AdSense clickthrough rates

[James]

David, Tom, Phil and anyone else who has Google Ads on their site:

What is your click through rate?

Mine is 0.7

[Phil]

1.7

completetly distorted by [a] low traffic, [b] me clicking through myself whenever I'm on a "foreign" machine

[James]

The low traffic shouldn't distort it as this is a percentage of visitors who click, the number of visitors is not relevant.

However if you're clicking yourself that does distort the figures!

[Tom]

I received Google's revised conditions this morning, including the following:

Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. "Google Confidential Information" includes without limitation: (a) all Google software, technology, programming, specifications, materials, guidelines and documentation relating to the Program; click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google; and © any other information designated in writing by Google as "Confidential" or an equivalent designation. However, You may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross payments to You pursuant to the Program. Google Confidential Information does not include information that has become publicly known through no breach by You or Google, or information that has been (i) independently developed without access to Google Confidential Information, as evidenced in writing; (ii) rightfully received by You from a third party; or (iii) required to be disclosed by law or by a governmental authority.


What I can say though is that the click-through rate is amazingly different for various parts of the site. Some popular pages have few clicks and some unpopular pages have many clicks. Hence my concept of the Happy Clicker: he finds the content interesting and wants to click on an ad to discover more about his interest.

[David]

I also received the new terms and conditions this morning. All I'm going to say is that my average is much higher than either of the figures above. This is primarily a function of the fact that mine is a community based site and communities engender loyalty. I've never asked my users to click but everyone now knows the deal with AdWords. Also, there are some genuinely useful and interesting ads on my site (to those in the CAD world).