When should the alarm go off - regarding the CTR?

what change in percentages should ring the alarm?

[martsd]

I was just wondering - what percentage of changes in CTR should ring the alarm i.e., when should i be worried and send an email to G?

I have a an average CTR of say x.2% - now suddenly the CTR has jumped to y.5% - with a difference of more than 1% - should i be alarmed? - as a matter of fact - my pageviews have dropped and CTR got increased. Yes! I did some tweaking to my pages - nothing against TOS.

This is the first day the CTR jumped such highs - should I wait for another few days to see the trend - or will it be too late?

Please share your thoughts.

[Jenstar]

If your CTR jumps from 1% to 30%, worry ;) If you are under about about 10% with fluctuations, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[mike schmitz]

I think judging increase in CTR by percentage can be a bad idea especially when your CTR is low to being with (not an insult - some sites just make virtue have lower CTR).

I would be more concerned if you went from .5% to 5%. A lot of things can change your CTR from time of day, day of week (Sundays typically have great CTR on my sites), new traffic, etc.

The best way to insulate yourself from getting booted from Google in my opinion (if that is what you are worried about) is to constantly increase your traffic so that a couple of unscrupulous people doing bad clickings don't really effect your total stats. Even if that is not possible, I wouldn't be concerned. Way to many people overreacting here and perhaps they have planted a bad seed. Run a clean website - don't sweat the small stuff.

M

[martsd]

Thank you Jenstar and mike - no my CTR didn't jump off the roof - it just went a little over 1%.

Then its cool! - no worries. Thanks again.

[jetteroheller]

That dependes on the impressions.

If You would look on every single impression, the CTR will be many time 0% and sometimes 100% 200% 300% or even more.

Small ad channels with below 1000 impressions a day can still have a wild up and down of CTR.

There was just a discussion about this and the statistic background.