Thread: Gamer Brief - The Drudge Report for Gamers

I am one of the Drudge addicts that keep a tab open almost all day watching for breaking news. The site isn't fancy and is meant to be something simple and easy to read. I would like thoughts on my adsense placements. I have been reading a lot lately - followed some tips here from the experts. I will be writing some stories and publishing them but the majority of my stories are basically a gaming news aggregator and just show people the top stories of the day.

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I'll point out what I have so far.

Only Adsense is being used:

Above the top featured story is a leaderboard text/graphics image
Above that leaderboard is a 728x15 Link Unit


1st Column on Left side is Large Rectangle 336x280 text/graphics

2nd Column 2 Linkunits placed side by side

3rd Column Large Rectangle 336x280 ONLY TEXT

I have another site that is similar to this so I won't ask you to help with both of them. Since if I get this one customized just right I can duplicate it there easily. I do have another site that is completely different that I will ask for input once I feel I am finished with the first complete setup.

Thanks in advance

Get rid of the leaderboard and place a rectangle in your middle column.
Also run a split test between large and medium rectangle to see which performs best.
Activate image&text Ads for that.

And try to position the Ads above the fold.

I believe you should also pay attention to your layout.

This is what I see in Firefox 4.0 on a 1032x746 screen:
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Originally Posted by Dogs and things ((login for URL))

I believe you should also pay attention to your layout.

This is what I see in Firefox 4.0 on a 1032x746 screen:
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Thanks for that _ I have lowered the size to 300 as Star suggested and that should take care of that overlapping. Star I have followed all your directions except getting rid of the leaderboard cause right now thats the only ad generating revenue.

Also I wanted to throw something by you. I have read before that people are still trained to associate blue with links - so do you think sites who make all their links blue see better returns than those who use different colors? LIke BLACK on my site?

That looks better. I suggest you change the two link units in the center from 160x90 to 120x90.
That will probably allow for them to show up side by side instead of one above the other.

The Link color depends. I don't use a link color that fits my theme like here for example links are green.
If I would add AdSense to this forum I would make my links green as well.

However changing all your links on your site to blue would not help you much.
Run an ABC Split Test with a) blue links b) black links c) red links and see which performs best.