Number of Vignette Ads decreased after removing one click to a webpage

My users don't need to click, but I lost 15% of my revenues

[guarriman3]

Hi there,

I manage a website with 200,000+ products stored in a database. Initially, I had 2 different URLs per product (one with general description, another one with photos), with the consequent risk of thin content, crawl budget, etc. Additionally, the URL with photos did not include AdSense ads, since Google warned me that there were just pictures with no text.

- mydomain/main/productname [With 5 ad units]
- mydomain/photos/productname [With no ads]

On 31.10.2022 I decided to consolidate the content, to improve my SEO and to help users to browse the photos without the need of clicking to another page with just pictures. So I included a photo carousel in the main page of the product, and created a 301 from the existing photo pages.

- mydomain/main/productname [With a photo carousel that includes another ad unit]
- mydomain/photos/productname --> mydomain/main/productname#photos

Suddenly I saw how the number of impressions (and the income) decreased 10%-20%. I had no idea about the reasons, since the I hadn't removed any of the ads (even I created an extra one).

I have been analyzing the reason for this decline, and found that the number of impression of Vignette Ads decreased 60%. The 'Impression RPM' of the Vignette Ads is, on my website, much much higher than the rest of the formats, so the impact on my incomes is high.

I am in a dilemma with this matter: I do not want to bother my visitors, but I don't want to lose incomes either.

Any similar experience is welcome.

[not2easy]

Do you have a fast way to add or edit the canonical on your old (no ads) /photos/ pages to reflect the new URL? More about how/why from Google: [developers.google.com...]

You also want to be sure that the old 'image-only' pages have a noindex meta tag to help bots identify your preferred URL. You don't want them competing because the /products/ pages are where they 'exist' now with a 301. Don't block crawling of the /photos/ directory or the noindex tags won't be crawled. In theory G-bot will not see the old /photos/ pages now because the 301 goes to their new location but it doesn't hurt to add suspenders.

Check that you are not submitting those 'image-only' pages in your sitemap if you do submit a sitemap. You can noindex that directory with a simple X-Robots header. Also remember that Google does not digest changes rapidly and it may take some time to reflect your changes.

[guarriman3]

Hi @not2easy, thank you very much for your nice answer.

Do you have a fast way to add or edit the canonical on your old (no ads) /photos/ pages to reflect the new URL?

You mean that I should I edit the 'canonical' of '/photos/' and change it to '/main/', right?

You also want to be sure that the old 'image-only' pages have a noindex meta tag to help bots identify your preferred URL.

Done

Check that you are not submitting those 'image-only' pages in your sitemap if you do submit a sitemap.

Done

[tangor]

Good initial steps! Report back in a month or so and let us know what happens!

[not2easy]

Hi @guarriman3, yes, those are the changes I was suggesting. Google needs signals for changes and the old signals need looking at to ensure they are up to date with the latest changes. That can help speed up their understanding of "what happened" but it is still slower than it used to be. Good luck!