Are google's new ad layouts affecting your CTR?

[londrum]

Has anyone noticed a definite drop in CTR since google changed the ad layouts?

im talking about the underline on the URL, and moving the URL to the right of the title in the big 300 and 336 boxes.

in the 336 box especially, my CTR has seen quite a big drop. im not too sure when they made the changes, but im guessing its around the 24th june sometime.

My earnings usually drop around the end of month anyway, which is normal, so im wondering if people can narrow down the date a bit? i know there's nothing that we can do about the change, but it would be nice to attribute the drop to something definite.

[littlegiant]

Yes definitely. Comparing June 1-24 to June 25-present, my CTR has dropped by 50%. I was thinking maybe the US Independence Day weekend might have something to do with it but I'm not seeing the same thing in the same period last year so it looks like that jumbled mess of a new ad layout might be to blame.

[HuskyPup]

No noticeable difference at all for me at the moment.

[andrewshim]

June 21st onwards noticed a decline.

[netmeg]

They're definitely ugly, but CTR is just about the same for me. Up a little, if anything.

[thatjen]

I don't know the exact date but my CTR dropped about a half percent or more around the last week of June. It coincided with when I first noticed the change in the 336 units. All of my 336 units, across a few sites, dropped in CTR, and my wide skyscraper dropped too - the font size in that one got bigger and the text got all jumbled. I had the font set to large, and tried default and medium and it looked the same, so I changed it to small to avoid the jumbled look. I experimented with the font color a tiny bit with the 336 unit and probably will some more. Overall I'm soo sad because things keep getting worse and worse for me, even though my traffic (mostly search engine traffic) is the same as always, or better.

[Dopa_Fiend]

My 336 unit CTR took a dive by about 25% from June 23 on, causing a loss of about 25% in earnings as well. CPC stayed relatively the same.

After a tip from someone else here... I switched to Arial from Verdana font, which seemed to help recover my CTR mostly these last four days.

The Verdana wasn't rendering properly as large due to the characters being crowded it appeared. Arial doesn't seem to be having this problem.

[londrum]

Has anyone worked out how to get the old style back? I mean, can you change from using the 336 box to the 300 box, and change the font to something else?

I've had a fiddle, but the URLs always seem appear next to the title, even if they end up getting cut off.

[Play_Bach]

As far as I know, the URL by the title is not something we have any control over. I've been complaining about this for awhile. Here's my post from April 9
[webmasterworld.com...]

[ken_b]

I haven't noticed any significant change in CTR that would seem to be related to the new url location.

Not sure how I'd be able to pin that down anyhow, other than a big CTR change when the new format first appeared.

[thatjen]

I have been playing around with the colors of the 336 unit ad since they moved the url next to the title, but so far nothing I've tried has helped the CTR. Has anyone actually had success raising their CTR by changing the colors on this ad unit? I've tried making the title and URL the same color, the text and URL the same color, in attempts to make the title stand out, and now I have it where the url is a darker version of the text, and the title sort of jumps out. But no matter what I've tried, the ad is still performing about 30% worse than before the format changed.

I was thinking of switching to the 300 size, but that looks sort of cramped, and it didn't perform as well when I used to use it a few years ago.

[londrum]

one thing that I am finding increasingly annoying, is that the font sizes in the 'manage ad' section seem to have absolutely no effect.

I've got a big 300 box ad, and tried changing it to large, but the font size looks exactly the same. Its as if google has decided they want 4 ads in that box, and the only way they can fit them in is if the font size stays small.

either google lets us change fonts and sizes, or they dont. but they shouldn't give us the option and then completely ignore it.

[simonbuzz12]

My CTR is dropped since the new panda update...

[Taqwaconsulting]

Oh yes, My CTR dropped from whopping 5% to less than 1%. Damn panda update!