Adsense Smart Pricing – “per-Account” or “per-Site” Basis?

Over the past week, I noticed at SIGNIFICANT decrease in Adsense revenues from one of my three sites (e.g., a sudden 95% decline). This sudden (and sustained) earnings drop suggests to me that there’s a good chance that I’ve been “Smart Priced.” However, revenues on my other two sites have increased over the same period.

Which makes me wonder…

Would Adsense Smart Pricing (on multi-site accounts) typically apply on a “per-site” basis? (as opposed to “per-account” basis)?

 

Word on the street is that it is per-account Check the following which, though from 2005, has not really been superceded by any new information:

http://www.jensense.com/2005/10/25/...te-can-smart-price-an-entire-adsense-account/

 

I don't see how that would be a wise choice for Google, obviously they want to earn as much money as possible while still protecting advertisers from clicks that don't convert. I would have to guess they've changed their policy. It makes more sense to smartprice pages or sites that don't convert, rather than an entire account. I doubt you'll find a straight answer from anybody though.

I can tell you that I run sites that like convert well and others that don't convert well, and it's reflected in eCPM's and average per click values for those sites (some high, some low). I have a spread.

 

How long does the "smartpricing" last?

 

Smartpricing is more or less an unexplored land.

I strongly believe that smart pricing occurs on a per-site basis. While there is no concrete and official policy that would confirm this, I have enough experience to back up my claim. I run several sites and PPC on the older ones is stable, while in the newer sites I see big traces of smartprice. Despite that the niches are highly competitive and therefor high paying, I get many many $0.10 clicks and below. What I have found is that in time things settle down and your clicks should get up to the standard again. That's if you send relevant and quality visitors.

 

What is Smart Pricing? To be quite honest, and I know I'll probably sound like a newbie, but I don't care, I don't know what that is, nor have I heard of it. Lol.

 

See the link in my post above.

JohnS0N - What you describe on a per-site basis could just as easily be an infestation of MFA cropping up in your ads rather than smartpricing. Over time their owners may get banned or because of LPQ their bid goes up so that the price of your click adjusts to what it was.

 

It would making more sense if it was a per-site basis.

 

google do more for smart pricing policy now and I think it is applied only for one site, not for the entire sites

 

Can you point us to some update or is this purely conjecture on your part?

 

Could be, but I don't see these patterns on my older and established websites. Adsense arbitragers could as well do that on those other sites, but PPC is pretty stable there. Of course you get bad and low paying clicks too, but they are not constantly repeating itself and forming a pattern.

On the other side some newer websites experience a repetitive low PPC for an unknown period of time (could be one week or three months...). And this seems more like a pattern and therefor my best assumption is that the website is smartpriced.

However, as I said this is a pretty unexplored land and my observations could be wrong, but still I am a strong believer that an account will never be smartpriced, only an under-performing domain. It makes sense for advertisers, google and publishers.

 

I've experienced drops before similar to what you've described, by doing housecleaning using the site filter it has almost always improved things. When the great arbitrage purge occurred in 2007 I noticed an immediate upswell in my ePC, too.

I have no official information on what/how/when smart pricing occurs, the only things I know are the tidbits that have been leaked which indicate that it is per account rather than site. Has that been since changed, it sure could be and it could be by site now, but I've seen nothing substantive to back that. I've also seen nothing that would negate it, and since we don't really know if what any of us have experienced is truly smartpricing or some other phenomena (big advertiser drops out of the network, MFAA take over, end of month pinch on advertisers etc) no one can really say for sure one way or the other. And The G ain't telling

 

I am not sure but I personally think that Smart Pricing apply on specific sites and not on the whole account. But this is only what I think, not sure if this is true.