How does google determine EPC in Adsense?

You are looking at search.

Display network is at least 50% lower.

Your site, with no track record, is more like 10% of that.

So, you see $10, get dollar signs in your eyes, then find out
that it's really $5 on the display network, and you're lucky
to get a 50 cent click. Netting, BTW, 34 cents.

This leads to accusing google of ripping them off, tempting
them to kill the goose that laid the golden egg by doing
stupid things with their adsense pages.

Your site, with no record, will not attract high bidders. It
might attract no bidders except global advertisers, paying
very little. As your site gets clicks and results, your
score will rise. Your sites could eventually get more than
on search.

Then there's the topic of being smartpriced. If your traffic
gets mindless clicks, your ads will be sold at basement prices
to help adwords users pump up the ROI.

Paul

hi paul thanks for you quick reply,

i do understand what you say there, no track record = no stable cpc.
but if a 10$ keyword goes to as low as 34cent (as you say) then how can people with new long-tail-keyword websites of 2$ cpc and 5k exact hits do make more then 34cents !?
I guess traffic type does matter when it comes to EPC imo.

For this you need a lot of traffic. Then you can go also with yahoo ads, they paid more, but chance to be accepted are very low.