I read from this forum and some others that if your revenue or CTR pattern suddenly changes, you can get banned. Is it true? I just changed the position of adsense ads on my web pages and my CTR has gone up 3%, it could go up more if I change the positioning on all my pages. But now i start to worry about this will fall into google's "sudden pattern change" voilation. If so, we cannot do any optimization for adsense ad on our website?
I'm not really sure if the dramatic increase thing is true, because my site doesn't normally get a lot of random visitors and will get "sudden changes" in CTR because of certain days people visit. If I add some content to the site, I will let my viewers know. Let me say though that I DO NOT mention the ads in notifying my viewers. I don't encourage clicking and I don't say "don't do it" either... I stay completely silent about that. So basically if I add new content every 3 days, my site will jump from 0 clicks for the past two days to maybe 10-20 clicks on that third day. I haven't been paid by Google yet, as I just recently finalized my PIN number and EFT information... but so far I haven't got any bad e-mails from them. I wouldn't take my advice though, since I can't confirm Google will pay me yet. I'm doing nothing illegal although I see how it could look suspicious. I guess I just have to hope that Google understands some sites may have extremely awkward visiting patterns.
Don't believe what you read. As long as you aren't clicking on your own ads, having someone else doing it, or violating the TOS, there is no such thing as too high of a CTR that will get you banned. Those are stories that probably originated from people who thought they were getting away with something and then use that as an excuse when they get their account terminated. I have some very focused specialty sites that regularly get a CTR as high as anything I have ever seen posted and I have never had any problems. I don't give out URL's of my sites to anyone I know just so there is never any temptation for them to "help me out."
Of course. I have changed my ads positions many times - sometimes it makes my CTR fall down or rise and I haven't got any problems.