Here are some reasons why your site doesn’t convert

[sunshine]

AdSense is the best ride in town. It has competition now, but currently - it is #1 for the vast majority of people. This is why we need to protect the program, even if it means getting rowdy in a forum.

This is my attempt to summarize several problematic areas of the AdSense/AdWords relationship - In hopes that these things can be resolved, so that AdSense will remain the best ride in town.

Click Fraud - It comes in all shapes and sizes - in the end, it represents short term gain for one individual with the costs being absorbed by Publishers and Advertisers.

It seems that with every new campaign I start these days, I see the same pattern.
I start with $0.05 and all or most keywords are active. Those that are not active usually have a pretty low minimum like $0.10.

After a day of running, most of the 5 cent keywords become inactive and require a CPC increment to 10 cents. I do that and let it run for another day. Then I see the same thing and have to increase the CPC to 20 cents. Then 40. Then 50. Then $1. Then $5.

Old campaigns that I haven’t touched in a long time are doing fine with steady bids. As a side effect of that, I’m now afraid to tweak them and just let them run.

Anyway, back to the new campaigns — do you think clicking on your own ads might help and keep the min CPC in the 10-20 cent range? It seems that it would be cheaper to constantly click your own ads at 10 cents than to pay $5 per click when yours is either the only ad for the keyword or one among only 2 or 3 others shown.

This would explain low conversions for some people. Conversions having direct impact on Smart Pricing, lowering EPC. (Smart pricing can go real low, reaaaal low - ask any forum owner)

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22cl...fe=on&filter=0
This doesn’t need explaining. This type of click fraud is theft… pure theft. I have found forum threads in Google from 2003 where the forum owner engouraged people to click like crazy, and even provided them a link to a separate window to click them in. The sad part is - today, ads still show on the site in question.

MFA Sites Plain and simple, they bring advertiser costs up, and publisher earnings down. There is no way that they convert better than “real” sites. We all know what they are, and what the look like. They are useless to people searching for real information. In case you’ve been in a closet and do not know what MFA’s are - they are Made for AdSense sites that contain only links to adsense for the most part with no real purpose. Most of them steal content from other sites to form their own content from. Often times they are thousands, upon thousands of pages large.

Here is a recent thread targeted at MFA’s: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/10136.htm

Often times the owner of a MFA site will game Google’s system by trying to advertise cheaply and convert the traffic into high dollar clicks on their “traps” that often times even disable the back button to force most people through an advertisement. These sites typically maintain about 90% ad content, and 10% scraped content. They must yield insane CTR’s.

Content Theft You may say - well Google can’t stop content theft! I beg to differ. Being the most searched of all engines - it is their responsibility to manage their content.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...&btnG= Search
Now you can even find AdWords advertisements that are advertising SCRAPING and scraping software. They are allowing their network to be used to advertise for copy wright infringement, and content theft. Just look at the ads!

Conversion Tracking and Statistics It would be nice to have clarification on how conversions can be properly tracked, if it is optional to place conversion tracking code on your pages - and even more impossible to know if the landing page is the problem. Poor landing pages, and un-tracked conversions could beat you into Smart Pricing submission.

On the statistical end of things. I find it highly puzzling why perhaps the single most important factor in the publishers long term EPC does not appear in the statistics. If conversions are affecting my earnings - I’d like to improve them. This would be best for the publisher, and the advertiser.

Again, I’m not posting this because I hate AdSense and I want to start a riot. In fact, I appreciate the program greatly. AdSense, combined with advice that I have received from forum members here has been providing me with an income stream that comes from something I enjoy. I never would have imagined. I would love for AdSense to contine on being the best ride around - it’s simple, it is efficient, and it works for almost everyone to some degree. If the ride is going to go on smoothly - the tracks are going to need to be ironed out, as even gravity has its limitations.