Google Adsense Optimization Tip: Don’t Use Competitive Filters

Everton | Apr 07, 2007 | View Comments


Google Adsense have started producing monthly Optimisation Reports for users with tips on how to improve performance.

My April report contained the following message:

Dear Publisher,

Here is your optimisation report for the month of April. After an automatic review of your sites, we think you might be able to improve your monetisation using the following tips:

You may be filtering ads that monetise well on your site.

This really made me think about how I was using the Competitive Ad filter. A very long time ago I added a long list of sites who were known to purchase low CPC ads to my Adsense Competitive Filter, to try and improve my overall average CPC.

However, after Adsense’s prompting I now think this was a bad idea based upon how Adsense works. Adsense trys to display ads that it thinks will perform best on a given page. By excluding certain low CPC ads you may actually be excluding the very ads that would work best on particular pages!

I’ve removed my filters and I’m going to monitor my stats closely for a week to see what happens. Let me know if you agree with my approach, or whether you have actually seen a tangible improvement in earnings from adding sites to the Adsense Competitive Filter list.


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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • @Robert

    My view is that a low CPC ad is being displayed then there is something wrong with your post, as Google will try and display the most relevant ad with the highest CPC. If that turns out to be a MFA site then so be it.

    Sometimes, when I see Google has messed up I look at the post and try to work out why and then do some edits. e.g. my post offering Joost invites got ads about wedding invites, so I went back and removed the word 'invite' as many times as I could to improve the ads.
  • I'm curious about your thoughts on Made For Adsense sites. Are you at least looking to block those? Those often have a low CPC but they also impact the reader's experience. A reader follows a link to one of these expecting to find information and instead finds a site with nothing but a few titles and a bunch of ads.
  • I'm yet to receive any such report... maybe they don't bother about us small adsense publishers :(
  • I've had no joy with affiliate schemes hence why I asked for help
  • Tru. I need to work on some quality content and SEO to achieve your traffic levels, Everton.


    Say, Have you used the new Adsense referral system? It's pretty cool to work with.
  • @TJP I was referring to your earlier statement:

    But if you get lots of traffic, adsense will convert anyways due to tons of impressions.


    i.e. The amount of traffic doesn't impact how well adsense converts.
  • I did have a few sites excluded using the ad filter but most of them are spanish sites which would give no meaning whatsoever to whoever is looking at it..

    And I thought I was the only one who had received the mail ;)
  • I don’t get why people (sorry for singling you out TJP) often refer to the level of traffic when talking about conversion. Whether a section of your site gets a lot of traffic or not is irrelevant. Conversion is conversion regardless of the traffic level, and is all that matters.


    Traffic matters because 1) adsense pays CPC and CPM, so you will benefit from clicks and impressions combined. 2) most publishers rely on 1-2 streams of income - like adsense and a second option. Even a poor conversion rate can translate in lots of money, which is why some publishers go with poor performing adsense ads over another income source that may or may not perform as well.

    CTR is CTR, but would you rather place adsense ads that are guaranteed to generate $2 CPM or experiment with another ad source altogether? Publishers are comfortable with guaranteed results.

    Just my 2 cents.
  • Lately the adsense throwing up not-so-related ads for me. Maybe google is still indexing my pages.
  • @Everton: lol yeah did saturday. Had been on your forum too. I am trying use the paged comments but then when I make comments it goes to
    http://www.technospot.net/blogs/comments-post.php

    Not sure whats the problem. Can you share your email so i can further disucss there.
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