I've found out that I "forgot" to put adsense on a part of my most popular site. I didn't place it there because I didn't deemed it worthy and actually even forgot that part of my site. My webstats are so overwhelming that I didn't even noticed. Litle did I know that that part not only has the highest pagerank of every site I have, it also is the main entrypoint for stray visitors (who eventually go to the main site). (i found out with the google webmastertools) I've added 2 adsense units to this part yesterdaynight and my CTR skyrocketed! It's been running for 7 hours now and was responsible for 30% of the past hour's of revenue (which somehow did not raise much) I've mailed google about this already, because I didn't expected it to be so successfull and am afraid that this sudden spike of CTR and traffic will get my account suspended. Should I actually be scared? I've placed the ads without borders themselves, but I've seperated them from the content with <hr>'s. I've now removed the 2nd ad-unit, because that causes a lot of clickthroughs too. Isn't it stupid that people are actually scared instead of thrilled and happy when they found a goldmine in their trashcan?
You're afraid that your making money? Seriously? Sell me the site then, I'd love to have Adsense on it.
a sudden spike in traffic and revenue could mean account suspension if you've read through the horror stories here. And it's not a site, it's part of a site.
you are asking for the trouble and search your visitor logs for any illegal activity and report it to Google also try whether your competitors are clicking on your ads
in my experience, emailing them to let them know, cant hurt you in the least so why not play it safe?
I've already emailed them, I'm just wonderig if I should remove the ads for now until I get a respond. I doubt it's illegal activity, because I've placed the add under a seperate chanel to monitor it, and it's all originating from that part of the site. I guess the type of visitors are just more clickhappy, because the frequent visitor use the main door, and those who comes in trhough this backdoor are coming from search engines and are actually looking for something.
Wait a bit longer, like a week, and then look at your stats. 7 hours is simply not long enough to evaluate anything. Cryo.
Why worry? because of this: although there are nothing that breaks the TOS it's never a good sign when the big bad G goes "hmmm"
I am also interested in the site! bascially i have 40%-50% CTR on some sites for years with no problem at all
as long as you're not getting the traffic from a traffic farm you have nothing to worry about. You're just monetizing one of your valued assets. There are legit reasons for traffic spikes all the time. Someone picks up a blog on well read site and poof - that page is gonna get all the Adsense love of the day.
This is not a problem - especially since you notified google of it. Just enjoy the profit. And a 30% increase in one day really isn't that much. I have fluctuations between A and 3A (roughly).
mobilebay: wow, between 30 and 120 % ctr?? Thats pretty amazing. I'd love to see the layout of your site, would you mind showing it?
it hasn't been too long PLUS you've notified G. i wouldn't be too worried. funny to see quite a few "scared" postings here these days!
what raises a red flag is if your page hasn't changed, you haven't changed the ads, and it went from a consistant 1% CTR for months and months to 15% all of the sudden. that's one thing. you putting ads in new places and making changes and seeing a moderate rise (150%) is nothing that rare. don't worry about it. worst thing that'll happen is smart pricing
I would leave both your ad blocks on it, and just maintain records. Search engine traffic is ad-click happy since they are looking for specific info, and the ads are usually very targetted to them. The adsense script should clearly see that the clicks are coming from search engines, and will likely deem it legit (unless you're doing something funky on that page). As long as the traffic continues (thus seen as a traffic increase instead of just a temporary spike), I think you'll be fine.
as long you are not violating adsense TOS your account is safe. because i have this site w/ 5% ctr and after changing the blending and placement in just 24hrs after implementing the new design my ctr increase by 30%. oh yeah smartpricing is killing me...