What is a bad CTR, a CTR which if you had you'd know something was really wrong? When I say CTR I don't mean the numbers between 10 to 20 percent when people who make "made for adsense" sites get, or those sites which have to real information or try to get clicks by deception. I mean the CTR that sites should get which have good content, and the visitors don't consciously think "they're just trying to make money from this". It's just that my CTR is around 0.6%, and when I was first starting out with adsense I heard people say that 5% was about average. Thanks.
I would say that less than 1% is bad, but it really depends on the site. If it was a forum I wouldn't be that unhappy with 0.6%. If not consider optimising the placement of your ads.
Oh right. Well actually I must say that the majority of traffic (and quite a lot actually) is coming from stumbleupon, so maybe those people don't click on ads for some reason. I'm still not ranking well in Google for anything.
Less that 1% over time is quite bad....if it continues, you should start thinking about your ad placement, etc. kumiko xo
I toally agree to this comment. Mine is around %1 and it is obviously not good but not too bad. May be we can say less than %2 as bad.
To some publishers a CTR of 8% might be classed as being "bad" whereas to others, this might be extremely high. It really does depend on the environment that you are serving your ads. Semi MFA sites might regularly experience a CTR that is in double figures, so anything in single digits might be unusual. On the other hand, a forum owner who has AdSense will rarely see a day where they hit 1%. See where I am going with this? Personally I serve all my AdSense ads via blogs and concentrate my efforts on driving targeted traffic. I am happy with days where my CTR is around 4%, but that isn't to say that's what I get
It all really depends on what type of site you have. If you have a forum or a site where lots of webmasters visit, then it'll be a lot lower than a site for just the everyday people. I'd say less than a 1.5% CTR for a site for everyday people would be bad & you should start looking at why it's that low.
Personally, I'd like to see at least 2%. But that's just me. 5% is a nice, healthy number, too. Hope that helps!