One of the first ways to improve your click through rate is to make sure that your ad is compelling (I’m not going to write too much on this topic for reasons that I’ll reveal later on this week). I’ve recently added AdSense to this blog, and I noticed this entry pop up.

The ad on the right is absolutely fine, although I’m sure Google wouldn’t like you to click it (or at least click it and actually use the service). The one on the left though… what’s it about? The title is Search Engine #. I have no idea what that means, are they talking about increasing your traffic? Your SE exposure? There’s no information, and there’s no call to action. Maybe in the 2 lines of text? Top 6 websites for Search Engine # is the first line, and the second line isn’t even used. Are they hoping for people to click through to clear the confusion? If so, one would think that that would lead to a very poor conversion rate, which makes the campaign rather costly. I would have loved to have clicked on it to find out exactly who the company was, but unfortunately under the AdSense TOS I can’t click on ads on my own site. However, searching for the term in Google - Search Engine # - showed them at #1, so I clicked there. It’s one of those spammy arbitrage site, which means that they’re most likely auto-generating the ads. So actually I’m kind of happy that their copy sucks, hopefully it’ll not make them much money…