Question for Adsense expert

I'm pretty sure I'm right about this, but after years of promoting Adsense and having read numerous ebooks on the subject (which doesn't mention this), and getting lower than expected CPC (yeah I know there's smart pricing) here's my conclusion.

There's 2 different networks (search and content) and Google's Adwords keyword tool displays the search network CPC while many people are using those figures, but they are using the content network.

When you go to create your Adsense "ad" you have 2 choices, search or content. Most people choose the content link and put up those text ads, in fact all of the ebooks I've read use those types of ads while basing the CPC on the SEARCH network figures (thus the lower than expected CPC).

The search network means placing the Google searchbox on your site and having your visitors do a search which brings up the SERPs (Google's listings), and if they click on an ad on that page you'll get the higher search network CPC.

However, most people try to get listed in the SERPs to get people to click on their listing which brings them to their website. If they click on an ad there it's the content network CPC. It pays a higher percentage (70%), but at a significantly lower CPC. If you've ever tried target placement on the content network you'll know what I mean.

Basically to get the search (Google keyword tool) CPC you need to get your website visitor to do a "Google searchbox" search AND click on ab Adwords ad from that page. If they just click on an ad at your site it'll be the content network CPC (not shown).

Does that make sense?

 

It makes perfect sense but you sure know how to complicate it. lol

 

That's easier said than done. Getting a visitor to use search facilities on your site is pretty hard unless you have tons of content. And unfortunately, the majority of Adsense publishers have a lack of content (the real problem).

 

I'm having a very low paying month after redirecting a site and crashing my stats, but my search RPM is $4 and my content RPM is 50c, if that is any indication of the difference. And I've only had the search box up for a week.

I put the search box in the header of my site, by necessity, it replaced a default CMS search box that I took off because it was so crap it wasn't finding the most popular search phrase both within and referring to my site.

 

What I meant was in order to get the CPC you see in Google's keyword tool you need to have your website visitor do a search from YOUR site from a searchbox that you have installed on your site.

If they just use the text or image ads as suggested by lots of ebooks on Adsense you'll get a much lower CPC than what's shown. Most Adsense ebooks make no mention of using the searchbox.

So in other words basing which keywords you target because of the CPC could be flawed to start with if you're targeting keywords with a CPC of two or three dollars with 2,000 exact match searches.

Thanks

 

Bob, does it also happen the other way round? The CPC that I get from my blog is way higher than what Adwords Toolbar shows. I think this is because my niche is relatively new and there is not enough data put up on Adwords, but still.

 

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. It's just that getting visitors to utilize your search isn't always easy. The visitor has to have a reason to use the search and in most cases, they don't need to.

 

I'm not sure what's going on with your CPC, I didn't really get into the Adwords part, I did advertise on the search and content network so I know a little about how it works, but I never did a comparison on a keyword. I'd "guesstimate" the content network is around 20% of the CPC on Google's keyword tool (probably even less, lower conversion rate as well). But generally the content network is significantly less.

You might want to see what spyfu.com has as the CPC, but as for the CPC being higher on your site I wouldn't know.

You might also try the different match types, "Exact" usually has a higher CPC then Broad or Phrase.

 

Don't get me wrong either

I guess I phrased the question wrong.

Mostly I wanted to see if I was right about Google's tool displaying the search CPC.

While every ebook on Adsense uses the content network, BUT uses search network data. AND failing to mention this.

 

Very true and I'm actually quite surprised nobody has pointed this out before, because it is pretty significant to your CPC.

 

I think we atleast need like 1000 of unique article to get something out of addsence by organic traffic.