Did adding AdSense lower my position in SERP?

I have a relatively new website (about 3 months old). I've been slowly building content and it's up to about 30 or 40 pages now.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that my site was ranked #1 and #2 for some decent keywords on MSN. The site was getting about 500 uniques a day. (For a new site, I didn't think this was bad at all.) Almost all of the traffic was from MSN and Live, but who cares.... traffic is traffic.

Then I added Adsense to the site. I didn't make any other changes, aside from adding a few new pages of content. Less than a week later, the traffic dropped lke a rock.

My 500 visitors a day dropped to 50 visitors a day. My site is now tucked waaaaaay back on the 5th page for an MSN search of the keyword.

My question-- Do you think Microsoft punished me for adding adsense to my site? Do they look more favorably on sites without Adsense? Or is there a different reason for the drop?

Just wondering. Thanks for any and all replies.

- FB

 

It's not meant to. I don't know about microsoft, but google states that adsense does not affect serp's in their search engine at least.

 

that traffic for most is loaded with buyers.

Try removing it and see what happens.
Maybe try the affiliate type links,just use sparingly

 

I highly doubt it. I have seen advertisements for adwords show up when the same company was listed as #1 many times. But then again I am very new to the SEO game.

 

In theory, Google would rather inject websites using AdSense above non-AdSense websites to promote more earnings for their advertising program Adwords. But, this is not the case and AdSense does not effect the rankings of a website.

 

Msn might have updated serp so site moved and that is why not because of adsense ads.

 

Adesense won't have any more effect in SERP, IMO.
Still remove just once adsense from your site, and analyze your traffic after removing it, if it's increasing than surely, msn does not like Google adsense.

 

I don'y care what Google says, what I do know is that one of my sites as soon as I placed Adsense my side search engine position dropped

 

On one of my websites adding the adsense code actually increased my sites ranking, if only it were the same for all of my sites.

 

No, they did not "punish you" for using AdSense. Chances are that the effect is temporary. Besides, do you really think Micro$oft would risk a major lawsuit and ANOTHER criminal investigation for manipulating someone's search engine listing because they used a competitor's advertising network?

Come on - they nearly had the company broken up for monopolistic practices in the past and have "promised" to "play nice" (tell that to Yahoo!). I doubt they would want that to happen now.

My bet is that the new pages may have had something to do with it. Last I checked MSN/Live prefers relevant content on Web pages, rather than the links pointing back to it. It could also be that they're factoring in the new pages with the existing ones. In other words, give it time - I'm sure your traffic will come back. (Also did you check to make sure that the traffic drop wasn't during a major holiday? You'd be surprised. )

 

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and input.

Dan-- I wasn't really complaining about the drop in SERP... rather I was trying to figure out the cause of it. (I understand that traffic will go up and down a great deal-- especially on newer sites.) Still, I think you make a good point. I don't see why MSN would lower serp for using a competitor... clearly that'd be against the rules of play.

The new pages were full of relevant cotent, just as the other pages were. I always take pride in creating quality content. The new pages had same basic content, layout, and format, just more detail.

Time will tell.

 

Its not true.If its then how come my sites come at the top of google ?

 

i don't think Microsoft is afraid of major lawsuit for manipulating someone's website visibility because they used a competitor's advertising network (AdSense by Google)... it also happens to me. I blog on blogger.com and my articles appear always in Google, hell not ever in MSN, not even once.. blogger.com is also run by Google.

Microsoft, i think is in not good terms with Google. pretty obvious. i thought i was the only one experiencing it.

 

Agree with Dan. I'm sure its not the AdSense that made the difference.

One small consideration:

Search engines prefer that your content is as close to the top of the code as possible, so putting in AdSense code above your content would push it down a bit. You may want to try putting your AdSense blocks at the bottom of your code and using CSS to position them where you want.

Unlikely to make a big difference, but its good practice anyway. Congrats on the MSN traffic, as grace stated MSN/Yahoo traffic tends to be better for conversions. Although AOL is the best IMHO, and they use a Google search backend.

 

Thanks Dan for such a nice information

 

As Far as google is concerned It Appreciates the use of Adsense
But ya msn has all the reasons to not like Google Adsense. So try to remove them & see effect.
Best of Luck

 

I'm sure this is not fact, but personally, if I owned Yahoo, all the Adsense sites would go to the bottom. If I owned Google, I'd put them all at the top. It would only make good business sense, unless it would deteriorate my search engines reputation by serving up crappy results.. Just my 2 cents.

 

hi,

I don't think traffic can increase by absense ,

 

Wow, I'm glad you don't own/manage a major search engine company. The public outcry from that action would be more than enough to make you change your mind before the lawyers finish fighitng over who'll represent the representatives in the class action lawsuits that would be filed against you in a New York minute.

Doing what you suggested is SUICIDE for a business. Not only would the SEO consultants and Web developers/site owners sue you, but so would the competing search engines. You'd be out of business before you could even appear before the judge.

AdSense, no. That's for publishers. AdWords on the other hand...

 

I removed all Adsense from a site and it seemed as if my ranking went down in serps. This may have been my own paranoia though!

As for new pages I often see brand new blog posts ranking high and then slipping down the list. If you keep getting visitors then they creep back up over time.

I recently wrote and article on condom sizes. I used Micro Niche Finder to get a long tail keyword to find the most searchable title verses the least competition and found a great keyword with 40000 searches a month and competition that I thought I could fight off.

Within minutes the post ranked around number 7 in Google. I was over the moon. Then over the next few days it slipped to the 4th page. I dugg the article and that managed to get the digg submission back to Page number two. Over time I got a few visits here and there, then a few weeks later, an explosion and now it is number 5 on page 1 of Google for the search term.

This site has Adsense and I know Google isn't punishing it. My position in MSN changes daily (sometimes) so I can only assume that they update and change things very regular.

My advice, don't worry about Adsense just position it nicely. Work on the quality and search engine visibility of your content.