Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Something that might tap the collective intelligence of the group to offer guidance on how publishers might improve this factor. I understand that we might not all agree that it even exists as an official algo/pricing component, but I believe there is at least a defacto influence at work.
It might be a small matter now, but it could likely grow in importance in the future.
I suggest that it's time for a good thread about the trust factor in AdSense....I understand that we might not all agree that it even exists as an official algo/pricing component, but I believe there is at least a defacto influence at work.
Could be. And why not? Google Search has "TrustRank" and AdWords has "Quality Scores," so common sense would imply something similar (if not now, then in the future) for the AdSense network.
Hobbs, your pinky and the brain theory definitely gave me a good giggle. Thanks. :)
Of course, traffic is traffic and the more there is, the better the overall earnings, everything adds up. But the eCPM doesn't seem to improve when you join the top players.
Maybe that's where to start the discussion.
1. At the URL at which it was spidered. You can trust it to be residing at that address just as a long term tenant or homeowner lives in their home. They just don't move or move very little over the course of time. (I changed a site over a year ago to have all new URL's and it is still suffering the consequences. Yet, it had to be done and there was no choice but to 301 the old pages as they became apparent.)
2. Contain the information with which it was spidered. That information can be updated, corrected, modified to be better, etc. without changing what the page is about. It just cannot change from being about apples to being about oranges instead.
Someone probably has more than my simple view. A whole lot more.
When a site grow and is trusted enough by Google to rank for the one word, competitive keywords, the EPC of the site seems to go down while traffic increases. Long tail traffic seems to bring better converting traffic.
I'd expect that any AdSense "trust score" would take multiple factors into account. For example, it could be based on data such as:
- Smart pricing.
- Google Search TrustRank or authority status.
- Whether the site is targeted for ad placements.
- Whether the site turns up in advertisers's site-exclusion filters.
- Any other "signals of quality" (or lack thereof) that might seem relevant.
Note my use of the word "could." The notion that Google uses any kind of trust or quality score for the AdSense network is pure speculation, so we can only talk about how we think such a hypothetical scoring system might or should work.
1.Take website www.everything.ruta, which deals with the subject of rutabagas. Let's assume it would qualify as pretty good in terms of design, layout, writing in the judgement of those on this board.
2. It gets, say, 1000 visitors a day. There are 2 AS units per page, so that's approx. 2000 imps, right?
3. In its rutabaga niche, there are 10 major competitors. Eight of these competitors get much more traffic each day than our example site.
4. When an ADWORDS advertiser opens the site selection panel for the topic 'rutabagas', he/she sees a list of possible sites. All the top 10 competitors are listed.
5. Our example site ranks first in the list, above competitors who generate much more volume. (For those who have not tried this exercise, the list does show a traffic volume figure. The list does not sort choices in order of volume, or for the matter, alaphabetically.)
6. Why is www.everything.ruta in the preferential first position? Could it be an illustration of "trust"? I don't know, but it makes me wonder.
This example is taken from a real situation.
1) Use the search algo strictly for page/ad relevance and give it a score.
2) Use everything else below for conversion and earnings likelihood and give it a higher weight score (which is what this thread is about):
2-a) Historical CTR data for the page
2-b) Estimated potential network earning from this page
2-c) Captured visitor navigation behavior
2-d) Reported advertiser conversions
2-e) Advertiser page targeting
2-f) Page estimated impressions share among similar pages (competition)
2-g) Estimated advertiser ad impressions for this page type (inventory)
2-h) Traffic source pertinent to topic
2-i) Above or below the fold
2-j) Geographical, time & language considerations (advertiser preferences)
2-k) Draw on network wide historical data of performance when matching this ad type with your page type
2-l) A dampening or boosting overall publisher specific earnings balancer (anti spikes)
2-m) All the 'advertiser comes first' factors that can override any of the above.
2-n) Last but not least SmartPricing which could be any combination or none of the above.
Your page is only one factor in the overall big picture. But there is a score for each ad location on your page, each of the above (and more) weight can be tweaked individually for optimum network performance, there is a knob after all.
