Plentyoffish: Google CTR Down 60%

March 1, 2008 – 9:17 am

After Google’s stock took a hit based on reports that Google ads are not being clicked on as much as they use to be, comScore is reporting today that the market may have got it wrongthe evidence suggests that the softness in Google’s paid click metrics is primarily a result of Google’s own quality initiatives that result in a reduction in the number of paid listings and, therefore, the opportunity for paid clicks to occur.In part this might be right, but what’s being ignored by most is a little decision in November that changed the way Google ads worked:Google has made a small change to AdSense that may make a big difference in cutting out errant clicks and even your AdSense revenue. They’ve redefined the clickable region for Google AdSense from the entire boxed region, to just the text link. I’ve been hearing first hand reports since then from publishers who have experienced a big downturn in CTR and Adsense revenue since that change was implemented. Well regarded online marketer Jeremy Schoemaker even recently told me in a podcast that Adsense was dead as a monetization strategy. It’s happening to big sites and small sites. Markus Friend from Plenty of Fish, one of the more famed and bigger free-making money from Adsense sites (January):The CTR on text ads declined about 60% in the last 2 months with googles changes, Image ads on the other hand stayed the same. If you take a screen shot of a text ad and then run it as an image ad it will get 2 times the click thru rate.You read that right, image ads with double the CTR of Google ads when showing the exact same thing.

I wish I could have this problem. Markus has made so much money already, it’s hard to feel sorry for the guy. I haven’t used Google adsense for a while now, because they said I had fraudulent clicks, and didn’t answer any appeals from me. Adsense is a broken product at this point, as far as I’m concerned. If you look hard enough, there are better offerings out there anyway…

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