I have noticed the following trend in one of my websites running adsense. On the same website, the CTR appears to be higher on low traffic days and appears to tank when there is a sudden spike in traffic. Recently, I had this high traffic day, when my website was mentioned on the frontpage of a leading website, in my niche. Traffic was so high that my VPS almost crashed. But when I checked my CTR, it was way down at 0.50% compared to my usual CTR of 1.50% The EPC also fell to an average of 20 cents per click from the usual average of 30 cents per click. Does google change the ads displayed and switch to low CPC ads when there is a sudden spike in traffic?
I agree. Adsense may have some rules regarding the low CTR during high traffic. It works as the more number of page impressions and less number of clicks will give you a low CTR. Please comment.... thanks
IMHO, as impressions raising up the CTR will going down. And this will affect the EPC for your site. As you can see that CTR = (Clicks / Impr) * 100, and Earnings = CTR * EPC * Impr / 100 However, you can calculate your earnings with AdSense Calculation Formula.
Yes, I know that formula. But my question is, as impressions go up, clicks should also increase correspondingly, keeping the CTR constant. But that doesn't happen. Increase in the number of clicks doesn't manage to catch up with the increase in impressions. Further when impressions go up why are low paying ads served, reducing the earnings per click?
I've noticed this same trend with adsense as well as with sales from my websites - as traffic grows the quality decreases. I think this is natural because at first the traffic is very specific and targeted but as the site gets more popular it gains a larger less targeted user base, still good in the long run but it may affect the CTR and EPC stats. As long as your total earning are increasing I wouldn't worry about it