Google penalizes AdSense Arbitrage?

Lower EPC when arriving from AdWords/Overture

[ari11210]

Do any of you direct traffic to an adsense page through overture/adwords, and if so, have you been tracking EPC differences between people arriving through overture/adwords vs. other means. I have been tracking it for a few days and it seems that the EPCs are consistently MUCH lower for traffic that arrived through AdWords and Overture. Has anyone else seen anything similar?

Thanks

[spaceylacie]

I've never tried it but it seems like, if they got to your site via an ad, they are probably a person who clicks ads often(or a least occasionally-some people almost never click ads) and would be more likely to click on ad on your site compared to other visitors.

Maybe Google doesn't pay as much for click happy visitors? Surely they know the IP address of the clicker.

[elsewhen]

i have found it very difficult to get it to work... you are probably best off creating more content for your visitors, and increasing you revenue that way.

[ncwonline]

People arriving through regular search engines are doing general searches for what they are looking for and are thus more ready to click on an ad if it interest them.

People who have already clicked on an ad are much less willing to keep clicking on more ads.

I take myself for an example. If I search for something and end up clicking on an ad instead of a search engine result listing I expect to find exactly what I am looking for at the website I get to from clicking the ad NOT more ads so I never click ads in this case just leave if the site does not have what I want.

Maybe your AdWords and Overture visitors are more like me and will not click on more ads?

[ari11210]

Thanks all. I am not concerned with how many clicks I get, I am asking whether google pays less per click for traffic that comes though adwords/overture. Based on my stats it seems that the EPC is much lower for this traffic. Has anyone seen similar?
Thanks

[gamb]

it's tough to make work - you can find terms that will work, but not enough volume to make a lot of money (my experience at least)

i've also tried with the blowsearch and kanoodles of the world, but that didn't work because those aren't humans on the other end of that traffic.... ;)

[petra]

Most of my targeted trafic is through adwords and I've been doing fine with that, but I'm not sure how you'd measure were the click was from unless you use an adsense tracker and it seems you do in which case can you please sticky me with the name. :)

[sailorjwd]

I've gone through an unwanted experiment recently. I used to get about 60% of visitors via free search. Recently, this week in particular, 95% of my traffic is paid via adwords.

I've noticed no significant change in EPC during this switch over to Adwords visitors. And my CTR is up a bit, so it appears once a clicker always a clicker.