AdSense CTR tanked

[drewfioravanti]

I have done, admittedly, a weak search on here and I am sure it has been discussed hundreds of times before, but I couldn't find an answer. So, please forgive my noobish ways.

I am new to this. I have been slowly learning and building. January was becoming my best month yet and I had earned more through the first 15 days of January than I had in the previous four months combined.

My sites are ranking better, and my pageviews are much higher. However, on January 18 my CTR tanked and my EPC also tanked. For example, today I have 2,000 pageviews and 1 click. I had a CTR of about 2-3%. I don't know why it all of the sudden dropped off and hasn't recovered.

I have changed the ads and the placement but nothing is working. I have changed them back to where they were before but nothing.

I have affiliate links that are converting, though.

[packerfan]

The CTR from adsense is a worthless measurement of anything. Are your visitors visiting more pages? If so, CTR goes down, but VISITOR conversion may go up or stay the same.

What you need to be concerned about is your VISITOR CTR not the adsense calculation which is pointless.

If you have a site where people go to more than 1 page, your CTR in adsense will always be low.

Make sure you understand the measures that determine if you're having success or not before changing stuff. It could just be that people actually like your site they are looking around a little more.

[drewfioravanti]

Good point. It looks like I have 95% unique visitors with an average pageview of 1.5.

At this point I am thinking it is better to just drop AdSense from my biggest sites since it isn't adding any value, apparently, to me, the visitor, the advertisers nor Google.

The affiliate commissions have been increasing steadily, but the average sale price is very low. Still, they are much more profitable than AdSense at this point.

[packerfan]

Originally Posted by drewfioravanti

Good point. It looks like I have 95% unique visitors with an average pageview of 1.5.

At this point I am thinking it is better to just drop AdSense from my biggest sites since it isn't adding any value, apparently, to me, the visitor, the advertisers nor Google.

The affiliate commissions have been increasing steadily, but the average sale price is very low. Still, they are much more profitable than AdSense at this point.

Test, test, test. If adsense adds a dollar a day, and taking it off doesn't add more, then leave it on.

Don't make assumptions. Typically a site that focuses on one thing (affiliate, selling it's own product, adsense) will do better, but there are a ton of examples where people have amazon/adsense sites and done testing and proven that the combo is better.

All depends on your site. The point is to test for yourself.

[tsx]

Originally Posted by packerfan

Test, test, test. If adsense adds a dollar a day, and taking it off doesn't add more, then leave it on.

Don't make assumptions. Typically a site that focuses on one thing (affiliate, selling it's own product, adsense) will do better, but there are a ton of examples where people have amazon/adsense sites and done testing and proven that the combo is better.

All depends on your site. The point is to test for yourself.

Some great info here that I did not notice myself before regarding Google ads. Thank you.