No,
Removing the competition came AFTER I had sucessfully completed the test. It has helped my traffic but clicks are still not that numerous but they are higher paying.

Read carefully and you will see the time frame for the other things I did. I added one adlinks to all other pages at the same time I deleted the custom channels and changed those ads associated with the custom channels.

#1 removed custom channels

#2. Changed ads that fed the channels

#3. put single adlinks unit on each page to enhance my pageviews

AFTER TEST: removed competition because the ads made me angry with their buzzing and having to spend up to an hour a day killing them only to have them pop up again. Also some of those banner ads were actually throwing popups!
Ann

Interesting stuff. I came in late on the thread (like yesterday), but that's what it looked like scanning through.

Does your site have seasonal attributes?

Is your visitation local/regional/national/international?

I'm giving it a try on a couple of my sites. I'm in a normal slight seasonal downtrend so if things go up I should be able to tell fairly easily.

To further clarify: I have to hand edit over a thousand pages so AFTER I had completed changing ads and removing channels Then I thought more page views could possibly make my site even more valuable so I had to hunt through the sites to find pages to put the adlinks on.

Also decided to change back my newest site from ypn to capture even more pageviews as well as dropping ypn because noone liked to click them, so there was another 100 pages of work. LOL no wonder I had such a case of eyestrain!

Now my sites are streamlined, (Mean and Clean):)

Ann

Edited to answer question: My sites are global and gets a good mixture of visitors from all over and non seasonal.

My EPC is steadily up. I want it up to 36c like the old version of the site, and its reached 29c.

I wasn't happy with the EPC I was getting after I got a lot of traffic to a certain directory so I switched a double ad unit to show two single ads instead as someone said that would cause respidering. I think it did.

Today I'm going to commit even more mischief in the name of research.

Anyone who clicks on an internal link on my site will be taken to the old domain. Same content, same layout. They won't notice the difference - I'm going to see what the EPC is there now.

Ok, now I'm wondering if just the simple act of manual updating might have initiated the trend? I did likewise late last Feb through April and on another site in May. Everything doubled up. I created some custom channels to track the shape of the ads across about half of my sites- then things started down (Mid-June). Of course this was expected.

You use SSI's?

If you mean me, I use php for includes and general mischief.

Everything except the basic template and header is a php include and I'd use it for those too, if I knew how.

>> Ok, now I'm wondering if just the simple act of manual updating might have initiated the trend? <<

I'm also wondering if ads on static pages are evaluated/pay differently than ones on dynamic...

I do not know why it works and given the secretive nature of Google I have no way of saying.

I don't think G is gonna help us here Ann. I think the truth is that you may have stumbled on a "Feature" of RandomPricing(tm) that they were unaware of, and are watching this thread as closely as the rest of us so that they can get clues :)

I'm not querying that it does work for some. Nor do I think that anyone (including Google) has a clue as to why this might be. What I am trying to do is to drag the thread away from the does it / doesn't it debate and onto examining what has changed for those it works for. I think that's the next stage of the debate. I don't think that simply removing the channels is the cause - I really think it's some subsidiary side effect of removing the channels. IE something unexpected changes, and we need to find as a group what the unexpected is. By pooling information that we can disclose we might be able to narrow it down a bit.

I can only say that i saw an improvement immediately in the ads being shown and the payouts per click.

OK - so in your case it prompted a change in ads displayed. Obviously the new ads paid better. So are the ads better targeted, or more relevant to the content now? What can others report on this one?

In the beginning I did just what I said about channels and added one ad to all the other pages that met the TOS to give additional pageviews in order to show usefulness and space for Googlebots benefit.

So can you rule out any effect of adding these extra pages? You might have stumbled across some pages that adsense really works well on, and that may have upped RandomPricing(tm)'s valuation of the account and consequently forced out some of the lower payers that Google loves to foist on us. Is that a possibility that can be ruled in, or ruled out?

On that topic, have others removed the channels and not made any other changes or additions to what pages ads show on - IE changed ad positions etc. What was the result?

Later, after I saw the change was holding up I removed all popunders and banners from every other ad company because I got angry at the stupid ads they were serving up to my visitors.

I'd suggest that the ball started rolling before this change. Although focussing on only G, and removing the crap inmroves load time and visitor experience and is likely to improve income, it sounds like it's precipitated rather than caused a change in fortunes.

I haven't the slightest idea what the algo is or how it was supposed to work but I would be willing to bet the result it was giving was not the one Google intended. I think it was intended to help but someone jigged when they should have jogged.

I don't think Google do have much idea sometimes :)

Don't be Evil - plain Stupid will do!

[edited by: Alex_Miles at 5:06 pm (utc) on Aug. 3, 2006]

In a somewhat related monkey wrench way, I just removed my Google sitemap entirely from my site and from their interface. I left the robots.txt file intact.

I made this change because Google would not verify my site, even though I tried various times over the past 6 months. Then, today, when inside the sitemaps interface, I was told that Google couldn't find my robots.txt file, I decided to just dump all of it.

Now we can see if Google sitemaps are of any use at all or at least of use to me (I didn't see any noticable changes for the 1 year I used it), and whether Google will continue to crawl my site now that I've diss'd 'em.

I am preparing for armageddon whether it happens today, tomorrow or never.

> I just removed my Google sitemap entirely from my site and from their interface.

Well you may be disappointed to find out that I put a Google site map up for ONE day, then took it down. Too late - Google had already spidered the sitemap. Even though I don't have one - Google shows it in the results. What's more - Google continues to add pages to the sitemap that weren't even submitted.

Prime reason I never trusted sitemaps submission. Have one on each of my sites which works just as well.

No, the income and all else was tanking lower than ever and it had been going down all this year, the sinking of the sites started last winter when I discovered and used custom channels. When I did the test I had tried everything everyone else was trying to no avail so the ball started rising After making the channel/ad changes.

My stats program shows all my pages and how many views they get so I don't think I "stumbled" on anything.

The ads have always been well targeted but low paying. I can recognize good widget sites in my niche and suddenly they started showing up. Do I still use the filter? You bet! but not as often as before.

Ann

Play_Bach, don't get me wrong. I WANT Google to spider my pages, the ones in the sitemap and all the others I add and update. I just got tired of trying to verify myself on their cruddy interface (I've owned and operated the site in question since 1999), and when they showed that they couldn't even locate my robots.txt file (what's up with that?) I said enough is enough and killed it all off.

I used to like Google, but that was 3-4 years ago, when they were still somewhat of a yearling. Now that they're big and public and rich, I have a much different opinion, much of it derived from their secrecy and their wicked failures, like Google Base.

It really seems to me that they are grasping at straws and branching out in directions askew from their original intent. They also are still a one trick pony, with AdWords their only significant source of revenue.

If they were truly as smart as they let on, they'd focus on search, adwords and building better relationships with their customers, but I think they have a bad case of paduki bird syndrome (flying around in once large but then smaller and smaller circles until it flies inside itself from behind).

It's all cyclical, you know, and G isn't immune.

Thats the most insightful thing I ever read about Google.

Does anyone else recognize the new A/B testing for what it is?

What is it?

Does anyone else recognize the new A/B testing for what it is?

I'll take a stab at it! A sneaky way to get you to use channels?

sounds like it to me. But that is just my opinion. /:)

Jomaxx, It is a way to test 2 ad blocks side by side one showing 50% of the time then switching to the other for the last 50%. To find out which one earns the most...you NEED custom channels to determiner that.

Ann

edited for spelling...too sleepy.

I'm using A/B/C testing at the moment using a small PHP package I wrote myself.

My script doesn't do one, then the next, then the next, it randomly selects one of the three each time. However, PHP's mt_rand function seems to be doing a fine job of giving an even distribution to the three banner types:

PHP misc large-rect: 274 impressions in July
PHP misc leader: 298 impressions in July
PHP misc skyscraper: 296 impressions in July

The only problem is the very low amount of traffic to my site. I'd love to see how my randomizer works on a high traffic site.

Oh, and I checked with Google. The randomized AdSense is fine, so long as the resulting code is exactly the same as it would be generated by Google's AdSense generator. They warn that relevancy and earnings may be affected by such a method, but I'm seeing the same ads appear on all three formats on a given page.

[edited by: UserFriendly at 10:12 am (utc) on Aug. 4, 2006]

I'll take a stab at it! A sneaky way to get you to use channels?

Haha I love these conspiracy theories. But come to think of it I have never come across of a time when the AdSense team did something to promote the use of channels like this.

Hello to all members of the AdSense team reading this thread :-)

P.S Since removing channels completely this week I am seeing slightly worse results, but that point aside I am looking at my AdSense reports a LOT less.

I find that blog entry (the first of August Optimization Month) somewhat suspicious.

Kudos to Ann for "cracking the code."

No wonder there are so many MFAs and G can't get rid of them. 1. Their algo isn't really that complicated. 2. Tweaking the algo to hamper MFAs would probably result in absurdly ruined SERPs.

Some people around here have questioned why I am so critical of Google.

My answer is that they need to be criticized until they come to the realization that without webmasters and out sites they would have NO business whatsoever. When that light bulb goes on, they may begin to treat us like full partners.

Here's one for their management team: How about a special class or stock option for AS publishers and AW advertisers? Say you earn a certain number of shares for certain levels of participation. Kinda share the wealth and make us really vested in Google's success - a democratization of the corporation.

I'm sure they'll have a good laugh over that one.

Or, if they did it, find a way to "recapture" ;)

Didn't crack any code, just tried the last thing I could think of before moving on away from Google.

I thank God it did work for me and some of you also. Probably for more than are willing to say so. That's okay, I really understand. I have caught enough flack about this but that's fine because when I get talked about the rest of the world can rest for a few minutes...(Me Mum's favorite saying. LOL)

Ann

So now it's become a grand conspiracy, even though Google already have a database that contains every impression and every click from every account. Even though there's no earthly reason for them to want to downgrade sites that use channels. Even though a decision to base smart pricing on channel data, when a significant number of clicks aren't tracked that way, would have been monumentally stupid.

I find it amazing what people can convince themselves of if they try hard enough. Simply amazing.

jomaxx

I find it amazing what people can convince themselves of if they try hard enough. Simply amazing.

I find it amazing that after having dismissed the whole concept as complete foolishness 17 days ago, that you still continue to follow the discussion offering nothing but contempt and distain.

I would have expected more from a senior member! If it wasn't to your taste... why not just let it go?

Chapman

Well I don't think I said there couldn't be SOME effect. I tried very hard (unsuccessfully) to get some specific numbers to work with, and in fact I proposed a reasonable explanation for an observed effect (which has the advantage of explaining why some who have done the experiment have seen no change, and others who do perceive an effect see their earnings going down instead of up).

I was gonna just let it go, but this self-justifying idea that Google are somehow trying to trick webmasters into using channels, and that therefore Ann must be on to something really big, got under my skin again.

I've bailed out of the test without any conclusion of whether it works or not for me. I simply had the need to know which channels are working and which ones are sitting on their thumbs. I just created a few new channels with entirely new names.

Well I don't think I said there couldn't be SOME effect.

July 18th-

Sorry but no, that's not possible.

There's no reason to even postulate that channels affect anything...

Busted Jomaxx

I tried very hard (unsuccessfully) to get some specific numbers to work with

Exactly what I've tried to do in this thread. However, it seems that is not to be. People would rather squabble about who'se side we are on, as opposed to pooling information to work out why it might work for some people.

Busted Jomaxx

I don't think so. It's very easy to copy and paste selective sentences that make it appear so, but it seems to me that Jomaxx shares my frustration that nobody is willing to try and investigate what is changing, or why it works for some and not others.

Obviously SOMETHING is changed that changes something else that maybe has an affect somewhere along the line. In trying to get figures and information it might be possible to find things in common, that might give a clue. It's a huge leap for me to believe that simply removing channels alone causes an affect in some cases. After all, we use channels to work out our profitable pages in order to make us (and somewhere down the line Google) more money. It would be nuts to have a system that penalised people that used channels. Therefore it's likely that it causes an affect somewhere else unpredicted - especially as it doesn't work for as many people that it does work for. Or that's how it seems to me at any rate.

It seems to me that there is some sort of requirement to take sides in this thread. I personally think that is pointless. IF this works, then we should be investigating WHY - not having a flame war about whether it does or doesn't. Clearly it works for some, and not others.

My apologies David, I did not intend to fuel a squabble about this or anything else. My specific point was that Jomaxx has been drifting in and out of this discussion since the beginning generally expressing only the negative.

I don't think so. It's very easy to copy and paste selective sentences that make it appear so...

While I appreciate that this can indeed be misleading... the remarks I copied and pasted were simply to illustrate his remarks "right out of the chute" before any serious discussion had begun.

I certainly understand your specific frustrations, however, I haven't ever gotten the feeling that Jomaxx was really trying to sort-it-out... only shoot-it-down.

Chapman

[edited by: Chapman at 10:46 pm (utc) on Aug. 4, 2006]