Adsense and Firebug

[realmaverick]

This is perhaps a bit of a strange question. I was playing about with my ad positioning in Firebug, for those who don't know. It's a Firefox plugin that allows you to manipulate live code.

After I'd finished playing about, perhaps 20 minutes, my eCPM had dropped $0.20 for the channel I was playing with, this is probably pure coincidence but I began to wonder, would Google be able to detect their ad moving all over the page, while I'm playing about with the CSS? and if so, would this look dodgy and lead to some kind of penalty.

Thanks in advance,

Paul

[dataguy]

My opinion is that AdSense responds much faster to changes than what people give it credit for. I use Firebug to optimize my pages as well, and changes in CPM happens quickly thereafter.

[realmaverick]

I agree. Changes in Adsense can be almost instant. Funny thing is, I didn't even end up saving the changes. It was purely messing about in Firebug.

I might test it some more, it would be quite humorous if Firebug did in fact alter eCPM.

Imagine the world of abuse that could open up :)

[Demaestro]

No they can't detect you playing with the CSS using Firebug.

The edits you see using Firebug all happen locally.

[realmaverick]

I know the edits happen locally. But adsense runs with JS, which I don't know a great deal about but figured perhaps it could communicate with the adsense server even after the ad had been served.

I'll talk to one of my developers later about the possibilities.

[Demaestro]

I really really don't think so, but if you are worried then do it offline.

[swa66]

Was there en effect on your CPC (cost per click (divide total earnings by the total clicks) ?

eCPM = earning per impression, if youre' viewing the page a lot, of course you drive this down as you drive up the impressions without being allowed to click.