Mesothelioma

One amusing suggestion concerning my meager Google AdSense ad revenue is that I do not write about Mesothelioma enough. At least a few years ago, it was rumored that law firms were paying outrageous ad click rates for the keyword "Mesothelioma" since they are able to make outrageous amounts of money from suing companies for causing this form of lung cancer from asbestos in the workplace. Maybe so, but I have been trying to stay focused on topics that I am actually interested in or at least trying to pass along useful information that I have run across.

I used Google AdSense advance reports to figure out that in 2006 and 2007 my click through rates (CTR) were 1.32% and 1.28%, but my CTR plummeted by 50% to 0.64% in 2008, even though my page views had climbed by 49% in 2008. That makes very little sense to me.

Given that my page view were up, which is consistent with my higher blogging rate in 2008, I do not think that I have a content problem per se. On the other hand, maybe my content mix has shifted enough and maybe some topics are significantly less interesting to reduce the likelihood of readers clicking on ads.

Maybe my content is simply less interesting to advertisers, whoever they really are, this year.

Another suspicion I have is that the Google ads are getting stale and people are just not clicking on them as much.

Another possibility is that Google click-fraud detection is incorrectly and unfairly reducing my click counts. It would be very interesting for Google to report that as a separate statistic.

Or, maybe my readers are financially far worse off than in 2006 and 2007, and simply do not click on ads because they can not afford to buy. I would hope that isn't the case, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility.

I did verify that my average earnings per click were actually slightly higher in 2008 (but not as high as in 2006), so that is not the source of the decline in my overall AdSense earnings last year.

-- Jack Krupansky