Here's something that one of my clients just came up with. He decided to put AdSense on his pages, but instead of displaying them in the usual way - a well-defined box across the top, bottom, or down one side, he decided to integrate them into the text, so that they almost became part of the text in terms of its meaning. He's getting around a 20% click-through rate!!!

I told him that it may not be a good thing because 20% of visitors are moving on to other sites, but he's happy with it.

So I changed the AdSense displays on one of my sites (not this one). I removed the border (box) and blended them into the pages as best I could - the pages don't have text in sentences so it isn't as 'natural' as my client's pages. I've just been able to see the first day's results for that site since the changes, and the CTR has increased by 300%-400% !!! Not bad for a simple change to the way the ads are displayed, eh?

This is blatant self promotion, I know, but I've been able to increase my AdSense revenue by 35% by using my AdSense Tracker PHP/MySQL scripts, which have told me where my clickers were coming from and what they were looking for.

http://www.related-pages.com/

But putting the ads on the pages in such a way that they do not appear to be ads is certainly a great way to improve CTR dramatically.

So, by using the tool, you placed the ads on pages that were getting the traffic? If all pages in a site carried the ads, would there be any benefit from the tool?

I should have been more clear. The tool tells you what kind of traffic gets the most clicks, how many clicks each page of your site(s) gets, what keywords people are finding your site(s) with that end up clicking on the ads, what sites referred the clickers to you, etc.

By analyzing that information I was able to see what changes I needed to make to further increase the number of clicks on my site by increasing the kind of traffic that converted into ad clickers.

You can view a demo of the software at:

http://www.related-pages.com/astracker/ ... d=password

jon

I'm still not clear. If a site has the ads on all pages, and if the ads are placed well by 'blending' into the page, what improvements could be made?

I'm not trying to be negative - I'm trying to understand if the tool can help me make improvements. A practical example might be useful for my old brain

Phil, as a leading ethical SEO, are you concerned that this technique is 'conning' people into thinking they are clicking on internal links?

Do you have an example of page using this that we could look at?

As one of the world's leading ethicals, I am researching it so that I can report back to my ethical colleagues ;)

Seriously - I don't think the ads can be truly integrated so that they look like actual content - not even if the preceding text reads something like, ".... and here are a few examples:-". although I could be wrong about that. Here's an example of my new layout. Before it, they were placed above the heading, and boxed in the usual AdSense way:-

http://www.holidays.org.uk/php/accommsr ... at=S&page=

I should point out that Google has a problem with the framed page and its dynamic URL, so the ads are not as relevant as they could be. Even so, I'm getting a 300%-400% increase in the CTR - so far.

Thanks Phil.

Assuming the link is typical of this technique I thinks it fairly obvious that the ads are ads so don't see any reason for complaint.

Phil,

One example of how the tracker works is this: if you have a site that's all about widgets, and you have information on three kinds of widgets (red, green and blue), but the tracker shows that the blue widget pages are getting most of the clicks, then you know that's where your AdSense money is and you can add more pages about Blue Widgets and work to get traffic to those pages.

Also, the tracker tells you your CTR by search engine (referrer domain). As it turns out the CTR of visitors from different search engines is remarkably different. So if all of your efforts at getting people to your blue widget pages is focused on Google in the hopes that you'll get AdSense clicks, but you find that MSN visitors are getting a better rate, you can focus more attention on putting up pages optomized for MSN. Google's reporting gives you none of this information. The AdSense tracker tell you all of this.

For those who spend money to advertise their sites instead of focusing on only search engines, the tracker tells you if visitors coming from your ad campaigns are converting into clickers. If that was your primary reason for the advertisement, then you know whether or not the ROI is worthy of keeping that campaign going.

The tracker also tracks the keywords people are doing WebSearches for (if you are using AdSense WebSearch). This information is invaluable because it tells you what people are looking for on your site. If you don't already have pages on a topic that is being searched for regularly, it's time to add those pages.

Hope that helps.

jon

That makes it much clearer to my old brain - thanks Jon.

You'd need to imagine it with sentence-type text above and below to get a better idea, but I still don;t think they can be blended to make them look like a part of the real content. Perhaps preceding them with something like "...and here are a few example:-" might be taking it a step too far, but if Google is delivering the right sort of ads, even that may be fine.

Shoot, given all that I've learned from your articles and posts, it was the least I could do to spend a few minutes and clarify my post.

On the same subject, I installed the AdSense Preview Tool yesterday. I didn't know it existed until then. If anyone is interested it at:-

https://www.google.com/adsense/previewtool

Here's a thought Darren. I've just changed the border of the ads in the main part of this site (link at top right of page). It matches the left column better. Now suppose I changed the ads border and background to white, and added the underline for the articles' links in the 2 main columns so that they matched the links in the ads. Would the AdSense ads appear to be a third column of articles, and maybe attract clicks because of their appearance, in spite of the "Ads by Google" bit above them? What would your opinion of that be? Too blended? Bordering on a conn?

I might ask Google about the idea of blending the ads.

Hey, that's great info Phil!

I always thought that ads should be noticed as ads and I'm doing really great with AdSense because of the large traffic but I can assure you I'll try out this blending thing in the next days. I'll get back with the results too!

Nice to see you again, Juliany

I've written to Google to ask if they have any objections as to how far blending should go. It'll take a little while but they should reply.

Keep us informed of how it goes for you.

Thanks Phil, I HAD to come back. I missed to much Phil-Nick-Will-Bucket fights


Great, let us all know so we don't break any rules

thanks for the info Phil

I also found this article rather enjoyable

...http://www.theforumzone.com/forums/show ... hp?t=392...

That's an interesting article.

I was reading the AdSense T&C and found this:-


(my highlighting)

I don't think it's intended to refer to what we are talking about because the rest of the statement is about making alterations, or apparent alterations. I think it's more to do with modifying the ads; e.g. changing the dimensions so that, say, only 1 ad appears.

I've been playing with the WebWorkshop front page and I put a square box of 3 ads, with a white border and background, part way down a column of articles. They were preceded by "Ads by Google" as normal, but they did blend in very well with articles list - not perfectly, but very well. They could easily have been mistaken for articles in the list.

It was just an experiment and I took them out because, unless Google say it's ok, it did seem to be a blending step too far in trying to attract clicks.

Hi Phil,

I'd interpret the Adsence T&C snippet the same as you.

I suppose like most webmaster issues to a large degree it depends on your audience. For Webworksop I'd guess most of the visitors are quite experienced users and so don't see too much wrong with trying the ads with a white background. For a less "web savvy" audience I'd not be so sure.

Of course we don't know why the increase click rate happens, could quite easily not be based on people being "misled" but on people actually reading the ads instead of ignoring them or people seeing it as a stronger endorsement of the ad by the webmaster.

That's true. The article that rex_b pointed to highlights it. Banner ads used to work a few years ago, but people have become blind to them to a great extent, and text ads work better - so we're told.

But because AdSense ads are so commonplace now, and they all look pretty much the same, maybe we are becoming a bit blind to them as well. I think that incorporating them into a page's content somehow, where they are more likely to be 'noticed' probably helps to get them clicked on.

The only differences between the before and after of the page that I showed you is that the ads were moved down slightly to below the heading and my customers' ads (they were above them), and their border and background colors were changed to match the background of the page. They have been incorporated into the accommodation listings rather than being a different entity above and seperate to them.

Incidentally, the next day's channel data shows the same massive increase in the CTR, and judging by yesterday's overall figures, the third day's channel data is the same (channel data lags a day behind).

News flash:

After blending the AdSense ads the CTR went up by 50%

I didn't mix them too much with the content but they now have the same colours as the main content part.

So, yes, it does work. Thanks a lot Phil for the tip.

One more thing: I read somewhere that if you mix red and yellow the ads catch the users' attention and the CTR goes up and up so I will be trying out this one too. I mean, you should try out lots of different possibilities in order to find the best one for your site.

Julian Yanover

Excellent Juliany! I my client reads this stuff, he will want commission

I have started getting Adsense that have pictures in them. How well will that work when blending?

I can't see them blending in the same way that text ads do, but you could try it and see if you get an improvement.

My improvement is still continuing, btw.

I just had my best week so far.

So far, I haven't found the search boxes to do very much. I've just added them to another site to see if they work there.

They don't much at mine either but I give a little bonus to people that use them like a post that says:

Use the google box below to search for a term that our website ranks for, if you find one post it and I will give you some points (must have a points system)

I find that I can talor the content a bit of the ads by putting words directly above the adwords and it scues the adwords to more different content.