Until June 3rd I had a good average CTR of 3.5%, however since that day CTR dropped suddenly to under 2%. Interesting thing is I didn't change anything on the site. - Same site layout - Same ads (no change in colours or layout etc) - No change in impressions - No change in EPC So I didn't do anything. What could be the reasons that CTR would suddenly fall down without any change on the site. I searched the whole forums here and found some answers. 1) An advertiser may have decided to stop his campaign. If his ads were the most important to show up on the site, then users won't click the ads any more because they don't find them interesting enough. 2) It could be that the server on which the site is hosted has new accounts on them, lowering performance, maybe pages don't load not as fast as before. 3) People are mabye on holidays (or watching the world cup), maybe big events etc, and they are not interested in buying products. I would appreciate any more ideas as I am completely confused!
4) Less people clicking. Isn't CTR mainly based on how many clicks, position of ads, and whether or not the users will click?
Question was: why. Why would 3.5% of the people click every day (over a very long period of time) and then suddenly stop clicking.
My guess is it is likely most related to your point #1 about users not clicking the ads because they dont find them interesting enough. Adwords advertisers can and do start and stop campaigns at any time, so it may be that for whatever reason, previous ads that were helping to draw the 3.5%CTR are no longer showing. Just an idea though.
I have another problem. got same average clicks, but got lower earning. LOL this can't be anything else. Only low paying keyword or the keyword trend changed.
Its the ads that effect CTR. Like Telmari said your visitors simply dont find them interesting enough to click on.
yeah i agree with mightyb, it depends on the ads. my ctr soared when one of my sites was down, so it seems like less ads=higher ctr.
my guess is that your ads didn't change much - so your repeat visitors have visited most of your ads already.
daboss: that wouldn't explain why it would fall down SUDDENLY! wouldn't it go down gradually over a period of some days or weeks? my ctr changed from ONE day to another. mightyb: how and why would traffic demographic change from one day to another? i'm reallly confused
Ask jaybong who suggested it. It should not fluctuate too much on day to day basis if you have a stable flow of traffic.
Ads can have a big difference on CTR. I have a site that can go from 8% to 2% if certain advertisers pause their campaign. I run tracking software that shows what ads are being clicked and I know this is the cause. The minute the advertisers restart their campaign, the CTR going back to historical levels. These advertisers have copy that results in a very high conversion rate when compared to others.
so you are saying that there is nothing I could do except wait till the advertisers start their campaign again??
You can add or change text on your page that will eventually trigger different ads. You can section target related blocks of text. You can try and filter some of your current advertisers using the adsense competition filter.
Maybe you recently got linked to by a high traffic site which doesn't have much to do with your niche. Thus impressions would rise and clicks wouldn't rise by the relatively same amount, so ctr would decrease. This would be easy to track through your web stats, so it would be easy to rule out.
I too am experiencing this. The two measures have been very consistent for the past year. May was my best month ever. Now, since last week in May my CTR and eCPM (and therefore earnings) are way way down. No content changes occured for a while prior to the change. No layout changes. I don't understand it. Visits are down too though my rankings haven't changed. I thought it was due to seasonal changes but my CTR shouldn't change...
This is just a hypothesis- I do economics so bear with me If your SE rankings haven't changed, but there is less traffic then presumably the demand for what your selling or the information you are offering has decreased. Advertiser's, seeing this will then wish to supply less (IE will not bid as much or take out their ads entirely), So the quality of the ads may decrease (Reduced CTR) and the CPC might decrease (as market has become less competitive driving cpc down).
if your website is about selling Polish Football shirts... the chances of clicks just left the building! James.