Is It True?

no , i don't think so

I don't think so, ugly theme like CTR theme?

I think this is a myth that may have evolved many years back with POF while they were earning mostly with adsense.

Needless to say, they themselves have evolved. The site isn't so ugly any more and they have a different monetization model.

The topic may be worth further investigation. And I wonder if G (or anyone else) might have some quantifiable evidence to support either side.

In the meantime... I'll just keep cashing my Adsense checks generated by my "ok" looking sites

Basically almost every one disagrees with that theory so far, so my next question is do you think my site is ugly? If yes any ideas on how to make it look better and more appealing. Thanks.

If there was something to this you would see the biggest sites on the internet all ugly, instead they tend to pay money to make sure their websites are well thought out and put together professionally.

I think this says a lot about the mindset, if you are the kind of person that thinks creating a ugly website is great because you will make a dollar more a day... get some pride. I would rather work on increasing traffic then how to be uglier but that could be just me.

I don't think its true. I use adsense pro ultimate ctr theme and magnum ctr theme on all my adsense sites and people like it. Bounce rate is also very low. So I doubt this hypothesis!

In my opinion: i think this is a complete lie, because who can like ugly websites more than good looking one ?

Heck no, I have had crappy sites, and I still don't think my site is still good enough, but I try to make it more attracting. But you need to build a simple, clean, attractive site or your traffic is going to be in and out in no time.

Hi eeeasyas12345,

It can be true, and it can be not true. It all depends on the strategy that is being used on the website to direct clicks towards the Adsense blocks.

For example, the strategy employed by ugly looking websites is generally something like this. People make the website so ugly, that people want to click away as fast as they can to go to a different page. They don't know where to click, and the Adsense blocks stand out because they're not as ugly maybe so they click on that to try and get away.

This type of strategy can get a higher CTR than nice looking sites, if they nice looking sites are not properly optimized. The thing with nice looking sites is that they look so nice that they detract away from the Adsense blocks. So people would rather look at and click on elements on the site rather than the Adsense blocks.

However, if you craft the site such that you take control of the attention of the visitors from the nice-looking content, slowly towards the Adsense blocks, you can get a higher CTR than ugly sites. For example, if you are using a nicely designed one-column site that forces people's attention from top to bottom, and you place Adsense blocks in a place that happens to be along their line of sight and attention, you can get a CTR better than the ugly site...

I don't see any relation between them, The only thing i know is that visitors and almost all people, like beautiful websites more than ugly ones. Whats your own opinion about it?

Ugly or pretty, doesn't matter. Just try and blend your ads in with your site.

When you have a web page with a bunch of distractions, your going to get a lower CTR, it's that simple. Doesn't matter If your running Adsense or selling a Mercedes Benz.

I've said this before, look at sites like Google Search, it's not that it's ugly, it's the simple fact that the web page is minimal by design. Google knows that they can get a higher CTR from a minimal page design.

Having a minimal web page design is the easiest way to boost CTR, the reason it helps is because traffic isn't going to stay on your web page for very long (that goes for all web pages on the net). Web traffic scans pages, If your not funneling traffic down a planned path, they'll most likely bail from the page or click links that don't get sales.

Ugly doesn't boost CTR (minimal does), don't bombard the traffic with too many options, keep it simple & very focused.

Simple sites and ugly sites are very different things. I definitely think simply laid out sites do better with Google Adsense because it's easier for the reader to navigate through.