So – After a three day test I have removed the Adsense units from SEOforums.org.
This is the second time I have run a brief test on the site, the first time was in December ’09 when we were serving a little over 5,000 pageviews per day, and our alexa rank was around 60,000.
At present we are serving many multiples more pageviews per day, and currently the alexa is hovering around the 12,000 mark.
so: what did we learn from the brief (and I agree, not optimized) usage of adsense on the site?
1) The CTR was actually not bad, about 0.74%
2) the eCPM is probably better than I expected at around £1.05 per 1000 impressions
3) I still dont think its worth plastering ads all 0ver the site to make a couple of hundred pounds per month.
I am a great believer in having a clean site layout, with as little distraction as possible – and I personally dont find that adsense allows tight enough integration on-site (this one at least) to warrant the inclusion of it.
In about a year I guess I will try it again. If in the meantime you have any explicit suggestions as to how people can increase on their stats, feel free to post them in the comments section or in the threads area of the forum.
