Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Is there such a thing as CTR being too high? If so, how high would be too high?
[edited by: Marcia at 12:09 am (utc) on Oct. 10, 2006]
Looking at those seperately, a consistent, but high CTR might not be much of a problem. On lower impression count pages especially. A 35% CTR on a page getting 100 impressions a day might not be that hard to achieve. Getting 35% CTR consistently on a page getting 10,000 impressions a day might be a bit more difficult, but it's probably not impossible. (I say probably because I don't have any 10,000 impression per day pages, so I'm guessing because I can't test my thinking at that level)
Getting a big jump in CTR is really something else entirely.
Big jumps in CTR can be really short lived because they can come from some unexpected traffic surge from a new source, like a blog or forum for instance.
A big jump that turns out to be your CTR reaching a new and consistent, but much higher, level because you redesigned a page layout is also probably not problematic as long as the design doesn't violate the Adsense TOS, think blinking arrows. :)
Can CTR be too high in general? I'd be more concerned with CTR that flucuated wildly, especially if a sites logs show hints of traffic sources that might raise questions.
But too high? And what would that be? Given the right site and traffic sources and levels I'd think 35% would be with-in reason on a long term basis.
On a short term basis it can be a real roller coaster ride reaching CTR numbers in the high 100s, or even over 1,000% depending on traffic sources, traffic targeting, traffic quality, traffic spike duration, etc, etc without becoming a problem.
Then there is having a high CTR page or a few high CTR pages on a larger site with many lower CTR pages. That's a lot easier to achieve.
When in doubt, test, test, test! Try a one or just a few pages and see what the results are. If it's really spectacular and you want to expand the layout to the rest of a site....
.... you can always email Adsense and let them know about your test results and what they might see coming from your site, it probably can't hurt.
On a short term basis it can be a real roller coaster ride reaching CTR numbers in the high 100s, or even over 1,000%
Boy, I wasn't watching what I was typing when I wrote that! I have an extra 0 in each of those numbers!
I basically meant near and even over 100%.
