Would Adsense Revenue Drop if Content was Hidden from Guests?

System0

System0

Active member
The First Click Free - Smart Content Hiding from yavuz looks excellent. It allows search engines to crawl your content whilst limiting the views of visitors.

I'm sure it's a great way of turning lurkers into members. My question is, how will this affect advertising income? I only show Google Adsense ads to guests so by utilizing this I could see a huge drop in earnings. I'm not sure. As perhaps the increased activity on the site would balance it out.

Have any members who show adsense to visitors tried this add on out?

Kev
 
Not a good idea if you rely on ads. Most ad networks put a higher worth on new visitor versus a repeat visitor because a new visitor is an unknown quantity who may be a possible customer, versus a repeat visitor who has already seen the ad and shown no interest is unlikely to be buying. So even if your pageviews remain the same by a decrease of guests versus and increase of member page loads, your earning will most certainly reduce. More so, if your guests were coming from search engines.
 
From the description, that sounds like cloaking (making the content look different to spiders)

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Ah... but I see the plugin tries to avoid Google penalties

So basically what the add-on does is, it allows the visitor be able to see the whole content if the request comes directly from the search engine(s) (also bots). However, users need to register and confirm their account if clicking any other link within the site.
Click to expand...
 
Note: You can give the Adsense bot a user account so it can "see" all of your content, even if guests can't see it, allowing it to bypass the add-on's restrictions if you are only showing ads to guests. ;)

With regard to members/guests and display ads - I work on the following principles (of a symbiotic relationship);
  • Members create content - which attracts and satisfies guests and creates new members
  • Guests create income - which funds the services you provide for your members
Granted, it's a game of numbers and until you turn those guests into enough members you might want to run ads to all groups, but I'm convinced that an ad-free forum for regulars it a great way of retaining membership. ;)

Do you use other forums that show ads to registered members? How many times have you clicked on their ads? :whistle:
 
sadikb said:
Not a good idea if you rely on ads. Most ad networks put a higher worth on new visitor versus a repeat visitor because a new visitor is an unknown quantity who may be a possible customer, versus a repeat visitor who has already seen the ad and shown no interest is unlikely to be buying. So even if your pageviews remain the same by a decrease of guests versus and increase of member page loads, your earning will most certainly reduce. More so, if your guests were coming from search engines.
Click to expand...


Probably....though not guaranteed, as more members signing up and posting would increase the number of threads which will be indexed by the search engines. However I think you're probably right and income would drop.

tenants said:
From the description, that sounds like cloaking (making the content look different to spiders)
Click to expand...

It was built according to Google's own protocol for member websites.
 
System0 said:
Probably....though not guaranteed, as more members signing up and posting would increase the number of threads which will be indexed by the search engines. However I think you're probably right and income would drop.



It was built according to Google's own protocol for member websites.
Click to expand...

So this plugin is OK to use and won't get a site banned? It adhere's to all of Google's rules?
 
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