Is is right to encourage people to make my site their home page

Maintaining traffic

[jacov888]

As a means of ensuring traffice to my website is constant I am advising poeple to make my site thier homepage, is it against the TOC. It is not clear if this constitutes an artificial inflation of impressions as poeple can also search the web through google search on my site. It is something I would do if I were not an adsense publisher, moreover it aint earning much for me.

[stuartc1]

Do you mean asking people to bookmark your site (add to there favourite) or asking people to make your homepage there browsers default loading page?

Any of the above is not going to cause any problems with google. I see absolutly no problems with this. Google can't set rules like that, that would be crazy.

[Heartlander]

I think this is a valid question, and I would like to email G to clarify.
What if I/we were to use a Site Map page with the Google Search (AdSense) Bar at the top of the page?

It does seem to be viable.
My question is whether any advertisers are getting the short end on the "impressions" end of it.
How would that search bar even use impressions anyway-since we don't know which AdWords account would be billed until someone actually enters a search term, and someone clicks on the resulting ads?

[jacov888]

Thanks guys, since I see no reason not to encourage poeple to do so I will continue the practice, but if anyone know of any reasone why it is not to be done, please let me know. Thanks

[aeiouy]

It is not against the terms of service, but as a long-time web site user, I would say it is annoying. I don't need a site asking me to bookmark them. Makes me think they are up to no good. I know how to bookmark sites I want to keep.

At this point even the most neophyte users have a handle on bookmarking sites.

It certainly doesn't hurt to ask, I just think it is cheesy, personally.

[Heartlander]

He's not talking about bookmarking- the issue is making a given site the Homepage.

Much like Firefox gives me a nice big 'ol Google Search bar in the middle of the page.

But, the point here is to have one's Google Search for AdSense bar ; )

[MrAnchovy]

At this point even the most neophyte users have a handle on bookmarking sites.

Funny you should say such a thing.
While it's not an everyday occurance, I regularly get emails from folks asking how to they can save my page to their favs and/or make my site their homepage.

[aeiouy]

Funny you should say such a thing.
While it's not an everyday occurance, I regularly get emails from folks asking how to they can save my page to their favs and/or make my site their homepage.

I should be punished for generalizing and overestimating people... Every time I try to give people credit, I am punished for it.

[hunderdown]

One possible downside for you--if a lot of people use your site as their browser homepage and go do something else after opening your browser, you could reduce the CTR for ads on your home page. Which could have a negative impact on smart pricing for the site as a whole--there is some evidence that CTR affects smart pricing.

[Meike]

there is some evidence that CTR affects smart pricing

I'd be curious to know what evidence there is of that exactly. Have there been any threads specifically to that question that someone might be able to point me to?

[RandomOne]

Definately nothing wrong with it, if like was mentioned you have adsense on a sitemap page with no geniune content that is not a good idea against TOS. The only bad thing I found with have make this your homepage link is the amount of people who do click that link and then end up emailing you and cursing you out about how to stop your website coming up first (like you sat at their computer and clicked the link yourself!) having to appease these non net savvy users gets really annoying all for the sake increasing traffic by a little.

[hunderdown]

Meike, Yes, there have been threads about that, but none recently, and I'm too tired to go searching for them. I was one of the contributors and I can tell you that when I removed AdSense ad code from pages that had CTRs that were significantly lower than the site average, overall income went UP.

This happened more than once. I lost a few clicks but the increase in EPC more than made up for them. I don't think it's a coincidence.

It also has not worked for everyone. I can speculate as to why, but I think this is another of those areas where one has to test.

In any case, the experience makes me wary of doing anything that brings in more traffic if that traffic isn't as likely to be interested in the AdSense ads as my existing traffic is.

[perfectlover]

Thanks guys, since I see no reason not to encourage poeple to do so I will continue the practice, but if anyone know of any reasone why it is not to be done, please let me know. Thanks

Dont you think it will cause lot of impression from same IP and Google might suspect that you are inflating advertiser by making FALSE impressions?

[ann]

I Use a small javascript for each, bookmark and homepage with an unobtrusive link somewhere in the top of my page. It works very well and I have numerous return visitors. I have done this before adsense and after adsense was added to my sites.

My smallest site was redone recently, the one Google doesn't think should get off page 4 or 5 for the main keyword is gaining popularity and clicks since I added that line across the top.

An email a friend link works good too.

I will take return visitors any day, they still click on the ads.

Ann

[incrediBILL]

I would be concerned that being a home page would elevate page impressions and drastically lower CTR which might engage smart pricing as your site would suddenly appear to no longer be as useful to your audience due to the disparity of impressiona and CTR.