Thursday, August 2, 2007

AdSense fits FixYa

As a technical support community website, FixYa.com helps people find the solutions and information they're looking for as quickly and as easily as possible. According to Yaniv Bar-Lev, FixYa's VP of user acquisition, this is why integrating AdSense into the site made so much sense. "Combining the contextual power of Google AdSense with our own user-generated content significantly improved the browsing experience, while helping us to easily monetize our complex site of over 700,000 products and several million web pages," he says.

With such a large site, Yaniv believes that the search capability of the site is an important element. "One of the most important things a user can do to help us provide better service is run a search for a problem or a product. The information gathered by the query allows us to quickly get the user to the information he or she was looking for," he comments. "However, it's always good to have a helping hand and provide external information from other sources, which is exactly what AdSense enabled us to do."

Yaniv recently began testing changes to the ad placements and formats on his search results pages. At the same time, he wanted to ensure a positive user experience with the ads on such an important section of his site. He found that by placing a 468x60 banner directly above the search results, an area of high focus for users, he was able to lift his revenue by 200%.

Before:



After:



Yaniv says that the key takeaway from this optimization is to continually test ideas and track the results. He also adds that "there's an added value in providing contextual ads in highly focused positions once you've gathered sufficient information on what the user is actually interested in, such as through a search query."

What's next for FixYa? "We are definitely going to continue working closely with AdSense to find new ways of improving monetization and service."

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