Google AdSense update

It has been a few months since I last wrote about the Google ads on this blog. After a couple of false starts, I’ve been tracking the main pages that have ads people click on. The idea is to see if the most popular pages are also the most profitable pages.

The most popular pages since 1st June have been, in order:

• Best Man Speech
• The home page
• Cheesecake Recipe
• hReview WordPress Plugin
• Baklava Recipe
• Positive Gearing Analysis
• Wi-Fi Test Results

This is very similar to last time, with the investment book reviews replaced with a recipe. Apparently there are more cooks reading, than books cooking. They don’t come here for the puns, that’s for sure.

The analysis of top search terms (courtesy of Google Analytics) is also similar to last time. The top four terms are:

• “best man speech”
• “cheesecake recipe”
• “baklava recipe”
• “positive gearing”

Variants of these are repeated until position 12 which is “auction strategy”, and it is position 27 before we get to “hreview”. Unfortunately, microformats are still not particularly popular.

But the list you’ve all been waiting for is the most profitable pages (i.e. those where people click on the ads the most). These are:

• Positive Gearing Analysis
• The home page (I couldn’t pin down 30% of earnings, so it’s probably the home page)
• Auction strategy
• Best Man Speech
• Baklava Recipe
• Cheesecake Recipe
• About page
• hReview WordPress Plugin

So, it’s still the popular pages (and, oddly, my About page), and the four most-searched for topics are also profitable, but the order is different. It seems that the message from my advertisers is that I should write more about real estate and baking.

Be careful what you wish for.