6 months later, how is your CTR without sidebar ads in Google?

1 replies
  • PPC/SEM
  • |
Just curious since most of the discussion was hypothetical when it first happened. Has it really hurt or is it about the same for you?
#ads #ctr #google #months #sidebar
  • When Google implemented this, there was much concern that costs would go up. In fact, most people said so. I started a thread in this forum saying that they would not go up. They haven't.

    Of course, I test a lot on behalf of clients so there is a lot of variables that may affect my costs. The idea is to get more traffic for them. But in January for one client, the CPC was $0.4855, which is the goal. Last month, it was $0.4956 and that is not statistically very significant, just 2% higher. In July 2015 it was $0.6274 so I improved that metric with CTRs going from 11% to 15%. Like I often say as does dburk, CPC is not your most important metric.

    Another client, CPC went up but for a different and known reason. It is however down from a year ago. For a third and new client, it went up a bit but again, not because of this change. The campaign is very different than in February. The CPC is actually about the same now than it was a year ago for a 15% increase in traffic. I have similar stories with a couple other clients, one in fact where the CPC is about half what it was in February.

    So the reports of CPC increase gloom and doom were greatly exaggerated, just as I predicted.

    The new expanded ads will probably increase CTR (Google I believe predicts 20%) and this may lower CPC by a few percent for those taking advantage.
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