There are lots of theories and discussions around where to best place Google Adsense units to result in the highest click through rate, or CTR. Everyone is always looking to increase their revenue, and increasing the CTR is one way to increase revenue without having to increase traffic.
If you are not familiar with the F-Shaped pattern of reading web content, it is an excellent study to understand how the majority of people read web content. Understanding how readers actually read the content by tracking their eye movements will result in understanding where best to place your Google Adsense units for optimal performance.
The image above is a heat map generated from a study showing the eye movements of readers while scanning web content. The shape of the red areas, or the most viewed sections of content sort of produces an F shape, thus the name of the resultant study.
Readers will first read or scan the content horizontally, left to right, and then move their eyes back to the left and move down a bit and start to read horizontally again for a shorter period and finally scanning vertically towards the bottom of the content. As you can see in the images, this F pattern isn’t an exact F pattern, as everyone won’t read the same way, but their is a definite pattern.
So What?
Ok, so what’s the big deal? Well, understanding your readers’ behavior while on your website is very valuable to your overall generation of revenue with Adsense. You want to put the Adsense units in locations that your readers most often will view.
1. Readers won’t read your content thoroughly. Most readers will perform a scan of the content in an F shaped pattern.
2. The top of the main content is most important, as it is most frequently scanned or read by the visitor
3. The left hand side of a web page is most noticed and scanned by a reader.
Where to place Google Adsense
If you are wanting to increase your click through rate (CTR), according to the eye tracking study, it is best to put the Adsense units at the very top of the main content, and vertically on the left hand side of your page. This isn’t a be-all end-all rule, because we know about other important places that Adsense units could be placed, but nonetheless, this study provides some proof about a couple of very valuable locations to place your units for optimum results.
