Comments on: Show Ads Only to Visitors Coming from Search Engines

By: Oscar

Oscar — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:57:56 +0000

Thanks for the informative article. Very useful to know how to do this.

Do you have any idea or a pointer as to how we might integrate this with existing ad plugins?

like this one for example: Random / Rotating Ads Plugin for WordPress — by datafeedr? you can google it or it is here:

http://www.datafeedr.com/random-ads-plugin.php

oh, btw, the tab order on your comment form seems to be out of order. if I tab after the e-mail field I get to “submit comment” instead of “notify me of follow up comments” just an fyi, but maybe you want it that way. Cheers.

By: Kaspars

Kaspars — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:51:20 +0000

gw, the click rate has't really changed since I installed the plugin or made the changes described above. It went up only for a day or two and then got back to the normal 0.5 clicks per 400 visitors.

By: gw

gw — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:23:54 +0000

@kaspers
You said “It is also interesting to see that the number of clicks has gone up by 50% since implementing the change.”

your original change to add the Ozh plugin or after your refinement to give them ads on all pages ?

Thanks

By: Kaspars

Kaspars — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:17:14 +0000

Ozh, the method you showed is much more elegant indeed. Your point about the visitors coming from search engines and finding value in the content is also very true. I hadn't thought about it that way. All I knew was that someone has to see those ads, and I don't want them to be my regular readers. It is also interesting to see that the number of clicks has gone up by 50% since implementing the change.

By: Ozh

Ozh — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:24:56 +0000

The reason I wrote it this way is: on the landing page, a search engine visitor is… a search engine visitor. One of those 80% that will go away right now because in a glance they won’t find what they were looking for, and hopefully go away with an ad click.

Now, if they visit a second page, they become a LOT more than just a one time search engine visitor. They got interested by your CONTENT, so why pollute their read with ads that they won’t click anyway?

This said, there is a much better way to do what you’re wanting than modify my plugin.

1) Create a custom function that either sets a cookie for SE visitors or checks if the cookie exists
Something like:
function cookie_or_SE() {
if (wp_ozh_wsa_is_fromsearchengine())
[set the cookie];
if ([the cookie])
return true;
return false;
}
2) In your ad rules, use an advanced rule like:
if (cookie_or_SE()) then {display}