months? etc.

[koan]

Lasted until September, when I started playing around

What did you do to recover?

[hunderdown]

Different things are going to work for different people, so read up on this in other threads, but the main thing I did was use channels to see where people were the lowest CTRs were, and at the same time looked at the ads showing up around the site.

I had some pages that contained news-type information. People came for that, and weren't interested in the ads. Low CTR and probably not much interest in the ads. And I had some other pages that just didn't display targeted ads no matter what I did.

In both cases, I took the ads off. Lowered my impressions but increased my earnings.

Also, over a period of some months I noticed that I was getting a lot of ads related to one sector of my industry that I hadn't written about. So I created a section of the site that addressed that area.

Basically, you want to get people clicking who are likely to convert. The part of that you can control is limited, but you CAN control what pages ads appear on, and how targeted or not the content on them is....

You really have to try things out and see what works on your site. And keep writing new content. All the tweaking in the world isn't going to increase your earnings if there's nothing to attract visitors and links.

[potentialgeek]

I think Adsense newbies often saturate their pages with ads: every page gets Adsensed with three ad units. The assumption is the more ads, the higher their revenue. Then they get smartpriced. Next they start removing ad blocks.

I've been removing ads from many pages not just to avoid SP but to increase the quality of the visitor's experience. There's nothing like ad overkill to ruin a site visit. The better a visitor's experience, of course, the more likely they will return.

Ads, including AS ads, can ruin your page design, turn it butt ugly. I've seen very few web pages which were obviously designed by expert graphic designers, including sites of big firms (which use ads).

Always focus on the user experience: quality content and quality design. This will help avoid SP and increase revenue.

p/g

[Sunshine1]

Read the TOS and Implementation guidelines carefully.
There is allways a reason you have been smart priced.

ALLWAYS have About.htm and Privacy-policy.htm links and pages on every site/page. EVEN if you do not have registrations include a privacy policy.

[iwannano1]

Sunshine1,

Good point but file name can be anything - i think you are suggesting sections
Privacy Policy
Disclaimer
About Us
Contact Us etc

[Genuine1]

>>> Read the TOS and Implementation guidelines carefully.
There is allways a reason you have been smart priced.

The only reason you get smartpriced is if your clicks dont convert or googles algo thinks they are unlikely to do so.

>>> ALLWAYS have About.htm and Privacy-policy.htm links and pages on every site/page. EVEN if you do not have registrations include a privacy policy.

I have none of those and have been earning almost exactly the same 3.5k plus per month and the same epc over 15 sites for 3.5 years without change. All that matters is quality content, real related links that naturally follow with the targeted search and other traffic that this brings. If you are buying traffic ecpect to be smartpriced.

[farmboy]

Read the TOS and Implementation guidelines carefully.

There is allways a reason you have been smart priced.
ALLWAYS have About.htm and Privacy-policy.htm links and pages on every site/page. EVEN if you do not have registrations include a privacy policy.

Where in the TOS or implementation guidelines does AdSense suggest or require an about page, privacy policy, etc?

FarmBoy

[farmboy]

I have a basic question concerning the subject of this thread.

How do you know for sure when you've been "smart priced?" How do you know that whatever is happening to your AdSense results is caused by smart pricing and not any of a myriad of other factors.

When it comes to EPC, CTR, etc., I read a lot of cause and effect assumptions people make, often they turn out to be inaccurate assumptions. Isn't it possible a lot of people assume they are experiencing smart pricing when in fact other factors are at work?

FarmBoy

[danimal]

why put a label on it?

just analyze the channel data and figure out what works and what doesn't work.

i know that is easier said than done for some of us, especially if you have a lot of pages that don't have the proper channel categories already set up.

[hunderdown]

Isn't it possible a lot of people assume they are experiencing smart pricing when in fact other factors are at work?

Yes. I think that happens all the time.

As danimal wisely says, why put a label on it?

Find what works....