I've read that having a CTR in the 20s is bad but I'm wondering at what point they become suspicious about the clicks. I've not done anything inappropriate to generate clicks but my site has been up for 4 days and I'm averaging about 127 impressions/day with a double digit CTR and an average of $12/day. It makes me nervous that they're going to think I'm doing something bad... Also, I got one today that was 1 page impression and 2 clicks. Now I'm assuming that it's because someone right clicked into a new window/tab from that link but will that throw up any red flags? I've gotten paranoid now reading about others getting banned for not doing anything wrong. I'd like to just sit back and enjoy but every time I log in I expect to find some sort of "you're evil and we've banned you" type message. Thanks for your thoughts!
If you're NOT doing anything wrong, DON'T WORRY! A lot of these "Banned by Google" threads normally have a GOOD reason behind them which resulted in the ban >> click exchanges, obvious AdSense TOS violations, asking people to click, 1% CTR one day and 50% the next (not natural increase), etc. I have one site with xx% CTR... It's all organic traffic with highly targeted visitors... I don't even annoy them with ads all over... just one box... but the traffic and niche is good, which thus probably explains the good CTR. Again: if you're not doing anything wrong, don't worry.
I wouldn't be worried about it, I have one blog in particular that doesn't get much traffic, but the traffic it does get always results in very high CTR's. It has been this way for a year and I am not banned. As the above poster said, if you are following the terms of service you should be ok.
There's no way to tell what google might think or whether they will become suspicious. Anyway, if you have not done anything wrong, there's nothing to fear. Maybe you should look into the stats for longer period of time. 1 page impression generating clicks producing high CTR is generally a common scenario during the start of the day.
ok, thanks everyone. That makes me feel better. This is my first adsense site so I'm still learning. Have a great one!
If you've made an MFA site you could be at risk. If you chose your topic for the sole purpose of high CPC you are breaking the Adsense rules.
I'm sorry to tell you guys that whether you are doing something phisy or not, there is no way to have a valid CTR of 20%. My neighbor and childhood friend who migrated in to US and now one of Google's Senior Engineers told me once in email that google automatically investigates accounts that generates 8% and above. They have all the benchmarkings and statistical studies... that no valid CTR more than 10%... 5% is the highest the google will ignore according to Andrej. My CTR is ranging from 2.7% to 3.8% though one of my sites has an excellent placement...
If Nothing wrong in your side you don't have to worry about it, This are all common for some days as the site grows up these figures will automatically make themselfs to a perfect figures. So NO WORRIES about it...
I'd like to disagree with you on not having a valid CTR of over 10%. It's absolutely possible... I can get into more details, but there's really no point in letting go of optimization secrets. Actually, it's not even optimization secrets... somewhat common sense with targeted niches. About investigating, I think they definitely do since I've also spoke with an AdSense engineer regarding CTR and what not. They also absolutely SHOULD investigate high CTRs... although I think anything 20% and above is fishy, yet extremely possible in certain circumstances. 20% would mean 1 out of 5 visitors clicks on your ads...
With targeted traffic sources, relevant ads and good placement it's not difficult - it can be done completely legitimately.
Imagine a killer placement. I guess it will be a MFA sites.. Page with: 1 youtube video with ads 3 banner ads around the video 3 links on the sidebar 1 custom search engine on the top
i completely agree with you. i don't do anything wrong or against tos and average well above 20% and have for 3 years. i just think a lot of people on these forums are overly paranoid. if you're not doing anything wrong, don't worry about it.
from the title, i thought this was going to be one of those cheating on your wives threads i find in other forums. anyhow, those google engineers are smart. too smart for most of us to figure out their tactics. but i'm guessing same hits from the same IP address and especially one that is used to check the google adsense statistics wouldn't be good.
I agree if it is happening from time to time... but if is happens daily, definitely there is something wrong... One of my pages receiving 300 to 400 daily organic traffic from google through very targeted keywords doesn't have any links.. The ads are well placed and there is no other links to click aside from adsense... Average time on page is 5:56 minutes but the highest CTR of this page so far is 7%... tell me what's wrong with this page why it can't reach 10%.... because 10% and above is just fake clicks.. I am sure this site has 100% bounce rate considering the visitor does not click on anything but adsense.. 15% and above is just a fairy tale..
Well you might be getting good organic results yet a low CTR but like I mentioned, it really does depend on the actual site.
There is no "depend" when talking about fairy tales and hearsay... 20% means 1 out of 5 clicks... where is your bounce traffic which is mostly 40% to 60%... are they all exiting your page through adsense? LOL... try to analyze guys...