Google Adsense: Less is More?
By nickel
After thinking long and hard about this, I decided to remove some of the Google Adsense blocks from FiveCentNickel and Raising4Boys about ten days ago. All of the positions were performing reasonably well, but I wanted to unclutter things a bit. Thus, I decided to tackle the weakest performing slots. I removed the right sidebar skyscraper from throughout the site, and also removed the ad block from the center column on the front page (between the first and second entry).
It felt great to free up that extra space, and I quickly took advantage of it by adding more widgets to the right sidebar. The next day, however, I started questioning the wisdom of this move. Adsense performance was down. Way down — by about 50%. Then again, sometimes you just have a bad day. Since I was already grooving on the lower density of ads, I decided to just sit tight. And then something interesting happened… My earnings rebounded. Big time. Over the next couple of days, Adsense performance returned to normal, and as of this writing, I’m actually doing better than I was before I removed the Adsense.
I still haven’t had time to sort out everything that’s gone on, but my overall clickthrough rate (CTR) is about what it was before I removed the extra ads, and the cost per click (CPC) is likewise unchanged. Thus, it appears that the Adsense activity from the now defunct ad slots has been re-focused on the remaining ad slots. Whatever the cause, I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. It seems that I can have my cake and eat it, too!
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I tried the same thing — I removed all my adsense ads, and my CTR rate remained unchanged, at 0.
I like your commenter plugin. I’m not competitive, but it makes me want to be. However, I need to ensure I’m only added valuable comments, not just spamming to get to the top of the list.
Your removing the ads probably just coincided with a general drop that occurs from time to time.
The ‘back-to-normality’ is a case of…. well….. people can only click on one ad link…. and then they’re gone.
Nice change, Nickel. What plugin are you using for the “most comments” list?
The top commenters plugin is here:
http://www.pfadvice.com/wordpress-plugins/show-top-commentators/
And the most commented post plugin is from here:
http://dev.wp-plugins.org/browser/most-commented/
Less is really more with AdSense. I started out with lots of google ads plasted just about everywhere. I’ve sinced freed up some vaulabel real estate and am making more from AdSense than ever before!
Cheers.