Filter Adsense Ads for Higher CTR
Filed in: Adsense Tips, Make Money Online — May 31st, 2005
Have you notice that my blog seldom display blog related ads and the ads are more revelant to the content than yours? Here I share my tip to filter Google Adsense ads for higher click thru rate(CTR).
Google Adsense is contextual ads, it select advertisements based on your website content. Sound cool, but often the selected ads is not related to your content. Well, that’s the limitation of robots. *shrug*
We(I) believe that highly relevant ads will helps to increase CTR(click thru rate), which also means increase your earning.
The common problem for blog site is that Google Adsense always display blog related ads, regardless the content of your blog(e.g.: display blog hosting ads in a food blog).
Google already know the problem, it provides a Competitive Ad Filter (Ads Settings -> Competitive Ad Filter) in Google Adsense.
Google combines advanced technology with editorial staff to ensure the highest quality standards in our ad program, but we recognize that you may not want certain ads, such as your competitors’ ads, to show on your website. Ads that link to sites on your filter list won’t appear on your content pages.
Though the ads are not competitors to us(bloggers), but we can make use of the ads filter to get higher relevant ads, by filter out those blog related ads. 
Google has prepared a guide on Competitive Ad Filter for you.
Bonus #1
Thought Google says filtering ads may reduce your earning, don’t be afraid! Google has alot advertisers! Filtering unrelated ads will only bring you more related ads.
Well, when you see no ads displayed, that means you gone too far and it’s time to reduce your filter list. 
Bonus #2
When I see an unrelated ad always displayed in my blog, I will filter it out to save the space for other ads.
Proof
My CTR increased by triple(3x) after filtered those $%^& blog ads. 
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May 31st, 2005 at 7:55 pm
Heh good work dude, I should have blogged about this before seen as though everyone using adsense now..
It makes a huge difference, also if you want to get granular, you can see which ads pay higher and block all the low low ads thus increasing your average click through value.
I did this on http://www.security-forums.com before we got full sponsorship and it made a lot of difference.
May 31st, 2005 at 9:13 pm
Yes, it’s true.
You can earn more money filtering Adsense Ads. We do it. It’s true.
Now imagine if you optimize your blog for highest paying keywords and use this tip to get more clicks?
Good idea, no?
June 1st, 2005 at 4:52 am
Filtering for sure will help in raising the CTR.
June 2nd, 2005 at 6:56 pm
another good post by Prof Lcf. I will try this filtering out ….thanks
June 2nd, 2005 at 8:25 pm
Please do not call me Prof. I am not, at least not yet a Prof.
Just share what I know and works for me to all of you. Got easy money then we earn together loh~
June 7th, 2005 at 2:56 am
Owh, what a great tip man .. i just got my adsense application approved and just started to implement it on my website .. this sure does give me so much insight on what to do … thx a lot Lcf! I really respect what you’re doing here ..
Could you please visit my site and give some more comment if you got the time . Thx again! 
June 9th, 2005 at 9:50 am
Maximise Click Through Rate (CTR) with Google Adsense for Blogs
Anyway Liewcf posted about a similar thing not long back, so I decided to filter my [url=https://google.com/adsense]Adsense ads[/url] here to see if it make any difference. It does, not a huge amount, but it is a blog, a fairly low traffic blog.
June 9th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
came to this post via shaolintiger’s. good advice, i’m trying it out…
August 26th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Cutted out ebay’s ads and increased my eCPM by 15-20%…
December 16th, 2005 at 3:58 am
You must be joking. All I see are blog type ads.
February 16th, 2007 at 3:19 am
good idea. should not be afraid to try things.