Tonight I was browsing the Internet, when my virus software notified me of a potential threat from openstat.ws. None of the websites open in Firefox had a link to this site in the source. After some investigation, it appears that the potentially malicious site is called by Google Adsense.

Avast Anti-virus Warning Message

I use Avast Antivirus on my computer and tonight it gave the following warning message while I was browsing the Internet:

Sign of "HTML:Iframe-inf" has been found in "http://openstat.ws/top.php\{gzip}" file

The inclusion of a URL made me suspect that one of the sites I was browsing was linking to a dodgy website (ie openstat.ws).

The obvious thing to do was to check the source of the sites open in Firefox, to see which one was the culprit. However, openstat.ws did not appear in the source of any of the pages. Not to be put off, I used the Web Developer toolbar to examine the generated source. Still nothing.

Google Says Openstat.ws Is Suspicious

Next stop, a Google search for openstat.ws. The number one result was the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for openstat.ws page. Because the nature of this page is that it may change often, I’ve grabbed a screenshot of what it’s showing tonight:

Okay, so Google are saying:

Site is listed as suspicious – visiting this web site may harm your computer.

They say the site was only listed for suspicious activity once in the last 90 days, but they also say:

Of the 6 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 3 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent.

I’m not a security expert and I may be reading this wrong (please let me know if I am), but that seems to be indicating that there’s a 50% chance of malicious software being installed from openstat.ws.

Norton Say Openstat.ws Is A Threat

The third result in the Google search was Norton Safe Web’s page on openstat.ws. Let’s see what they say about openstat.ws:

Norton are saying that there are two threats found on openstat.ws, one of which is:

Threat Name: Direct link to HTTP Malicious Toolkit Variant Activity

Location: http://openstat.ws/top.htm

The file Avast picked up on my computer is top.php, but top.htm is pretty close. HTTP Malicious Toolkit Variant Activity sounds pretty nasty. Norton say:

Severity: High

This attack could pose a serious security threat. You should take immediate action to stop any damage or prevent further damage from happening.

Okay, I’m convinced now that I don’t want openstat.ws being called on my computer. But how can I stop it where I can’t find where it’s being called from.

Looking Under Firefox’s Hood – Sessionstore.js

If openstat.ws wasn’t being called by the websites I was visiting, perhaps it was being called by Firefox itself. I started thinking that Firefox or one of the extensions I run must have been compromised. I started looking through the Firefox files – admittedly without much of an idea of what I was looking for.

I started by looking in the \Documents and Settings\[username]\ Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[profilename] folder. I ordered the files in date order and started going through the most recently modified files.

I soon came to sessionstore.js. It gave me the answer, although it wasn’t the answer I was expecting. Sessionstore.js seems to store the current session, presumably so it can be restored in the case of Firefox crashing. I’m not sure if this is default behaviour or part of the Session Manager extension.

It consists of a series of entries tags, one for each tab that’s open. In examining this, I found the following:

EDIT: Due to Syntax Highlighter performance issues, I’ve moved the sessionstore.js snippet into a text file.

That’s not particularly readable, but it’s saying that I’ve got Ozh’s Handling Plugins Options in WordPress 2.8 with register_setting() post open. Inside that there is a child URL open (http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/etc) which is a Google Adsense ad. Inside that, there are some further children, down until we come to one for http://openstat.ws/top.php, which is our suspicious site.

At this point we are still inside the Google Adsense child, meaning that the site that Google lists as suspicious is actually being served through Adsense. This is a little worrying to say the least!

Note: There is absolutely nothing wrong with Ozh’s site apart from the fact that he is running Adsense – as do I and hundreds of thousands of other sites.

Final Thoughts

As I said, I’m not a security expert, so I’d love some feedback from some more knowledgable. I’d also love to hear if anyone else out there has come across this problem.

Some of my most popular posts are those in my make money online series that discuss how to avoid Adsense smart pricing by displaying Adsense only to search engine visitors. Now I’ve found the most complete solution to the problem of smart pricing, over on the Blog associated with RT’s backlinks service (more below).

What Is Smart Pricing?

I’ve explained this many times before, but here’s the short answer again:

Smart Pricing is a penalty that Google applies to Adsense accounts (yes the entire account) that don’t convert well for the advertiser. This can result in a penalty of up to 90% of what you earn for a click. Pretty significant hey!

To avoid smart pricing, you need to provide the advertisers with targeted traffic. This traffic will convert well for the advertiser and ensure that you don’t attract the smart pricing penalty. Search engine visitors provide targeted traffic (no problem). Regular readers and social networks visitors provide untargeted traffic (problem). Many bloggers are smart priced without even knowing it.

If you need any further information, see Grizzly’s authorative explanation of smart pricing. This explains the intricacies of smart pricing far better than I can. If you’re trying to make money online, then you need to understand this.

How To Prevent Smart Pricing – My Solutions

As I said, I’ve written quite a few posts about how to prevent smart pricing. These all centre around displaying Adsense to only search visitors (targeted), not to your regular visitors or social media visitors (both untargeted).

I started with a hack to the Shylock Adsense Plugin (for WordPress) so that only search engine visitors would see ads (regular visitor wouldn’t see them). This could also be used for showing Adsense directly, without using Shylock.

This solution only displayed Adsense ad units on the first page that a visitor landed on. If they navigated to another page on your site, Adsense wouldn’t appear, as they no longer came immediately from a search engine. Therefore, I followed up with an improved solution that shows ads to search traffic on subsequent pages as well (by setting a cookie).

Later, I converted this solution to work on the Blogger platform, so now you can filter out non-search visitors on Blogger as well.

The Most Complete Solution To Smart Pricing

RT’s post on filtering out non search engine visitors in WordPress is amazing. Not only does his solution filter out non-search traffic, it also filters out certain search terms that are unlikely to convert well and posts from categories and tags that are not likely to convert because they aren’t targeted for Adsense,

This is the most complete solution I’ve seen. If you follow RT’s advice, then you are very unlikely to get smart priced by Google.

The only caveats are:

• It only works for the first page, not subsequent pages. I know RT will say that the vast majority of clicks come from the first page and there’s no point showing ads on subsequent pages.
• It won’t work with PHP caching solutions, such as WP Super Cache (neither does mine). RT is working on a solution to this, although as he points out, the whole point is to get search traffic rather than loads of social traffic, so this may not be needed anyway.

Following this technique should ensure that you are earning the maximum amount possible via Adsense.

What Is ConnectContent?

Before wrapping up, I’ll take the chance to explain what ConnectContent is. Chances are, if you’re interested in avoiding smart pricing, then you’ll be interested in ConnectContent as it can help you earn more money online.

RT founded ConnectContent to help members get relevant links, with relevant anchor text. Getting such links is the most important thing to do if you want to improve your rankings in the search engines. If you want to dominate your niche, relevant links are essential.

More information from the ConnectContent site:

ConnectContent is a managed network, designed to promote relevancy between websites. Search engine quality guidelines are followed and reciprocal linking is discouraged while one-way linking is encouraged.

The service is not free, but is very reasonably priced: USD$12.00 per month (or USD$120.00 for a year). There is no restriction on how many links you can get, except for any self imposed limits on how many links you can give. The more you give, the more you receive.

There’s an affiliate program that pays 50 percent of subscription fees as residual referral commissions. That means if two people sign up through your affiliate link, you break even. That’s leaving aside the extra money you can earn through improved rankings! Easy AdSense money.

Final Thoughts

If you really want to make money with Adsense, then make sure you’re not smart priced. Many people are only earning a fraction of what they could be. There is no guaranteed way of avoiding smart pricing, but RT’s solution is as close to a guarantee as you’ll find.

Want to make money online with Google Adsense? If so, you better make sure you don’t get smart priced! One of my most successful posts covers how to avoid smart pricing by only serving Adsense to search engine visitors. That post was written for the WordPress platform. In this post, I outline how to do the same on Blogger blogs (although there are severe limitations).

Why Only Show Adsense To Search Visitors?

First, why are we doing this? The main reason for showing Adsense to search visitors only, is to try to avoid smart pricing. I won’t go over smart pricing again (go read the above post in detail), but here’s the brief summary:

Smart Pricing is a penalty Google applies to Adsense accounts that don’t convert well for the advertiser and results in you earning only about 10% of what you’d normally earn per click. Search engine visitors provide targeted traffic for the advertiser, which converts well (no problem). Regular readers and social networks visitors provide untargeted traffic, which doesn’t covert well, increasing your chances of being smart priced (problem).

After reading Grizzly’s recent post on making money online anonymously, I learnt that it’s even more complicated than that. Grizzly, who’s a master of making money online, reveals that when he writes a post his CPC (Cost Per Click) drops for a couple of days:

Whenever I post I get a surge of traffic – the surge is un-targeted (my readers) and my CPC drops for several days until readers tail off. As long as my ad impressions stay above the 3000 barrier my CPC doesn’t drop more than 10 cents a click. If my ad impressions fall below the 3000 barrier I see a 30 cent drop in earnings per click.

Grizzly also says that his CPC dropped when he received a surge of traffic from a forum. It follows that the same would happen when you receive a surge of traffic from the social networks (ie Digg, StumbleUpon, etc).

It may be that this phenomenon is separate to smart pricing, or it may be that it’s actually a part of smart pricing and that smart pricing is far more complex than anyone has guessed.

Either way, showing Adsense to search engine visitors only should ensure that Adsense units are only served to targeted traffic, which should protect your CPC and help you make more money.

Serving Adsense Only To Search Visitors on Blogger

I’ve already covered how to display Adsense units only to search visitors for WordPress and I actively use the method on this blog. However, I also have a few Blogger blogs (and Grizzley’s site is on Blogger), so I started wondering how to show Adsense only to search traffic on Blogger.

With WordPress it’s easy. You can use PHP on the server side to detect where the visitor came from, then decide whether to include the Adsense code. If they came from a search engine, the Adsense code is added to the HTML sent to the browser. If they came from somewhere else, then it’s not.

However, with Blogger, it’s not possible to detect where the user came from on the server side. The only option is to use JavaScript, on the client side, to a) detect where the user came from and b) show the Adsense code or not.

Part A – Detecting Search Engine Visitors

Detecting search engine visitors is relatively easy. We can use JavaScript’s document.referrer to work out where the user came from. Converting the code I used for the PHP in JavaScript, we can do something like:

<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
var ref = document.referrer;
var se = new Array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
var sevisitor = false;
for (var i = 0; i <= se.length-1; i++) {
	if (ref.indexOf(se[i])!== -1) {
		var expiry = new Date ();
		expiry.setTime(expiry.getTime() + 3600000);
		document.cookie = "sevisitor=1; expires=" + expiry + "; path=/; domain=scratch99.com";
		sevisitor = true;
	}
}
//]]>
</script>

Note: In the document.cookie line, you must change “.scratch99.com” to your own domain!

This code detects whether the user arrived from one of a number of search engines and, if so, sets a variable called ‘sevisitor’ to true. It also creates a cookie, so these visitors can be identified if they subsequently navigate to another page (they will no longer appear to have come from a search engine).

We’ll use the variable or cookie later to decide whether we’re going to display Adsense.

So where does this code go? We only need this code once on the page, regardless of how many Adsense units we show, so we’ll put it at the top. The bad news is that it doesn’t work if you try to add it via a Blogger gadget, so we’ll have to add it to the template itself, as follows:

• In Blogger, go to Layout, then choose Edit HTML
• Make a backup of your template by clicking Download Full Template
• Click Expand Widget Templates
• Search for <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> (near the top somewhere)
• Place the code above on the line immediately below this.
• Save the template

Your blog should now be setting the variable and the cookie.

Part B – Showing Adsense To Search Visitors

Next we need to detect whether the variable and cookie are set and, if so, show the Adsense unit. To check whether they’re set, we’re going to use the following code:

var results = document.cookie.match ( '(^|;) ?sevisitor=([^;]*)(;|$)' );
if (sevisitor == true || results[2] == 1) {

Put this together with your Adsense code and it should look something like this:

<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
var results = document.cookie.match ( '(^|;) ?sevisitor=([^;]*)(;|$)' );
if (sevisitor == true || results[2] == 1) {
	var adsenseString = "<div style=\"float: left;\">\n";
	adsenseString += "<script type=\"text/javascript\"><!--\n";
	adsenseString += "google_ad_client = \"pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\";\n";
	adsenseString += "google_ad_host = \"pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\";\n";
	adsenseString += "google_ad_slot = \"xxxxxxxxxx\";\n";
	adsenseString += "google_ad_width = 336;\n";
	adsenseString += "google_ad_height = 280;\n";
	adsenseString += "//-->\n";
	adsenseString += "<\/script>\n";
	adsenseString += "<script type=\"text/javascript\"\n";
	adsenseString += "src=\"http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js\">\n";
	adsenseString += "<\/script>\n";
	adsenseString += "<\/div>\n";
	document.write(adsenseString);
}
//]]>
</script>

You’ll have to replace the xxxx’s with the appropriate numbers from your Adsense code and you’ll have to change any other details (such as ad width and height if you’re not using a large rectangle).

What this script does is first check whether the variable or the cookie is set and if so, builds a string containing the Adsense code, then writes it. We have to build a string then write it, because there’s an external script called by the Adsense code. If there wasn’t an external script called, we could just strip the <script> tags and put the code in directly.

Where does this code go? The answer is wherever you want it, but it has to be in the template, as follows:

• In Blogger, go to Layout, then choose Edit HTML
• Make a backup of your template by clicking Download Full Template
• Click Expand Widget Templates
• Find where you want to put the ad unit and place your code near this.
• Save the template

Here are some suggestions for where you might like to put the Adsense unit:

• At the top of the post body: Place it on the line after <data:post.body/> (or <p><data:post.body/></p>).
• Before the post title: Place it on the line before <b:includable id=’post’ var=’post’>
• At the top of the sidebar: Place it on the line after <b:section class=’sidebar’ id=’sidebar’ preferred=’yes’>

Remember, according to Google’s Terms Of Service, you can only have 3 Adsense units on a page (plus 3 link units), so make sure you don’t put this in too many places. You don’t want to be banned from Adsense.

Why In The Template?

You might think you could save yourself the trouble of editing the template by using HTML/JavaScript gadgets that can be added via Layout > Page Elements.

Save yourself the time and don’t bother. These gadgets are extremely fussy. CDATA doesn’t work, the code you paste in mysteriously changes, using htmlentities doesn’t help.

And before anyone asks, there is no way this can work with the built in Adsense gadgets. The only way seems to be through the template.

Is It Worth It?

This obviously takes a while to set up and only you can decide whether it’s worth it to you. It really depends on whether you’re likely to get smart priced. I’m not going to bother, as 99 percent of traffic on my Blogger blogs are search engine visitors to start with, so I’m unlikely to get smart priced.

If one of my Blogger blogs morphs into something similar to this blog, with regular readers and social traffic, then I’ll definitely shift all of the Adsense units into the template and show them only to search engine visitors.

I’d highly recommend you do some testing  (remembering it takes about a week for smart pricing to be removed) and base your decision on that. Remember, this is all about making money online.

The IFrame Solution

After writing much of this post, I came across an alternative solution from Rhys, which places Adsense within an IFrame. This gets around the problems mentioned above and should allow you to use the HTML/JavaScript widget.

However, although this is much easier, I’m slightly hesitant to recommend it. It seems to me that when the Adsense bot goes looking at the page that the Adsense unit is displayed on, it will crawl the IFrame, rather than the real page, meaning the ads may not be relevant. However, it seems to work for Rhys, so I’ll leave you to make up your own mind.

Final Thoughts

Google Adsense is one of the best ways to make money online, but you have to make sure that you’re not smart priced. Don’t just believe what I’m saying – go and test it out. It’s definitely worth looking into, because it can help you make extra money.

I was recently optimizing Adsense on one of my Blogger sites and decided I wanted to place Adsense inside the posts – but only on single posts, not on the home page or in the archives. Here’s how.

Why Blogger?

Although my primary blog platform is WordPress, I do occasionally use Blogger for some side projects. Why? Go and read everything that Grizzley’s written on his Make Money Online For Beginners site. Blogger can be an excellent option. It’s free, easy to create a site, can scale to handle massive traffic etc.

The only downside to Blogger is the limited ability to customize the site. With WordPress I can change pretty much anything I want. With Blogger I can only change things within the narrow framework that Blogger allows. In this case, I ran into the limitations with the built-in options to display Adsense ads.

Blogger’s Built In Options To Display Adsense

The easiest way to add Adsense to a Blogger blog is via the built-in gadget. I won’t go through the whole process, as it’s written about elsewhere, but you can add an Adsense gadget in the same way you can add a Profile gadget, Text gadget, Poll gadget, etc. Just go to Layout, then Page Settings, then click on Add a Gadget, select the Adsense gadget and then configure it.

The first time you use it, Blogger will ask you for your Adsense publisher number and link the blog to your Adsense account. Then you simply decide where you want the gadget to appear, what size and colour the ads should be and you’re off! You’re ready to start making money online.

You can also add Adsense between posts. To do this, click Edit on the Body gadget and turn on the Show Adsense Between Posts option. You’ll then be presented with the same options that the gadget gives you (size, colour etc).

Limitations With Built-In Options

There are several limitations to using Blogger’s built-in Adsense gadget:

1. Can’t Put Adsense Ads Within Posts

The main limitation with using the built-in Adsense gadget is that you can’t place ads within a post. You can add them before posts, after posts, between posts, in the sidebar, but not in the actual post.

It’s well known that the CTR (click through rate) is higher for ads within a post than for ads in other positions. So putting Adsense within a post will make more money for you. I cover how to do this below.

2. Can’t Use Channels

Another limitation of the built-in Adsense gadget is that you can’t use channels to track the performance of ad units.

However, this isn’t really a limitation – if you want to use channels, simply create your code on the Adsense site, then copy and paste your Adsense code into a JavaScript gadget, instead of using an Adsense gadget. In all other ways it will work the same as the Adsense gadget.

3. Blogger Only Shows Three Ad Units

The last limitation is only an issue for those people who place an Adsense unit in the sidebar. Some people choose not to do this, but I find that an Adsense unit in the sidebar performs relatively well (not as good as units at the top of the page, but better than those lower down the page).

The problem is that Google makes sure that only three ad units are displayed on a Blogger page, as per their Terms Of Service. Great in general, but it means you have less control over which ad units appear. Unfortunately the sidebar is rendered last in most templates, so it’s one of the units that disappear if there are too many units on the page.

This won’t happen on the single post page. However, if you display ads between posts (or within posts) then the sidebar ad unit will disappear on pages with multiple posts, such as the home page and archive pages. I explain how to overcome this below.

Adsense Within Posts

As I mentioned above, you can’t place Adsense ads within the post body using the built-in gadgets. To do this, we’re going to have to put our Adsense code directly into the template.

We still can’t put the ad unit in the middle of the post, but we can put it at the top of the post, below the title, with the text wrapping around it. Great! That’s proven to be the most effective placement, so that’s exactly what we want.

Now, the technique used to do this isn’t new. In fact I learned how to do it by reading Bonnie Calhoun’s Wrapping Adsense in Blog Post. You can go and read her post for the full instructions, but here are the basic steps:

1. Get your Adsense code from the Adsense website
2. Parse the code to replace special characters with HTML entities
3. In Blogger, go to Layout, then choose Edit HTML
4. Make a backup of your template by clicking Download Full Template
5. Click Expand Widget Templates
6. Search for <data:post.body/> or <p><data:post.body/></p>
7. Place your Adsense code on the line immediately above this
8. Save the template

Note 1: It’s very important to parse the code as per Bonnie’s site (ie replace < with &lt; and > with &gt; etc). If you do not do this, your Adsense units will not display correctly and you risk being banned by Google.

Note 2: You probably want to place your Adsense code within a floating div, so that the text wraps around it.

Here’s what the code will look like (with the publisher specific information removed). The first and last lines should already exist in the template, the rest is what you’re adding.

<div class='post-body entry-content'>
<div style='float: left;'>
&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;&lt;!--
google_ad_client = &quot;pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&quot;;
google_ad_host = &quot;pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&quot;;
google_ad_slot = &quot;xxxxxx&quot;;
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
//--&gt;
&lt;/script&gt;
&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;
src=&quot;http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js&quot;&gt;
&lt;/script&gt;
</div>
<p><data:post.body/></p>

This solves the problem of getting Adsense to appear within the post, driving up CTR. However, the sidebar unit will still disappear on the home page, as there will be more than 3 units on the page (one embedded in each post).

Only Showing Adsense In Posts On A Single Post

To solve the problem of the sidebar unit disappearing, I decided that I only wanted to show Adsense within the post (ie solution in the previous section) on single posts. I didn’t want this ad unit to appear on the home page or on archive pages.

It would be easy enough to do this in WordPress / PHP, but I had no idea how to customize a Blogger template. I consulted Blogger’s Help facility and found a list of Layouts Data Tags, which let me see what could be done. Despite the options being fairly limited, I found the answer I needed: The pageType tag, which can have a value of ‘item’, ‘archive’ or ‘index’.

My XML coding skills are a little rusty, but thankfully it wasn’t hard to work out how to include some HTML based on the type of page:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
PUT YOUR CODE HERE
</b:if>

This says: If it’s a single post, include the HTML (obviously you have to put it in). So single posts (pageType of item) will display the HTML, but the home page (pageType of index) and archive pages (pageType of archive) will not.

Applying this to our Adsense problem, here is the full code you need (with the publisher specific information removed). Use this instead of the code in the Adsense Within Posts section above. The first and last lines should already exist in the template, the rest is what you’re adding.

<div class='post-body entry-content'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<div style='float: left;'>
&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;&lt;!--
google_ad_client = &quot;pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&quot;;
google_ad_host = &quot;pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&quot;;
google_ad_slot = &quot;xxxxxxxxxx&quot;;
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
//--&gt;
&lt;/script&gt;
&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;
src=&quot;http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js&quot;&gt;
&lt;/script&gt;
</div>
</b:if>
<p><data:post.body/></p>

Of course, this means that only two Adsense units will be shown on the home page. If you’re doing things properly, most of your visitors should arrive on single posts, via the search engines, so this solution’s good enough for me.

Final Thoughts

If you want to make money online and you’ve decided that using Adsense on Blogger is the way to do it, then optimize it!

Hopefully this has helped you a) increase your CTR by showing you how to place Adsense units at the top of your posts and b) how to preserve income from the sidebar unit by stopping it from disappearing on multiple post pages.

In the past, I’ve written about only showing Google Adsense to search engine visitors, so as to decrease the chance of being smart priced. In this post, you’ll see how to improve the technique outlined previously, so that you can make more money.

Background On Smart Pricing

By now, most people know that Smart Pricing is a penalty Google applies to Adsense accounts that don’t convert well for the advertiser, resulting in you earning only about 10% of what you’d normally earn per click.

I’m not going to go into more detail than is absolutely necessary in this post, so if you want more information on Smart Pricing, see my post on how smart pricing may cost you money or for the ultimate description, see Grizzly’s Optimization Tips for Adsense.

For now, you just need to know that only certain visitors are going to click Adsense ads and buy something from the advertiser. Who? It’s not your regular readers. It’s not the stream of visitors from StumbleUpon, Digg or Sphinn. It’s the search engine visitors.

Search engine visitors provide targeted traffic for the advertiser, which converts well. The other sources don’t. If the majority of your traffic comes from the social news sites, then you’re in danger of being smart priced. That’s why I chose to show Adsense only to search engine visitors.

The Original “From Search” Function

In my original Shylock Adsense Plugin – Hack To Avoid Smart Pricing post, I provided two approaches: one based on hacking just the Shylock Adsense plugin; another on a more generic solution that can be called from wherever you want (within the Shylock Adsense plugin, the sidebar, single.php, etc).

In this post, I’m using the second approach as it has a wider application. This was originally explained in the Hacking Shylock Adsense AND Sidebars section of the previous post. This worked by adding the following function to functions.php in your theme’s folder (wp-content/themes/yourtheme folder, where yourtheme is the name of your theme):

function scratch99_fromasearchengine(){
  $ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
  $SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
  foreach ($SE as $source) {
    if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) return true;
  }
  return false;
}


This function was then called from the Shylock Adsense plugin, a sidebar widget, or anywhere else you may want to, via the following code:

if (function_exists('scratch99_fromasearchengine')) {
  if (scratch99_fromasearchengine()) {
    INSERT YOUR CODE HERE
  }
}

Obviously, INSERT YOUR CODE HERE needs to be replaced with whatever code you want to show the search engine visitors: your Adsense code if it’s in the sidebar (using the ExecPHP widget) or the Shylock Adsense code (see my original post for more details).

Problem With The Original Function

As Zath pointed out in the comments, the original function only works on the first page the visitor lands on. If the visitor subsequently navigates to another page on your site, the ads disappear. This is because the http_referer is no longer the search engine, it’s now the page where they landed on your site.

Of course, that means they no longer have the option to click an ad before leaving the site. I wasn’t worried about this, because I figured not many search engine visitors would go to another page on my site. I was wrong!

Leaving Money On The Table

According to Google Analytics, over the last month, visitors arriving at this site from a search engine read 1.54 pages per visit. That means that every second visitor is clicking another page.

Every second visitor! That means I could be serving up 50% more ads to the sort of visitor who is likely to click ads!

I decided I better change the way I was doing things, so that search engine visitors see ads on every page they visit at my site. Fortunately, this is fairly easy to do, by setting a cookie that identifies search engine visitors.

New “From Search” Function Using Cookie

Here is the solution I’m now using on this blog.

First, the you need to add some code to functions.php in your theme’s folder (wp-content/themes/yourtheme folder, where yourtheme is the name of your theme). The following should be added immediately before the ?> at the bottom of the file:

$ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
foreach ($SE as $source) {
  if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) {
    setcookie("sevisitor", 1, time()+3600, "/", ".scratch99.com");
    $sevisitor=true;
  }
}
 
function fromasearchengine(){
  global $sevisitor;
  if ($sevisitor==true || $_COOKIE["sevisitor"]==1) {
    return true;
  }
  return false;
}


Note: In the setcookie line, you must change “.scratch99.com” to your own domain!

The fromasearchengine function can then be called from wherever you want to use it (to check if a visitor is from a search engine or not). This is explained further below.

Notes About The New “From Search” Function

The code that detects whether the user is from a search engine has been moved out of the fromasearchengine function, into the body of functions.php. This means it will only run this code once per page load, rather than every time the function is called, which may be several times per page load (I call it from Shylock Adsense and from the sidebar).

Also, the $sevisitor variable was introduced because the cookie can’t be detected on the first page view. The cookie is set on the first page view, but the $_COOKIE function won’t see it until the next page view. The above code checks whether the $sevisitor variable is set (ie it’s the first page view) or whether the cookie is set (ie it’s a subsequent page view).

I had one problem with setting the cookie via WordPress, but it doesn’t affect the final solution above, so I leave that for a future post.

Calling The New “From Search” Function

To call the new fromasearchengine function from Shylock Adsense, edit the shylock_adsense.php file which comes with the plugin. Look for the following code (on line 325 in version 1.2):

function shylock_adsense_filter($content){
  global $id,$user_level;
  $output = $content;

and replace it with:

function shylock_adsense_filter($content){
  global $id,$user_level;
  $output = $content;
 
if (function_exists('fromasearchengine')) {
  if (fromasearchengine()) {


Then go down to about line 364 and look for:

  return $output;

and replace it with:

} } return $output;

Alternatively, to call it from a PHP sidebar widget or somewhere else (such as single.php), you would add the following code in the appropriate place:

<?php if (function_exists('fromasearchengine')) {
  if (fromasearchengine()) { ?>
    INSERT YOUR CODE HERE
<?php } } ?>

replacing INSERT YOUR CODE HERE with your Adsense code or whatever else you wanted to show the search engine visitor.

Final Thoughts

Using this technique, to set a cookie to identify search engine visitors, then only serving Adsense to such visitors, should help you make more money, while avoiding being smart priced. However, as always, it pays to experiment with Adsense and monitor the affects on your income.

Of course this technique will have other applications as well, allowing you to serve whatever content you like to search engine visitors. I hope some of you find it of use.

This morning I noticed an entry on Sphinn highlighting GreyWolf’s Seth Godin Wants to Cheat Advertisers with Fake Clicks post. It discusses Seth Godin’s Ads are the new online tip jar post, which suggests that readers should click ads to reward bloggers for their writing. To quote Seth:

If you like what you’re reading, click an ad to say thanks.

GreyWolf condemns Seth’s advice and rightly points out that anyone following this advice is guilty of click fraud:

If you click on an ad and your purpose is to make sure the site owner or blogger gets money from the click, and you had no intent to buy or research, that is click fraud.

As you’d expect, given they are Internet Marketing / SEO communities, comments on GreyWolf’s post and on Sphinn strongly condemn Seth’s statement. The majority of commentators agree that this is click fraud. I concur!

However, what’s intrigued me is that no-one’s mentioned the effect this may have on a blog being smart priced by Google. Seth’s advice may actually end up costing bloggers who run Google Adsense.

I’m not sure why no-one’s mentioned this. It may be that most members of those communities fall on the advertising, rather than publisher, side of the fence. I’m definitely on the publisher side, so I’ll go ahead and explore the impact on smart pricing.

What Is Smart Pricing?

I’m not going to go into what smart pricing is in detail. That’s been covered before, both by myself in my How To Avoid Adsense Smart Pricing On Blogs post, and by better bloggers than me.

The short description is that smart pricing is a penalty applied by Google, resulting in the amount of money you receive when someone clicks an Adsense ad (on your site) being only a fraction of what you would normally receive.

If you want to find out more about smart pricing, the best description I’ve found is Grizzly’s Optimization Tips for Adsense. Read his long article in full for a good understanding, but here’s his quick summary of smart pricing:

If you are running ads on your blog that an advertiser has bid $0.50 per click on and your traffic clicks the ads and doesn’t convert well for the advertiser then Google will not pay you the usual $0.25 per click. They will likely give you $0.01 to $0.05 per click. This means you have been smart priced. This will also mean that you will receive lower payouts on every site you have Adsense on – not just the poorly converting site. This is a penalty because you are not optimizing your Adsense pages in order to give the advertiser the most bang for his or her buck.

So basically, if clicks from your site give advertisers a low conversion rate, you get a huge penalty on what you earn.

But It’s More Complicated Than That

There’s more at play here than what I’ve described above. Admittedly, no-one but Google really knows how it works, but Grizzly knows as much as anyone else and mentions targeted traffic.

Google considers where the traffic comes from and how much value traffic is to the advertiser. Even if the visitor doesn’t buy anything from the advertiser, if it’s targeted traffic, Google considers that you’ve delivered quality traffic to the advertiser. As Grizzly explains:

My best advertiser is looking for people looking to “make money online”. The ad says “Make Easy Money Online”. Most of my traffic – about 75% find my blog searching on Google for the term “make money online” or a long tail version of that term. If one of my visitors clicks on the ad they are most likely looking for what the advertiser has to offer and even if they don’t buy, Google can charge the advertiser full price because the visitor left a “make money online” trail. They found me using the term and they found the advertiser because of the term. That is as targeted as traffic can get and Google can charge the advertiser full price. If all my traffic came from stumble upon and clicked the ads then the advertiser wont get many conversions and Google can see where the traffic originated, knows it isn’t targeted and will penalize me and give the advertiser a rebate.

So you’re more likely to be smart priced if a high percentage of the visitors clicking ads, arrived at your site from a source other than a search engine.

Seth Godin Could Cost You Money

How can you avoid smart pricing? The answer: Try to ensure you’re delivering targeted traffic (ie from search engines) to the advertisers and that a good percentage of that traffic converts for the advertiser.

If your regular readers follow Seth’s advice and click on ads to reward you, you’ll get more clicks, but you won’t be delivering targeted traffic to the advertiser and only a low percentage of people will actually buy anything.

That puts you squarely in smart pricing territory. Thanks Seth!

If you only have one site, the impact may not be so bad: There’s no guarantee you’ll be smart priced and anyway, a lot of low value clicks may equal a few high value clicks.

However, the risk is not worth it, especially if you have other sites running Adsense. If you get smart priced on your blog, you get smart priced on all your sites. That could really cost you.

Final Thoughts

I’ve got nothing against Seth Godin – he’s obviously very well respected – but I think he’s wrong on this occasion. I’m far from an expert in this, but leaving the click fraud argument aside, it seems his advice, aimed at helping bloggers, could actually hurt them if they run Google Adsense ads.

As a publisher, I don’t want my normal visitors to click ads. When people choose to click ads on my site, I want them to be highly targeted search engine visitors, who’ll lead to a higher advertiser conversion rate and won’t get me smart priced.

Oh, if you came to this post from Sphinn or StumbleUpon, or you’re one of my regulars, and you’re wondering why you can’t see Adsense on this blog, well you can’t. Only search engine visitors see Adsense ads on this blog.

Happy Chinese New Year! The arrival of the Chinese New Year seems like a good time to announce my new blog at jobsinchina.com. Primarily a blog, for now, JobsInChina will cover issues related to living and working in China.

What JobsInChina Will Offer

I’ve been wanting to write about China and my experiences here for a long time. This gives me the outlet. I’ll write about anything related to China: daily life, culture, travel, news articles, amusing stories, pictures I’ve taken, etc.

I’ll relate these back to living and working in China, because the primary focus of the blog is to help people understand what it’s really like here.

The site will also aim to provide resources for people wanting to live or work in China. I plan to add sections covering work visas, legal issues, etc. This part of the site will build up slowly, as I’ll need to research it carefully.

It’s also quite likely that at some point in future, the site will list jobs available in China. This will probably be done in partnership with an existing job listing provider.

There are lots of possibilities with JobsInChina. I’ve taken the unusual step of leading with a blog and adding other services later. That doesn’t mean that those services won’t be provided in future.

Why Lead With A Blog?

I’ve owned the jobsinchina.com domain name for four years, but never done anything with it. My original plan was to create a job listing service, but I was too busy to put it into action. Time passed and the opportunity was lost. There is now a lot of strong competition in this area and a new job listing site would be unlikely to succeed (without a lot of money behind it).

However, my experience with More Than Scratch The Surface made me confident that I could create a successful China-related blog. I realised that the easiest way to succeed with the www.jobsinchina.com domain would be to build the blog first, then leverage that to add the other services later.

Besides, I wanted to write about my experiences here in China anyway!

Monetization Of JobsInChina

If I can build the JobsInChina to a reasonable level, it will offer some good monetization options, including:

1. Adsense (search traffic only): While not a high paying niche, it should work reasonably well, once search engine visitors start to arrive. With lots of content, it should be able to attract reasonable search traffic.
2. Affiliate Reviews: A blog lends itself to reviews of products related to China: books, DVDs, language software, cameras (to take with you).
3. Direct Advertising: This may be where the real money comes from, once traffic reaches a certain level. Potential advertisers include large chains of English language schools in China, corporations hiring in China, companies selling China-related products, etc.
4. Partnerships: I won’t talk too much about this now, but once the site is reasonably successful, it will open the way for partnerships with job listing sites and other China related sites.

I’m sure more opportunities will arise as things proceed.

Adsense Related Posts Explained

Regular readers will have noticed a lot of Adsense related posts recently, including:

1. The Adsense Dilemma (Or How To Make Money)
2. How To Avoid Adsense Smart Pricing On Blogs
3. Shylock Adsense Plugin – Hack To Avoid Smart Pricing

These all came from the planning for jobsinchina.com. My first thought was to create a Made For Adsense mini-site, but I soon decided that I wanted to create a blog, so I could write about my experiences in China.

At that stage, I realised that a blog with good content, would be less successful with Adsense than an MFA site with mediocre content. This lead to the "don’t solve their problems" theory outlined in the Adsense Dilemma post. As part of researching that post, I learnt more about Adsense Smart Pricing and the high risk blogs have of being smart priced. That lead to the second post. The third post was my solution to the problem.

So that’s why I’ve been subjecting you to all these Adsense related posts!

Ultimately, I decided to go with a blog for JobsInChina with the plan to expand into other services later. This will mean a lot of extra work, but should result in better monetization options once it’s reached a certain level.

Final Thoughts

I’m excited about JobsInChina and I’m really going to enjoy writing about China. If any of you are interested in learning more about China, or what it’s like to live there, join me at Jobs In China. Happy Chinese New Year!

More Than Scratch The Surface has finally been penalised by Google. I noticed today that my toolbar PageRank has dropped from PR4 to PR0. It appears to only be a toolbar PR penalty – I am still in the same place in the SERPs.

I say finally, because I’ve been watching other sites get penalised, while mine remained untouched. The cause of my penalty: two sponsored posts I wrote about three months ago. Until now, Google hadn’t noticed them.

Goodbye PayPerPost

Like RT, I’ve said goodbye to PayPerPost. I only did two sponsored posts and it’s almost 3 months since the last one. I initially stopped doing them because I couldn’t find any fitting the subject of this blog. Then, as more and more blogs were penalised by Google, I decided to hold off doing any more.

I thought about adding nofollow to the links when Terence Chang recently lost his toolbar PR. I’m not sure why I didn’t. If I’m honest, I guess I thought that if Google hadn’t already penalised me, then they must have missed me. So if you are thinking about fixing any issues on your site, do it today!

I’ve now added nofollow to the links and requested reconsideration via Google’s Webmaster Tools. Now, I wait and hope my toolbar PR is restored.

Why Am I Worried About Toolbar PR?

Cynics will be asking why I’m so worried about toolbar PR, given my somewhat anti-Google stance on previous posts, such as Final Thoughts On The PageRank Debacle and I Signed Up For PayPerPost.

There are several reasons for my change of stance:

1. Originally, I was angry that so many fine bloggers were penalised for what was normal practice. It felt like Google was being very unfair. I’ll admit I didn’t know anything about Google’s Terms Of Service at the time. Since then, I’ve come to realise that Google had stated that the nofollow tag must be added to paid reviews and advertising. I still feel that Google should have communicated this better to the average blogger before penalising them, but in hindsight, they could have reduced real PR rather than just toolbar PR. A turning point in my attitude came when I read a well-considered defence of Google.
2. I originally thought, like many others, that I didn’t need Google. I’ve since come to realise that although it may be possible to have a successful site without Google search traffic, this traffic is where most of the money is. Search engine visitors are the one who are most likely to click ads or buy something (whether from Adsense or Amazon). Turning your back on Google’s search traffic has to be considered as shooting yourself in the foot. If I value the search traffic, I have to play by Google’s rules. I’m now happy to do so: In fact only 3 days ago, I turned down an approach to buy links on my site.
3. I was making very little from Adsense at the time and it appeared that sponsored posts were a better option. This may indeed be the case for some blogs, but I’ve come to understand Adsense much better since then. As I’ve learnt more about Adsense, it’s started performing better – and it’ll only get better as my site grows. Long term, Adsense is a better option.
4. Although toolbar PR is pretty much irrelevant (it’s your real PR and position in the SERPs that really matter), most people don’t realise that. Why is that important? Well, it’d important if I wanted to sell links or write sponsored posts, because they’re based on toolbar PR, but I’m not going to do that! However, I’ll be moving to Brisbane in about 3 months and I’ll be looking for a web-related job. You never know, a PR4 website may help me get such a job, a PR0 site probably won’t!

Final Thoughts

I didn’t have to post this. Google don’t care whether I make this post or not. I could have just requested reconsideration quietly without mentioning it and most people wouldn’t have noticed. But that’s not my way. If I feel I’ve made a mistake, I’ll put my hand up and admit it.

In the past I’ve said things that were anti-Google and pro-sponsored posts. At the time I believed what I said and there is an element of truth in those statements. It may be that for some people, sponsored posts are the best way to monetize their sites. It’s quick and easy money for a small blog, while Adsense won’t start working well until you’ve built your blog up and you understand how it works a little better.

However, I’ve come to realise that in the bigger picture, Google search traffic is a very important element of a successful site. It’s not something I want to lose, so I’ll play by Google’s rules. Today, I’ve only lost my toolbar PR, tomorrow it may be my real PageRank and my position in the SERPs.

In my last post, I talked about Adsense Smart Pricing and how blogs can avoid it by only showing ads to search engine visitors.

One option for WordPress is the Who Sees Ads plugin, which has the ability to do this. I prefer the Shylock Adsense plugin for the reasons given in my last post: automatic placement of ads; no need to enter placeholder in each post; easy to move ads from, say, top right to top left, etc.

The problem with Shylock Adsense is that although it can show ads on old posts only (mostly search engine traffic), there is no option to show ads only to search engine traffic. I really wanted this functionality, so I added a few lines of code to the plugin to enable it. In this post I explain how to do it.

Hacking Shylock Adsense ONLY

If you are only using Shylock Adsense to show ads, then this section is for you. If you have Adsense in other places, such as the sidebar, skip this section and continue to the Hacking Shylock Adsense And Sidebars section.

First, edit the shylock_adsense.php file which comes with the plugin. Look for the following code (on line 325 in version 1.2):

function shylock_adsense_filter($content){
  global $id,$user_level;
  $output = $content;

and replace it with:

function scratch99_fromasearchengine(){
  $ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
  $SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
  foreach ($SE as $source) {
    if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) return true;
  }
  return false;
}
 
function shylock_adsense_filter($content){
  global $id,$user_level;
  $output = $content;
 
if (scratch99_fromasearchengine()) {

Then go down to about line 364 and look for:

  return $output;

and replace it with:

  } return $output;

Upload the edited file to the wp-content/plugin directory on your server, overwriting the original file.

Shylock Adsense will now only show ads to search engine visitors. Any existing limitations will still be in place, but there is no longer any need for them – if the plugin is set to show ads after a certain number of days, you should change this so they are shown immediately.

Hacking Shylock Adsense AND Sidebars

Note: If you only show ads using Shylock Adsense, the previous section is for you, NOT this one.

I display ads in my sidebar, as well as in the post body. There is little point in hacking Shylock Adsense so that ads only appear to search engine traffic in the post body, if regular visitors can see them in the sidebar! Therefore, I came up with a solution to restrict ads in both places.

If we are going to use it from multiple places, the best place for the function checking if visitors are from a search engine is not in the Shylock Adsense plugin. What if we stop using the plugin in future and disable it? Then the function will stop working in other places, such as the side bar. I decided to place this function in the functions.php file in my theme folder.

1. Functions.php

Go to the wp-content/theme/yourtheme folder (where yourtheme is the name of your theme) and make a copy of the functions.php file (in case things go wrong). Then edit the file, go to the very bottom and replace:

?>

with:

function scratch99_fromasearchengine(){
  $ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
  $SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
  foreach ($SE as $source) {
    if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) return true;
  }
  return false;
} ?>

Upload the edited file to your theme directory on your server, overwriting the original file.

2. Shylock_adsense.php

Edit the shylock_adsense.php file which comes with the plugin. Look for the following code (on line 325 in version 1.2):

function shylock_adsense_filter($content){
  global $id,$user_level;
  $output = $content;

and replace it with:

function shylock_adsense_filter($content){
  global $id,$user_level;
  $output = $content;
 
if (function_exists('scratch99_fromasearchengine')) {
  if (scratch99_fromasearchengine()) {

Then go down to about line 364 and look for:

  return $output;

and replace it with:

  } } return $output;

Upload the edited file to the wp-content/plugin directory on your server, overwriting the original file.

3. Sidebar Widget

To do this, you need to have a widget with can execute php code. I use Otto’s ExecPHP plugin, but there are others available.

If you don’t have a plugin which can do this, download ExecPHP and install it. This will add a PHP Code 1 widget to the Presentation – Widgets page in the Admin area. Drag this widget to wherever you’d like the ads to appear, click on the configure icon and enter the following into the text box:

<?php if (function_exists('scratch99_fromasearchengine')) {
  if (scratch99_fromasearchengine()) { ?>
INSERT YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE
<?php } } ?>

replacing INSERT YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE with your Adsense code.

Close the text box, Save Changes and you’ll now have ads which appear in the sidebar for search engine visitors only.

4. Other Places

Although I’ve done this in a sidebar widget, the same code should work equally well in sidebar.php – or for that matter, wherever you want to use it (maybe single.php or index.php).

Testing The Changes

This applies to both hacks above. You should no longer be able to see Adsense on your site when you visit it as you normally do. Now you need to visit your site via a search engine to see if the ads appear.

You could do this by searching for your site name or url, or you could search for a relatively obscure phrase from one of your posts, contained in quote marks (eg “I’ve concluded that I wasn’t already smart priced”).

Once you find one of your posts in the search results, click it, go to your site and see if ads appear. If they do, you’ve hacked the plugin successfully.

But Wait There’s More

While this post has been written from the perspective of serving Adsense ads to search visitors only, you could use this technique to show anything to search engine visitors – other ads, custom messages, you name it…

Final Thoughts

This hack should help you avoid being smart priced by Adsense. I hope you find it of use.

I’ll be contacting the author of Shylock Adsense to see if this functionality can be added to the plugin in future. In my view, this would be a logical extension to what is already a great plugin, especially as more people become aware of Adsense Smart Pricing.

In my last post, I mentioned the danger Adsense Smart Pricing poses to blogs. Blogs are particularly vulnerable because most blogs don’t work well with Adsense. In this post, I examine the issue further and look at a couple of potential solutions for WordPress users – but there’s a twist in the tale.

What Is Adsense Smart Pricing?

First, lets look at what Smart Pricing is. In my last post I said:

Not many people have heard about Adsense Smart Pricing and there’s little information about it. It appears that if you have a low CTR (under 1 or 2%), you may be penalised, so you only get about 10% of what clicks are worth.

This was based on Courtney Tuttle’s recent explanation of Adsense Smart Pricing. The theory is that having a low CTR (below 1 or 2%) will result in a penalty, so you only receive about 10% of what clicks are normally worth.

The Danger To Blogs

Simply put, the typical blog is in danger of having a low CTR because they rely heavily on regular visitors and social traffic (such as StumbleUpon). Both of these groups are unlikely to click ads, resulting in a lower CTR. In particular, a burst of traffic from StumbleUpon is likely to have disastrous effects on CTR – a large number of impressions with very few clicks.

Search engine visitors do click ads. There are many factors that go into how high your CTR is, but it’s accepted that the higher the ratio of search engine visitors, the higher the CTR. While most blogs get search engine traffic, the majority of their visitors come from other sources.

This blog’s CTR is well under 1%. That’s not surprising given the target audience and the fact that only 25% of traffic comes from search engines, but it also means this blog is in danger of being smart priced by Adsense.

What Can Blogs Do About Smart Pricing?

The solution seems simple – to me anyway. Why not just show Adsense ads to search engine visitors only? This should result in a much higher CTR. Of course, a few clicks may be lost, along with a lot of impressions – but it would be worth it, if the value of clicks were higher as result.

I went ahead and did it on this blog. You won’t see Adsense here, unless you came via a search engine. I’ll tell you more about how I did it later.

Does It work?

It’s early days yet, but I’m still getting clicks (I don’t seem to have lost any) and my CTR has moved from well below 1% to around 2 or 3%. It’s looking good, so I decided to write a post explaining how to do this.

But Here’s The Twist!

When writing this post, I went digging for some official information about Smart Pricing. There is very little to be found. The best I could come up with is The Facts About Smart Pricing from Google’s official Adsense Blog. This is more than two years old.

Importantly, it contradicts what Court says. Here’s a quote from the post (emphasis mine):

The percentage of clicks that convert for an advertiser is the most important factor in an advertiser’s ROI, so it’s not only possible, but common, to have a low CTR and a high advertiser conversion rate. It’s also possible to have a high CTR and a low conversion rate. Don’t remove the AdSense code from your site just because it has a lower CTR – it may be one of your best converting sites.

Did Court Get It Wrong?

Yes, I think so. I have the greatest respect for Court and he has a lot more experience with Adsense than I do. He’s basing his theory on what he’s personally seen, others verify it and Google’s statement is ancient.

However, it seems more likely that Google would use advertiser conversion rate, rather than CTR, to determine whether Smart Pricing is applied. After all, Smart Pricing is all about Google delivering value to the advertiser.

Does this make a difference?

Only a little. There is probably a high correlation between high CTR and high advertiser conversion rate, because both are a product of targeted traffic.

People who are searching for a solution to a problem are more likely to click ads promising a solution. They are also more likely to buy something from the advertiser than a regular visitor who wasn’t actively searching for something.

So a high CTR probably means a high advertiser conversion rate. Showing Adsense to search engine visitors only should also result in a higher advertiser conversion rate and help prevent you getting smart priced.

However, you should try to determine if you’re smart priced before taking action. Don’t just disable Adsense because you have a low CTR.

Are You Smart Priced?

It’s hard to tell, as click value varies from ad to ad and from niche to niche. If your clicks are only paying 10 cents, then you are probably smart priced, but there’s no real way to know.

The only way is to experiment and see if the click value goes up. Try showing Adsense to search engine traffic only – you’ll lose some clicks, but it should result in higher CTR and higher conversion rate. It may take a week for you to see the benefits and you need to monitor how much you’re making closely.

If your earnings don’t improve, then maybe you weren’t smart priced. If that’s the case, undo the changes!

Is This Blog Smart Priced?

As I mentioned earlier, the CTR on this blog is way below 1%. In fact it’s below 0.2%. So I should be smart priced right? But I don’t think I am.

In the past, I’ve had periods where I was only getting 6 to 10 cents a click, but for the last month or so, I’ve been getting 30 to 90 cents a click. I think that’s probably about right for this niche. If someone out there can confirm this, please let me know!

Even though I think I’m not smart priced, I’m going to stick to my plan to only show Adsense to search traffic. I’m confident that search engine visitors are the ones who click my ads. I’ll use Adsense on other projects, so I want to protect myself. If this blog gets smart priced, so will all my sites.

How To Show Adsense To Search Traffic Only

I’ll mention two possible solutions for WordPress users:

1. The Who Sees Ads Plugin

One solution for WordPress users is the Who Sees Ads plugin. This has the ability to display ads for search engine traffic only. There are many other options, but this is the only one we are interested in. It works with the Adsense Deluxe plugin, which many people use, and can control ads in the sidebar as well as in the post body.

If you use Adsense Deluxe or manually insert Adsense code, then this is the solution for you. I won’t go into how to set Who Sees Ads up to display ads for search engine traffic. Just follow the instructions from the plugin’s home page. You want to set if Visitor comes from a search engine to display and turn the rest off. If anyone wants me to give detailed instructions on how to do this, leave a comment below and I’ll do this in a future post.

2. The Shylock Adsense Plugin

Personally, I prefer the Shylock Adsense plugin because it places the ads for you. Most plugins require you to manually enter a HTML comment where the ad should appear (in each post). This affords greater control on where they appear, but means they can’t be moved without editing each post! With Shylock‘s system you specify where ads should appear (eg top right of the post, middle left, etc) and Shylock adds the Adsense code to all posts.

A key feature of Shylock is that it allows you to only display ads on posts older than a certain number of days. If you set this to say 14 days, ads will not appear on new posts, meaning the majority of regular readers and social traffic won’t see them. This will certainly improve CTR and advertiser conversion rate, but there are a couple of problems:

1. It only works for ads in the post body. Ads in the sidebar will continue to appear to everyone.
2. Some regular visitors, social traffic, people following links will visit old post and be shown ads. It’s best if it appears for search traffic only.

As my sidebar ad is my highest earner, I’m not willing to give it up. Therefore, I decided to hack Shylock and the sidebar, so that ads are only shown to search engine traffic. This sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite simple. This post was supposed include instructions on how to do this, but I think I’ll leave that to a separate post, later this week.

The Final Word

Adsense Smart Pricing is something everyone wants to avoid, but the average blog is in serious danger of being smart priced. The solution may be to show ads to search engine traffic only. However, don’t assume that a blog is smart priced simply because it has a low CTR – do some testing to see if this is really the case.

Got an opinion on this? Let me know!