Hello, 1st post - looks good this forum Im very interested in knowing more about how smart pricing works - I know its only Google which knows all details etc, but I would like to hear your experiences. I have a site for 3 months which provided XXXX/day adsense clicks. Im now seeing a 3 times lower cpm than the first month. I know its not the advertiser who have lowered the rates that much, because I have a fellow webmaster who dont experience this with a very similar site. I dont have a problem with adsense lowering my eCPM (same ctr) on that site due to lack of conversion, but the problem is that my sites that I have had for years are also experiencing a much lower eCPM (same ctr). Bottom of line; does smart pricing have an effect on all your domains or just the one that doesnt convert well? From my stats and experience it effects all your domains, which seems quite "unfair" to me. Anyone else experienced this and what should I do? Anyone contacted Adsense? My concern about contacting Adsense is that wont "reveal" much of their smart pricing strategy. Your feedback are much appreciated Thanks, Jonas
I think it is on the whole account, which makes sense when you really think about it. When you sign up for AdSense, you only submit 1 URL. The premise is that you only put AdSense on that one URL, the one you submitted to get your account approved. The reality is people have attached their AdSense accounts not to one domain, but 2, 3, 5, 10, 100 and so on. Sooooo, to save Go ogle the time and headache of tracking your blogs or domains, they just Smart Price your entire account. I see this as a preventative step on their part. What happens is xyz.com gets smart priced, so you sub-domain or get a new domain name and point that to the new site. So now you have a new domain name that is not smart priced yet has the same traffic and content as the old site. So to cancel out the possibility, they just attach it to your entire account. Makes sense to me. I'm sure the more experienced members of the board will either correct me or add some additional insight. Brian
It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Smart-pricing should be either site-speficic or even better, page specific. If you have a page/site on Digital Cameras and a page/site on Normal cameras, the conversions/value (or estimated conversions/value by Google) of each should not inferere with one another. They should be judged and valued individually taking in to account pages similar to them that perform in the AdSense network. You do not judge the value of a publishers Pet Insurance site on how the same publishers Tropical Fish site performs and vice-versa - you should judge/value them only on how other sites related to each individual one performs on the network and how the sites own conversion data sits and smart-price them individually. Pete
Seconded. Principally I think the Adsense team should value domain by domain, but it would take a lot of work for the Adsense team. I wouldnt mind if it was sites that made $50 a month, but since some of my sites are in the XXXX range I think it would be more than fair to value if not page by page atleast domain by domain. Or some way to argue for a non-smart pricing account. I would gladly pull my ads on that site that caused the smart pricing if I could get a non smart priced account!
You could set-up multiple AdSense accounts under seperate corperations - probably worth it if your sites are earning a fair wack. At least then you know each site is being individually valued and that your earnings for all your sites are more 'fair'. Pete
Well, interesting thought. Thanks for the heads up. Is that against the TOS since I would be the owner of all the companies?
I didn't mean that I agree with it, but I do agree that smart pricing an entire account is better than doing nothing. Domain by domain would be great, or even channel by channel, but that would be a ton of development work on Google. It does make sense to do something if you remember why Smart Pricing was created. Smart pricing was created as an effort to show advertisers that Google is serious about wanting them to convert new clients and grow by using AdWords. Smart pricing has absolutely nothing to do with how much your site makes. Whether it is $50 or $1,000, makes no difference. Smart pricing is set based on AdWords conversions from your site. So according to the logic above...Let's play this out. Let's say you have 2 sites. Site A makes $50 for the publisher and leads to 10 sales for that AdWords advertiser Site B makes $1000 for the publisher and leads to 10 sales for the AdWords advertiser. From Google's perspective, Site A is more valuable because it has the higher conversion rate for the AdWords publisher. Site B, deserves to get smart priced because they produce nothing but wasted clicks for the advertiser. Smart pricing was Google's first step at preserving AdWords as a whole for the long term. As a publisher we should be happy about this because No AdWords = No AdSense.
Nope it's allowed if they are all seperate companies, even if you own them all. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/28/publisher-uses-multiple-adsense-accounts-to-increase-earnings/ There's an interesting link to how it may effect your earnings. Pete
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/28/publisher-uses-multiple-adsense-accounts-to-increase-earnings/ Thanks, interesting read. Present time my account is in my name and not my company's. I think I will ask Adsense if its ok I apply with my company. Anyone have done this before and what was the response? Thanks, Jonas
If the whole account is affected: What if an someone abuses a publisher's adsense publisher ID & gets the victim's (publisher) account "smart priced".
Since we know the entire account is affected... it therefore makes sense to not display adsense on pages where you notice "less relevant" ads being displayed. Smartpricing hit many of our clients hard for a period of roughly 3-5 weeks. Once we were able to figure out how to combat the monster ... and that's exactly what it is ... earnings, EPC as well as CTR's all shot through the roof. So... can David really beat Goliath? He does it everyday of the week.