New Case Study - ScienceDaily.com

[Joel Comm]

Google has added a new case study to the AdSense site today. It is for Science Daily Magazine..

"Dan Hogan launched ScienceDaily magazine (www.sciencedaily.com) and began publishing daily news headlines and stories on topics such as science and technology, health, and the environment. Soon after, he began using AdSense programs and is now making money on ad revenues with Google."

https://www.google.com/adsense/newsandstudies

Frankly, I think Dan is still leaving money on the table.

Let's take a turn critiquing Dan's site. What suggestions would you have for him?

Joel

[flyer]

Yeah, his Adsense is well below the fold, and so far to the right that I have to scroll over to see it, even on my big monitor.

Odd that Google chose this as a case study, considering it has several other non-Google ads on it, & isn't doing anything "interesting" with Adsense. (It's certainly not as good an example as those in Joel's book.) If I were G, I wouldn't pick sites like this that remind us there are other ad providers we can use.

A lot of the other ads are in positions where I'd put the Adsense. Other than removing those ads, I'm not sure where I'd put Adsense on this site, since he does need room for the content. But without knowing what those other ads earn vs. Adsense, we're just playing web designer, not revenue consultant.

The menu on the left might be a good place- put an ad link unit above or within the menu, and/or Adsense in that big empty space below the menu. And probably change the look of the menu to look more like the ad links.

I also think he has too much content on that front page- it looks nice, but is about 3 screens long. Maybe put the archives stuff from the bottom to its own page. I think having lots of content like that can scare away some visitors, when it looks like it will take all day to read it, like the Sunday newspaper.

[bivie]

Doc, don't hold back. You already have these things in mind, so share your thoughts. Here are mine:

I didn't go very far into the site for lack of time. But, the first thing I noticed on the main page is wasted real estate on the left hand column; a good place to put Googe text links. Also, it's a large page with lots of content; maximize your Google ads by adding additional ads. You can put 3 (not counting search and text ads) so put more in - especially under the Breaking News section. There is empty real estate there that could contain more Google Ads.

Additionally, you could put a Google tower in the left hand menu column, or plant Ad Sense in the middle of Earlier Stories. If you make them match the other stuff on the page, you are likely to get clicks.

Just my 2 cents. I would love to hear from others.

[Bobette Kyle]

The first thing I thought about, too, were the other ads. The case study says "the effectiveness of Hogan's cost-per-click ads on AdSense is four to five times that of the other ad networks." To me, it should naturally follow that you'd want to give the best performing network the prime real estate...any above the fold advertising should be AdSense...there are three banner/tower ads above the fold, no AdSense (hmm...wonder if they are keeping text ads away from top so as not to distract from home page content, preferring visitors to stick around for another page). Anyway, it's the same situation in the interior pages.

Those pages are so full, I think it would mostly be reprioritizing the existing material and switching out other ads with AdSense...with Alexa rank of 5,000+, PageRank of 7, and - criminy - #3 ranked for "science" in Google (775 million results returned for that search term!), the site's no doubt pulling traffic beyond belief, so they probably don't want to mess with the formatting too much and ruin something that's working for them. But, by simply reprioritizing existing advertising, I'm thinking they could boost revenue by loads (They say AdSense is 66% of revenue...I'm thinking they could get 80%-90% of revenue from AdSense with some shuffling).

I like how under "related headlines" they have AdSense formatted to blend with the headline news articles.

Another opportunity is the search box. "AdSense for search performs extremely well. It gives us an exceptional click-through rate of 10 percent." If they could figure out how to get another search box in a strategic place (maybe to the right of the top navigation), that may give them even more searches, which means more movement through their site and more clicks.

That's all I can think of just now (except I am jealous :) ).

[dragonsage]

I am confused, I guess. Google's latest Adsense case study (www.sciencedaily.com) has a Dogpile search bar at the top of the screen. Dogpile results include results from Google, Yahoo! and other search engines. At the bottom is a Google search bar. Google has shown us this case studay as a good example of using Adsense effectively.

But, isn't this a violation of the program policies?


Competitive Ads and Services

We do not permit Google ads or search boxes accessing Google search services to be published on web pages that also contain what could be considered competing ads or services...If you have elected to receive Google search services, this would include other search services on the same site and non-Google query-targeted ads.

[Bobette Kyle]

has a Dogpile search bar at the top of the screen. I was wondering about that, too. Then I thought - since I only saw it on the home page - that maybe it was a served ad from another network where dogpile is an advertiser (which I guess wouldn't make any difference. It's still another search service).

sciencedaily could be one of the mega customers with a custom account, but even if that's the case, doesn't seem right to make a case study of the account.

:confused:

[dragonsage]

Or, they might have made the change after Google decided to use them as a case study. If so, Google might have goofed by not making a last-minute "is everything in compliance" check before releasing the case study.

[biggles]

Has anyone asked Google about this?
If not, who wants to ask Google for an explaination of the apparent contradiction between their TOS and their 'featured site'.
As before I am happy to, but want to keep these things at a low level on their radar screen, so don't want to duplicate enquiries.

[AndyBeard]

They are not blending very well, but placement is better on internal pages.

I don't like their top menus, they appear underneath the banner ads, and on my system sometimes you can't even see the bottom of the menu.

On the front page, I would use a smaller font for the right column

The front page might not be the primary point of entry to the site for many of their readers.

[trivum]

Well, I agree that he could do a lot better in a lot of ways, but he's probably pretty happy that he's making dough off of a bunch of high school students who aren't going to buy anything the advertisers are selling and are probably only clicking on the ads because they don't realize that they're ads. Google sure did pick a strange one to highlight - somebody who isn't really taking advantage of the ads and who is delivering terrible customers to the advertisers. Lots of waste going on in a lot of different ways.