Should you remove adsense from low traffic pages?

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Should you remove adsense from low traffic pages?

Sgt_Kickaxe

1:19 pm on Sep 9, 2022 (gmt 0)

Have you removed adsense from low traffic pages and if so, what happened?

Removing adsense from low performing pages is not a new concept, it's been discussed here on WW since 2009 and before - [webmasterworld.com...]

As you can see in most of the threads the discussion falls around performance metrics and where to "draw the line",

My question is specific to traffic numbers. Below a certain number of visitors per day Adsense reports a page as being "low traffic". How much is "low"? 10 visits? 50? and what effect would removing adsense from every page that doesn't meet that threshold?

I would think that if page performance has a sitewide impact on publisher revenue that you would not want adsense on pages where adsense can't get a good evaluation?

robzilla

2:02 pm on Sep 10, 2022 (gmt 0)

I would think that if page performance has a sitewide impact on publisher revenue

What makes you think that's the case?

I see no reason to remove ads from low-traffic pages, if they still make money collectively.

tangor

4:46 am on Sep 11, 2022 (gmt 0)

An ad spot is just that. Might be thinking this too hard!

Sgt_Kickaxe

10:57 pm on Sep 12, 2022 (gmt 0)

An ad spot is just that. Might be thinking this too hard!

An ad spot is a 78% rating in pagespeed instead of 100% on mobile.

An ad slot impacts user experience on pages with little experience data gathered

An ad slot in an "every page can affect the overall site" search and advertising world is what % impactful?

It was just a question, I'd remove ads from 80% of pages if it meant a 20% income loss and a much better user experience with a chance to increase earnings on the best pages... and make up for it possibly. I was just wondering if anyone has tested it recently and if so, what happened to overall metrics 2-3 months later.

There is a symbiotic relationship between search and adsense so there would be two sets of data to monitor, one for search and one for adsense.

As for overthinking it, it's not me deciding to treat pages with ads differently than pages without, I just follow a test everything mentality really. if I overthink and it's nothing, that's awesome too. Underthinking and missing something.... not so awesome. I thought there would be more case studies online to be honest.

tangor

11:58 pm on Sep 12, 2022 (gmt 0)

It is possible, of course. You have already identified the majority of reasons to do "something", but you will have to test it in real life, in your situation, to see if there is any profitable reason to make those changes.

I doubt that the 78% of g's own adsense drag on page speed is a metric they attach to low traffic pages. After all, on their side, it is an ad served.

robzilla

8:02 am on Sep 13, 2022 (gmt 0)

Ah, it wasn't clear to me that you were referring to performance as in page speed, thought you meant ad performance (RPM etc).

I've disabled ads for about 30% of my traffic because it hardly brought in any revenue, but that's country-based. I do it to improve their user experience, and not really expecting that to feed back into the rankings (can't hurt either, of course). Page speed is such a minor factor.

No way I would sacrifice 20% revenue, though :-)

And of course low traffic pages will also have less of an effect on your overall site speed than high traffic pages. Either way, I'm not convinced even having AdSense on a page will affect your page speed to such a degree that it influences your rankings.

puckparches

2:36 pm on Sep 16, 2022 (gmt 0)

@Sgt_Kickaxe
I'm not sure if it is related, but I removed the "manual" ads on a low-traffic and low-earning site and left just the auto ads, which rarely show, and since then the traffic and ranking increased.