Right vs. Left Sidebar Performance

[LuckyD]

Wondering if I should switch from right to left sidebar, based on the information from the old AdSense click heat map.

Any of you folks have the experience with testing sidebar positions?

[EditorialGuy]

I've always been leery of placing ads on the left side of the page, probably because I'm old enough to remember when three-column layouts were standard and the convention was:

| (L) navigation | (M) content | (R) ads

Three-column layouts aren't as common as they once were, but the convention among high-quality sites still appears to be "ads on the right side, not on the left." Still, if you want to try flipping things around, why not simply run a test?

[netmeg]

I have them on both, but the right side does MUCH better. Thinking of ways I can maybe do an A/B (the sidebars are different sizes, so I'd have to change the layout for "B" in order to run similar sized ads)

[ken_b]

I'm facing this issue on a new site.

Trying to make the site mobile friendly and still not have the ads fall to the bottom of the page. My plan was to put a 120x600 in the left column under the nav links with a little about us blub/link in between. That would leave a bit of the adblock showing above the fold on a small portrait orientation screen.

Not sure yet.

[breeks]

I have them on the right.

I used to have 160x600 left and right when I had a three three-column layout. It was overkill but worked well. Not so good for the visitor but good for the publisher

My right column is wide enough for a 336x280 which seems to work best. 300x600 looks good but an underperformer especially when it shows text ads.

[EditorialGuy]

300x600 looks good but an underperformer especially when it shows text ads.

I switched from 300 x 250 to 300 x 600 a few weeks ago and have been delighted by the improved performance, which just goes to show that, as the expression goes, "your mileage may vary."

I don't much like the look of the 300 x 600 units with text ads, but on the flip side, Google seems to populate more of those units with display ads (often for big brands in our field).

[breeks]

300x600 display ads are usually around 50 cents to a dollar a click, 300x600 Text version has 10 ads which only pay pennies.
Wonder what would happen if set to image only? Test time.

[fathom]

I prefer the right side navbar, but it has nothing to do with ads.

I prefer not to use any Meta Description thus allowing to totally snippet content.

With left side navbar, nav menus interfers with snippets, making what Google returns unpredictable unless you do custom edits of placing the page content above the navbar in the code.

With right side navbars the nav menus are below page content naturally, so you don't need to do anything.

[netmeg]

As I mentioned above, the text ads are so ugly these days (specially in the larger sized ads) I'm considering going all image. They certainly seem to have the inventory for it.

[Trixii]

The only data-based decision for you, in this case, is to launch an A/B/ test with the help of Google Content experiments or Mazymisely.com as an example (learned about them recently). All other methods (like guessing what arrangement of a banner will work better) may work well for someone, but don’t work for you, IMHO.

[frankleeceo]

I tested something similar when I first started in the beginning. The result is actually roughly the same. Now adsense actually converts into magazine based so it fills in image only slots. The result, not much difference between text and image only overall...Based on my own sites.