Did Google Screw You When They Reduced The Clickable Area On The Ads?

If your Google Adsense revenue went down because of that change, then you’ll answer yes. But when nothing has changed in your revenue, you’ll answer no, isn’t it? 🙂

But honestly, for me, Google did the right thing, not because I did not experience the drop in earnings, but because it gives more value to the ad network.

As a publisher, I don’t want to send useless traffic to my advertisers. And for me, traffic from accidental clicks are useless. What would someone do to a website when he was just sent there accidentally by clicking an area on the Adsense ad? Nothing. He’ll simply leave the site, wasting the advertiser’s money and sending some of it to me. It’s unfair to the advertiser. I’m happy, he’s not, I think, it’s not a good scenario.

It’s only reasonable that the only clickable area is the link title and the URL, and not the whole ad space. It is an assurance that when someone clicks it, he is really interested on the advertisement. It gives the advertiser a valuable visitor, someone who will read what he’s offering on his site. I get the money for that click, and the advertiser gets what he paid for, a valuable visitor, not a useless visitor who doesn’t even know how to use his mouse properly. 🙂 Both parties are happy. He got his visitor, I got my money.

If you experienced a drop of earnings on that change made by Google Adsense, the solution is not to curse them. They just did the right thing. Study your ad placement. If your strategy before is to place the ad in the position where visitors can accidentally click them, it doesn’t work anymore. Change your strategy. Position your ads so that visitors can easily find and read them. If your visitors are really interested in an ad, no matter how small the clickable area on the ad is, they will still click it.

If others are experiencing a drop on earnings because of that change, I experienced the opposite. My Google ads cost-per-click increased while maintaining the same click-through-rate, thus, increasing my Adsense earnings.

Do it the right way, and you’ll earn more from Adsense. Do it the wrong way, and he’ll just slap you. If your Adsense earnings went down, then you’re doing it the wrong way.