Hello all, A few years back, I made a promise to myself that I would never post such a thread. I know how disturbing it is to see the same thread being opened over and over again, about how the CTR of a site is very low in general, or how this one day the CTR was much lower than that other day. This is along the same lines, but different in many ways. I have a site that gets about 400 uniques a day. The site has had Adsense on it ever since it started getting some traffic, and since then, it has had great CTR. I don't want to get into specifics, but I will say that there were 4 days in March were the CTR was much lower than normal. Back then, I didn't really pay attention because things happen. So, April arrives, and out of the first 5 days of April the CTR is decent (lower than normal but still ok). For the past 4 days through, the CTR is 1/4 of the normal CTR. Bear in mind that I am comparing it to the overall average CTR of the site ranging through 3 years. To put things into perspective, if the site averaged 10% CTR over its lifetime, it's averaging 2% CTR during these last few days. The traffic is increased (if anything), and the sources of the traffic remain the same - almost 90% from the US and 95% organic traffic from Google. Almost 90% unique visitors. I personally checked the ads and they are displaying properly (no PSAs or blanks). I had a few friends check on them too - from different countries (just in case) - and still they are displaying properly... And they are targeted... at least as targeted as they always were. If anyone has any ideas then please let me know. P.S. Remember that we are talking about an already established site - so it shouldn't have anything to do with Ad placement or Ad targeting. Thanks in advance!
When traffic increases from different sources it is more likely that ctr drops. I get below 0.90% average CTR and that is fine for me...! It depends on what type of blog you have and what type of content do you have on landing pages. may be your content has been changed and ads for those keywords are not much appealing..!
No - the content is 100% unique and in most cases written by me. In the rare occasions when it's not, then it's definitely edited by me. On a separate note... based on all the info provided in my original post, why and how would an autoblog affect CTR? It could affect rankings - but that's not the case here. Right? The traffic increase was not substantial (only about 10-15%) and the CTR did not drop as soon as the traffic increased. It dropped about a month later. As far as content goes - while it's an interesting thought because the content did change (a new post was published) - the ads are exactly the same as before. It is also worth noting that the new post was published over two weeks ago, and the CTR remained unchanged until a few days ago. P.S. Once again, I would like to say that this site receives 90% new, organic and unique traffic. That has been the case throughout its existence.
Your right, its not your case that you use and autoblog as you write unique and hire and edit stuff unique. Lately google has been fighting against autobloggers. Their traffic, adsense earnings, and ctr is dropping like crazy. Some are even getting banned. The past couple of days have been really exciting for us who have high quality sites as we reap the benefits of competition drops.
Perhaps an advertizer targeted your site, paying by CPM. So this advertizer will show alone in your adsense block(s). If this advertizer has a badly optimized ad, it won't be clicked often. You don't mind because he's paying CPM. So what about your earnings? Did they also drop like the CTR did? Or not?
Thanks for your reply James. As a matter of fact, yes they did. There was about a 30% decrease in CTR and it was around the same decrease for the earnings of this site as well. Also, while you had an interesting thought there, I don't think that this is the case because I can still see a lot of ads and they are all similar to what was always being displayed. The only possible explanation could be that the old post which was displayed at the top of the page attracted better ads and better CTR.... but I updated the site with another article and the CTR is still less (maybe a tiny bit higher than before). Then again, I find it hard to believe that throughout the life of the site (when the CTR has been stable) I always had great articles, and now I missed on 2 out of 2... Any other ideas?
Could this be the reason why my earning more than double the past three days?? Interesting... Either that or it's because I wrote three articles (one a day) with targeted keywords taken from Google keyword tool. edited: just realized i'm replying to a post back in April. So I guess it's the latter reason why my earning doubled.