Adsense With HTTPS

[hamedh]

Every few months, I try to convert our website to be HTTPS only, but see a drastic reduction in clicks (not impressions). My guess the ads are less interesting for users. According to Adsense Help page (https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/10528?hl=en), there's less inventory available for secure SSL sites. This has been going on for over a year though, is this pretty common behavior for other sites? Just can't imagine these days why we can't run a HTTPS only site and not have the same inventory. Not sure if there's also any new announcements from Google regarding this.

[Edge]

is this pretty common behavior for other sites?

For my site this is true.. I would love to arrange a meeting between Google AdSense and Search Spam Group..

[netmeg]

I'm an advertiser on behalf of clients, and I have yet to see any kind of a push by Google (other than the normal search push) to get the advertisers to use https on their landing pages. Until that happens, the inventory is going to be an issue.

[creeking]

why would the landing pages need to be httpS ?

[netmeg]

Some important things to know about the SSL-compatible ad code:

HTTPS-enabled sites require that all content on the page, including the ads, be SSL-compliant. As such, AdSense will remove all non-SSL compliant ads from competing in the auction on these pages. If you do decide to convert your HTTP site to HTTPS, please be aware that because we remove non-SSL compliant ads from the auction, thereby reducing auction pressure, ads on your HTTPS pages might earn less than those on your HTTP pages.

The SSL-compatible code also works on HTTP sites and doesn’t change how ads are served on these sites.

Older versions of the AdSense ad code don’t work with secure content. If you try to run HTTP ads on an HTTPS site, on most older browsers your visitors will get a mixed content warning, while on some modern browsers your visitors might not see any ads at all. If you want to place ads on secure pages, you’ll need to use the new SSL-compatible ad code.

[creeking]

yeah, I saw that. what part talks about the after-the-click landing pages ?

that looks like notes for the publisher's page, and the advertisements that are shown on the publisher's page.

[Edge]

I'm an advertiser on behalf of clients, and I have yet to see any kind of a push by Google (other than the normal search push) to get the advertisers to use https on their landing pages.

I would also like the opportunity to arrange a meeting between the Adsense and Adwords groups at Google..

[netmeg]

what part talks about the after-the-click landing pages ?

I'm pretty sure that a secure landing page is part of the SSL-compliant ads policy. Supposedly everything involved in the click from soup to nuts needs to be under SSL.

[robzilla]

I'm pretty sure that a secure landing page is part of the SSL-compliant ads policy.

I disagree. The landing page is not part of the ad itself, and only the ad needs to be SSL-compliant to avoid mixed content warnings (and blocking) on SSL-enabled pages. The policy is for third-party vendors [support.google.com] who co-inhabit Google's ad ecosystem. For ad serving purposes, I see no direct benefit in requiring SSL on landing pages.

Not all of these vendors currently support SSL (and despite the policy I still sometimes get mixed content warnings), but most do. The impact of switching to SSL should be minimal.

[nomis5]

There were a few posts about the subject of conversion to https a while back that claimed it was a change to a couple of lines of code and all would be OK. We are now hearing about the disastrous results for some, not all, of a change of this nature.

Forget it for the moment if you have Adsense on your pages is my advice. The whole thing is a massive bag of worms and even G are backtracking faster than normal concerning their initial advice to convert.

Don't do it yet! Wait for a year or so and see how it all works out.

[eek2121]

https didn't affect my earnings at all. I moved my entire site to https a while back. Didn't affect things in the least.

[Nutterum]

If you implement https badly, this would affect all your marketing and advertising channels. We migrated to https and I saw nothing but positive outcomes.

[Edge]

If you implement https badly

Can you give an example of "badly"?