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Since my site hit no. 1 in the SERPS, Adsense CTR is down 80%?!

by markowe
3 replies
  • SEO
    • |
OK, so my little minisite - the first I have really tried to monetise with Adsense - hits no. 4 on page one, starts getting a bit of traffic, CTR pretty high. We're not supposed to talk about CTR (Adsense TOS), but let's say around a third of visitors seemed to be in a buying mood

My site starts to Dance, disappears for almost a month, then reemerges in the no. 1 slot - imagine my joy! Traffic doubles at least, for the same kwp, but... CTR is waaaaaay down, like, single figures! Basically I will be lucky to make the same as I was in the no. 4 slot!

What gives? Anyone else have that experience?

OK, I did make some small changes to the page so it looked a little less like an Xfactor, and I am going to try different tweaks to the layout to see if I can improve things again.

But I wonder if there could be any other explanation?

- maybe there are more non-buyers visiting the no. 1 ranking site (i.e. more junk traffic)? At no.4 I was pressed up against the shopping results - maybe that was actually BETTER, because it got the attention of the buyers!

- maybe I am showing less relevant ads for some reason - hard to tell, it's UK traffic I am interested in and I am not in the UK to test it. But haven't changed the content that much, so doubt it.

Anyone got any similar experience/simpler explanation?

Mark
#80% #adsense #ctr #hit #serps #site
  • Profile picture of the author SEOSrilanka
    I think its now your time to test your ad placement, format and the ad style. Also not all day is luck. May be you could get luckier tomorrow. I would say do some ad test, try playing around with the placements and stuff.
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    • Profile picture of the author markowe
      Originally Posted by SEOSrilanka View Post

      I think its now your time to test your ad placement, format and the ad style. Also not all day is luck. May be you could get luckier tomorrow. I would say do some ad test, try playing around with the placements and stuff.
      Thanks. It's been a couple of days, so I will definitely change some things.

      In fact, I'll just put everything back that way it was when I had a high CTR and see what happens!

      Interestingly, I notice the Adsense bot hasn't visited for 2 or 3 days now - I was the only visitor before then (because I wasn't in the SERPS) and it was showing me ads that it was obviously targetting to ME personally, based on sites I had visited previously. I wonder if it continues showing those sites to new visitors too... They are less relevant, so that might explain it. A visit from the Adsense bot might fix things...
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      Who says you can't earn money as an eBay affiliate any more? My stats say otherwise

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      • Profile picture of the author aygabtu
        Originally Posted by markowe View Post

        Thanks. It's been a couple of days, so I will definitely change some things.

        In fact, I'll just put everything back that way it was when I had a high CTR and see what happens!

        Interestingly, I notice the Adsense bot hasn't visited for 2 or 3 days now - I was the only visitor before then (because I wasn't in the SERPS) and it was showing me ads that it was obviously targetting to ME personally, based on sites I had visited previously. I wonder if it continues showing those sites to new visitors too... They are less relevant, so that might explain it. A visit from the Adsense bot might fix things...

        I thought it was cool when someone from France sent me a screen shot of my site and they included the ad. It was in french and obviously nothing I had ever seen before. Pretty cool!
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        Check top 300 Google SERP results free. WhatsMySERP.com tracks and graphs changes for multiple domains/keywords/regions. Also includes advanced keyword density tool.

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