Finding your own level…

I have talked about Google AdSense before, but now I want to concentrate on the average Google Adsense CTR (Click Through Rate).

According to Awstats*, this blog averages about 5,000 unique visitors per month, making about 15,000 visits, and reading about 130,000 pages. If you type into Google: ‘average CTR for Adsense’, you will receive answers that range from 1-2% to 2-3%, so, let’s take the average at 2%.

Adsense CTR measures what?

The next question has to be: a CTR of 2% of what? We have three numbers: unique visitors, total visits and total pageviews, which is the technical term for the number of pages viewed according to the rules laid down by Larry Page, who was a top dog in Google in his day).

2% of unique visitors doesn’t seem right to me… Neither does 2%of pageviews, because a click on a Google Ad would take that person off-site. It’s possible, but it seems unlikely.

Therefore, we are left with a CTR of 2% of visits, the total of which is 15,000.

So, a CTR of 2% would mean 300 clicks per month.

At a miserly 10c per click, that makes $30.

So, why am I earning only 30c… a hundred times less?

Google says that my site receives 300 visits per month, so six clicks.

Google Support

Why the huge discrepancy?

If anyone can shed any light on this, please leave your comments below, or contact me directly.

This CTR thing bothers me, so I can’t let it drop until I get to the bottom of it.

I have been on Google’s Support Forum. However, no-one there has any solution as to why Google’s Adsense CTR, or should I say, it’s count of the number of visitors, should be so different from that of Awstats’.

*Awstats is, according to my blog’s host, ‘the gold-standard’ of site traffic measurements.