If you have Google Adsense on your website you’ve probably heard about the dreaded “Google Smart Pricing.” Once your site has been Smart Priced it effects the amount you receive for each click-through on your site and being Smart Priced is often a kiss of death for your Adsense revenue. In this article I’m going to share some of my experiences with Google Smart Pricing and see if I can shed some light on this shadowy subject.

To the best of my knowledge this is the way Google Smart Pricing works. Google collects and analyzes the conversion data of your website’s Adsense conversion rates against the millions of websites that are involved in their Adwords and Adsense program. Your site is compared to others for keywords, content and most importantly conversion for the advertisers. Not all traffic is created equal. By having your Adsense blocks in front of unqualified buyers Google Smart Pricing determines the quality of your click throughs and sets your Adsense payout rate accordingly.

During the last several years Google has been privy to all of the most intricate conversion details of all website involved with their Adwords and Adsense programs. They have put together complex formulas to determine the value of each and every click. They’ve collected conversion data from millions of sources and are ever increasing the amount of money they spend on furthering their hold on these sources.

This means in the future Google will continue to get better at estimating the value of your website. Smart webmasters will realize this and change their content in order to receive the highest payouts.

In order to receive the highest paid Adsense clicks you’ll have to study the ads showing on your site and only put them in front of qualified customers or face being penalized by Smart Pricing. This will often translate into using less Adsense blocks on your pages. It will also mean fine tailoring your websites content to attract certain kinds of viewers who are more prone to convert into buyers through the network.

Here is a good example of two related websites that each get drastically different Adsense payouts. The first site is about computer software reviews and the second features computer gaming tips. Using this example the click-throughs of the gaming site will be worth far less to the advertiser. The clicks on the computer software review site will have more qualified buyers and people ready to get out their credit cards and purchase. Knowing this and making changes to the content on your own site can drastically effect your own Adsense checks.

Now here’s a little intrique and rumor for you to ponder before I end this article. Traffic from Google to your Adsense monetized website has been said to drop your click value. This might be due to the theory that Google pays less for recycled traffic. While this is only speculation, if you purchase traffic for your website it may be worth thinking about using alternative sources…