Is it possible for a site to do too good?

[wfernley]

Hey everyone,

Well my website has made some great leaps and bounds over the past few months. I'm now averaging $40/day and have a CTR between 4% to 5%. This has come about because I have been really optimizing my site for the past couple years and now it is starting to pay off. Needless to say I'm very happy :)

I was curious if it possible for my site to do too good. Right now my CPC is good but I find most clicks are going to the same advertisers. There are not that many advertisers in my market so I don't want force the current ones out or get them to block my site because most clicks are coming from there. This could be a silly outlook on clicks because I'm sure my site isn't the main source out there that they are getting their clicks from.

I was just curious if a site could do too good and either cause smart pricing to come into effect because you are getting 4000 clicks a month or by forcing advertisers to lower their daily limit or block your site completely.

Does that make sense? I hope so! :)

Thanks!

Wes

[trinorthlighting]

It really depends on the traffic. Most of the smartpricing tends to come from sites that are buying traffic or have questionable traffic.

If you have good content and getting your traffic from natural serps, return visitors, etc. I would not worry much about it.

[danimal]

you site doesn't have cpc, it has epc.

in theory, if a site is designed for ctr as the only goal, it could generate clicks that do not convert for the advertiser... a classic example of that is putting all the site navigation below the fold, so lazy surfers will only have ads to click on.

it could take months for the epc on that page design to get dinged... which is why you should use channels to track everything.

[annej]

Depending on the kind of site you have a CTR between 4% to 5% is quite common. Also in improvement in traffic and earnings over a few months is reasonable. I can't see how this would raise a flag.

[Randy LaCelle]

I agree with trinor. A good keyword rich site(rich but not over-optimized or hard to read for visitors) will help ads stay relevant. Google tracks IPs so if the same IP keeps clicking your ads you could have trouble. Use Adlogger to track your site for fraud clicks. Contact google and they will remove the money and you won't get in trouble. If you don't contact them Google may suspend your account for multiple 'fraud' clicks.

[wfernley]

Thanks for all your replies.

I do have a click logger tracking most of my clicks. I do get some people who click 4 or 5 ads which I can tell from the same IP and same page. How many clicks from the same IP do you consider fraudulent?

As for my site, one of the best ad channels I have is a text link unit at the top left above my side navigation. The second best is my right side bar. Either than that, the rest of my channels are found in product descriptions and at the top and bottom of articles and press releases.

I don't think I consider my site to be over optimized as I have not received any complaints yet from my visitors saying the site is overloaded with ads.

I haven't been purchasing traffic. 75% of my traffic comes from Google and 10% from other search engines.

Thanks again for your replies :)

[annej]

I think Google sometimes discounts several clicks from one computer. I know I was worried about multiple clicks I observed because schools use my site and kids will do stuff like this. They said they can catch situations like that and could tell it wasn't me.

[wfernley]

Well thats good. :)

[Randy LaCelle]

It depends on how much traffic you get. Low traffic site getting multiple users clicking ads multiple times can raise red flags. Google has ways of checking to see if it might be you and tracking the IP for later. If you get a user clicking more than 5 times on a low traffic site I would contact Google and let them know. It is better safe than sorry. I report clicks all the time and they are happy....

[wfernley]

Well I do get a lot of traffic. I get about 120+ clicks for every 800 visitors.

[BillyS]

>>I do get some people who click 4 or 5 ads which I can tell from the same IP and same page. How many clicks from the same IP do you consider fraudulent?

If you're cliking on your own ads, I believe it takes only 1 click from an IP for Google to figure it out.

[bennyp]

Some of my idiotic former friends got a hold of my site, and in an apparent attempt to help, they clicked on my ads over and over again. I ended up getting banned from adsense. I contacted adsense, told them I banned their IPs from my site, and even got a new url. They just sent me back a form "Sorry, can't help letter".

I wish I had known there was software at the time, so I wouldn't have been kicked out of Adsense.

[wfernley]

I find that kinda sad too. In my opinion, Google should be monitoring this more. It is hard to go through all your clicks everyday looking for fraudulent activity. You might even get competitors (or friends ;) ) who click on your links trying get you banned.

It's a shame Google doesn't just have an algo that finds this kind of activity and just doesn't count it. I personally don't think it should be up to us to have to monitor our clicks because we already have to work on our site. It is just my opinion ;)

[bennyp]

I agree. You would think that at the end of the day (or throughout the day), they could go through the clicks, find the invalid ones, and charge them back to the advertisers. This way the people who try to click their own ads, get nothing from it. The people who are honestly trying to use Google, don't get banned because of someone else.

[blairsp]

They said they can catch situations like that and could tell it wasn't me.

What, by using their all seeing eye. Please!
Unless they have a webcam on every single pc in the world that is google arrogance at its best

[Randy LaCelle]

Blair is it arrogance on googles side or ignorance on yours? Google can find patterns easily. Google isn't stupid and with your adsense code in your page it can tell alot.
If you have done any kind of Adsense for any kind of time you would have noticed this. But then if you think Google is stupid feel free to click your own ads and see how long that lasts ;-)

[gregbo]

I agree. You would think that at the end of the day (or throughout the day), they could go through the clicks, find the invalid ones, and charge them back to the advertisers. This way the people who try to click their own ads, get nothing from it. The people who are honestly trying to use Google, don't get banned because of someone else.

Certainly, G can find obvious patterns, but all invalid, or even fraudulent patterns? They cannot determine the intent of all clicks (no one can). Furthermore, why should they expend energy on sites that just cause them problems? Better to ban the troublesome sites and focus on the good ones.

[potentialgeek]

In my industry or for my site there are a lot of MFA advertisers. This means a high percentage of clicks per unit, often more than one click per visitor for each ad unit. The surfer clicks on one bogus ad, sees the MFA site, hits the back button, and tries again. Then they cycle through the entire ad block, and hit two, three, four, or all five ad links.

Google allows the high percentage of clicks because it knows the advertisers are MFAs. I don't care if many or all MFA advertisers get nothing for the clicks or low conversion rate. They're abusing the system so they deserve to lose money and their accounts. I'll take their money for a while and then ban them.

p/g