I just launched a site <<< URL Removed >>>, it is a free service that estimates the number of visitors any site has.

When I launched the site I put it into a couple of forums for reviews in order to get some feedback. This was very helpful and I got tons of feedback. I made a lot of changes some of them right away and other changes were a bit more low priority.

One the low priority changes was changing the look of my Adsense ads. I’ve had several posts saying that the ads looked bad, because the ads were not in the same colors as the rest of the site. The ads were default Google Adsense colors.

Making sure that the Google Ads are an integrated part of your site and look like the rest of the site is not revolutionary news. It is an old Google Adsense tip and you might have heard the tip before, but I think this is interesting because this is an example of the exact result that a minor change like this can do. I have nothing to hide so I’ll give you the exact numbers of the effect of this very small change.

The numbers are based on 4 days before the change and 4 days after the change. Here are the numbers:

Before:
Pageviews 882
Clicks: 1
Click through rate: 0,11%

After:
Pageviews 1125
Clicks: 8
Click through rate: 0,70%

The numbers are not huge because the site was just launched, but I think they are large enough. This was a serious shock to me. A minor change like this increased my earnings 7 times – pretty wild.

I hope you can learn something from this, I certainly did. Let me hear your comments or if you have similar stories. It would also be interesting to hear if 0,70% is high or low compared to others.

Regards,

To addend to this, many have found that the 250x250 text only ad immediately below the header with the same background color as the page converts really well and flows nicely with the text.

Very interesting indeed, thanks for sharing. I've never explored google adsense, I might have to soon :) Oh and i've used your site before, it's a great idea and resources to have.

Interesting point DevilDog, I might try that.

Hi DevilDog

Take a look now, I've made a few changes...

I like your site better now then before.

Originally posted by Zach Highknee
Hi DevilDog

Take a look now, I've made a few changes...

Sorry Zach that I didn't get back sooner. It looks pretty good but here is an example of how I put a 250x250 ad where the title bar has the same color as the background. The code is a <div> that floats to the left and the text flows around it:

Example:
<h1 align="center" class="text">Web Hosting Explained</h1>
<div class="lt"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-7433483551647952";
google_ad_width = 250;
google_ad_height = 250;
google_ad_format = "250x250_as";
google_ad_channel ="";
google_color_border = "EEEEEE";
google_color_bg = "EEEEEE";
google_color_link = "222222";
google_color_url = "3366CC";
google_color_text = "000000";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script></div>
<p align="justify" class="text"><img src="image-files/null.gif" alt="Web Hosting Explained - WebsiteMaven.com" width="1" height="1">If you are reading this page then you need the ...</p>


The ad is placed inside a <div> tag so the text flows around it. In this case I apply a CSS style of "lt" whic is defined as:

.lt {float:left;}

You can also float the ad on the right and with text flowing around it but it seems to look nicer on the left.

I'm not saying it's the only way to do it but I have heard that others experienced increases in clicks when the backgrounds of the ad blends with the page itself. Right now your page looks good but your ads really stand out. I think a few of your pages would do really well with the 250x250 ad blended to background.

Thanks DevilDog

I might wanna try that, it sounds very interesting.

nice work.
just had a look at ur site, very interesting. just thought u mite like to know, on front page, it says date, i assume its meant to read data??

I think too a nice idea wud be to have some sort of info about improving visitors, or gettin listed into various search engines etc. Wud be a nice follow through maybe. And, more pages for ads ;)

Hi Cheezyal

Thank you for correcting my bad spelling, it has been corrected now.

Thanks for sharing this Zach Highknee