Very nice site. I think you placed your ads nicely. I would not change anything for now. After some time you will be able to see how they perform and than you can improve something if you need.
Um.... Your site is good. It looks very much like the normal blog sites. Not much different... but....... The ads don't blend into the site (that could be on purpose). It makes me feel that everything in red is an ad. Good luck with the site.
In firefox the Google search box is misaligned. Ad-wise, you have so many Google ads on the front page that it screams "I want to make money off you". You might want to consider the "less is more" approach.
Crazy, That search box is supposed to be at the bottom left. Good idea about the ads, I thought that the one at the top of the articles was a bit much, I'll have to the stats. Up in the air about the links though. Not sure if I should leave them the link color or text? Thanks for taking a look
yup the site is really nice but alignment of search box is wrong. I think it's better if u remove the search box.
The thing is, you really don't have a lot of content on each page to justify 3 ad blocks. As a result, the ad blocks look overwhelming. I would get rid of the 468 and skyscraper, and put a 728 leaderboard Adlinks underneath your latest news listing at the top, and leave the medium rectangle embedded in the article. Experiment with this for a week, and you'll probably see better results. Do you have the traffic to convert?
OK I nuked the search box, that was the right call. Checked my reports and looks like I forgot to create a custom channel for the 468 header. Created that channel and will leave things sit for a while. Currently content block outpaces the navbar (skyscraper) 2.5 to 1 on clicks.
That's always the case. Putting an ad block squarely in the middle of the article always converts because it forces your reader to take a look and they can't simply look past it like they do skyscrapers and leaderboard banners.
OK, Here's what happened over the last two weeks. http://www.fractionalnews.com 1. Eliminated the search bar as mentioned earlier. 2. Added a horizontal bar before the fold. 3. More content (as always) Added more content but that's nothing new. Stats: Left Nav clicks + 550% Header clicks + 250% Content clicks - 400% Top (new) + 250% used the two weeks before and after the changes for quick stats. Since the Top item was new I used the average impressions of the home page -10% for the base to come to the +250%. Numbers are accurate. So basically with the small changes that everyone mentioned clicks up 650%. I found the drop off in clicks on the content square surprising but the increase more than takes care of that. Remember this is a site rebuild so traffic has been steadily increasing as well. I didn't figure in any weighting for increased traffic. Analytics currently show a 60/40 mix for repeat/new visitors. Anyway wanted to get that out to everyone, thanks for the help. RSS feeds of the articles just published over the weekend so we'll see how that goes.
Very interesting results. Additionally I've heard good things about adding general pictures to liven up AdSense. An example can be found at the bottom of http://www.pspatlas.com. G'luck!
Yep working on that for one of the other sites right now. Pictures, especially relevant product with the ads is a great idea.