Google AdSense

[tdisraeli]

Originally Posted by Mike-N-Tosh

I do find that the display ads are much better on other pages than the home page for the classified site.
-Mike

Mike - I have always wondered about this. What's your theory? Is it because visitors don't want to be blasted with banners right off the bat. I was considering removing the sky scrapper banner here Idaho Gear List

[Mike-N-Tosh]

To me, it's not so much about having ads it's having ads for competitive sites. Unfortunately, the google adsense text ads on a classifieds site is usually around 98% ads for other classified ads. Ads that are relevant to the content in my opinion are actually a value ad for the end user as well as the site owner. Google adsense text ads seem to think that other classifieds sites are relevant material.

I did have an issue at first with the display ads, but once I blocked kijiji and one other site (I can't remember the name of it) from displaying it was all good. I even wanted to click on a few of the ads myself when I was working on the site. (not allowed to do that though, it's against the rules. lol)

-Mike

[seymourjames]

I think I am probably repeating my self here but the best way to proceed with understanding the performance of your google adverts is to use Crazy Egg – visualize your visitors which builds heatmaps of where people click on your site. At $9 a month it is hardly expensive. If you can't earn a lot more than that through google ads you should not be doing them anyway. Google ads is about traffic. Lots and lots of traffic more than anything else. It is a numbers game.

You then test position and colour of your google ads using crazyegg. The adverts are always simply positioned within your layout.tpl file or indeed any of your template files - you can do it manually with little knowledge of coding.

Standard wisdom (and proven) from the theory of NLP (neuro linguistic programming) says that adverts in the top left hand corner will receive the most visual attention. Adverts which also act as alternatives or in place of zero information will also tend to outperform random placement. People do not like empty spaces.