Am I being smart priced?

[gamemerlin]

Hi,

I need advice as I think i am being smart priced by adsense. Without going into too many specifics half my traffic comes from keywords that are worth $2.00 a click.

my expectation was that I would get $1.00 a click, i have been told google pays out at least half if not more.

my average CPC is less that 20 cents though. What is going on? am i being smart priced? this is way lower than I expected. Granted the other half of my traffic is cheap, 5 cents a click. So i was expecting at least 50 cents on average

if i am suffer from smart pricing how do i fix it? i looked everywhere and have done all the optimizations. the only thing i can think of is my site is small, less than 20 pages, is that a factor?

also it is new, less than 1 year old, 10 months old. Is there a checklist of things i should check?

All of my content is relavant and original. My ads are a very good match i get very contextual matchs. I just am not getting any where near the max potential value of the click.

[outwest]

Who says the CPC is 2.00? The google adwords tool?
go enter the kw in Spyfu, see what that says

also go enter it in Contextual kw tool on adwords tool
those are way more accurate than the adwords CPC numbers

[gamemerlin]

yes just checked on spyfu. 1.50 - 1.85 which sounds right

13 advertisers

around 100 clicks a day

I assume spyfu.com's data set is same from adwords no?

[Steve Crooks]

It is way too simplistic to assume that you will receive half of the Adwords quoted CPC for a keyword for the following reasons.

1. Just because Adwords might quote $2, that is the estimated bid amount for the top spot of Google's own search results page. Advertisers will bid varying amounts (usually just cents) to hopefully appear on the first results page on Google (most cant afford the top spots).

2. Advertisers can choose to have their ads shown on the content network and/or search pages and usually that means, they bid a lot, lot less to appear on the content network (Adsense).

3. Advertisers can choose CPM as well as CPC. This means that if an ad gets displayed on your site (not necessarily clicked) with CPM, you will earn a few cents for that.

4. Bid prices fluctuate constantly depending on budgets and this has a knock on effect on what we get paid for Adsense.

5. Yes, your account could be subject to smart pricing. In fact it is, because all Adsense accounts are. The best way to ensure that you are getting the best from smart pricing is to try and angle your content and keyword choice to keywords that advertisers would benefit from. For example, perhaps a dog food advertiser would see good returns from placing ads on your web page all about the benefits of bran in a dogs diet.

6. Don't forget that the ads are not always contextual any more but also based on visitor's interests as well. this can also impact on the ads shown and Adsense earnings.

These are just a few reasons.. Nobody really knows how Google determine what the Adsense publishers get paid, except Google of course.