Google offers both manual and automatic ad placement options for AdSense publishers. In addition, there is also an additional option available for automatically optimizing your AdSense ads. Though this is meant for maximizing your revenue, it can create problem most of the times. Here are some of the reasons why it can create problems and how you can disable Auto optimize in Google AdSense account.
Why to Disable Auto Optimize?
First, these are part of “Experiments” and hence Google will automatically run experiments when you have enabled Auto optimize option. These experiments will run without any communication to you and without your confirmation. Though you can see a notification in your AdSense account as shown below, you will not receive any email that an experiment is automatically started.
Being an experiment, it can change your revenue in either way and you can notice the impact of this in your daily earnings. So, you may want to stop an experiment if the revenue goes down.
Finally, it may create conflicts when you use AdSense along with other ad networks on your site. For example, auto optimization will suddenly run an experiment for anchor ads which you might have disabled in Auto ads as you use the placement using third-party network. The problem here is that these experiments will run even if you have disabled Auto ads.
Checking Experiments Running Automatically
When you see a notification in your AdSense account, click on the “See experiments” link. Alternatively, navigate to “Optimization > Experiments” section. Here you can see all experiments running on your site and click on the one which you did not create. Alternatively, click “Created by Google” button to filter automatically created experiments from the list.
The experiment will show clear details in “About this experiment” section indicating it was created automatically by Auto optimize option.
Scroll down on the right “Experiment details” section where you can find “Created by Google” indicating it was created by Google automatically.
Most importantly, the experiment is using “Auto-apply on” which means the variation will be automatically selected by removing the original setup. This will happen with the testing of 50% of your traffic and with 15 days duration. So, if you did not open your AdSense account for 15 days, this experiment will automatically overwrite your original setup and apply the variation without your knowledge.
Disable Auto Optimize in AdSense Account
Now that you understand what problem this Auto optimize can cause, here is how to disable it.
- Login to your AdSense account and navigate to “Optimization > Experiments” section.
- Above the list of experiments, you will see “Auto optimize on” button and click on it.
- On the next page, select “Auto optimize off” option and click on “Save settings” button.
- This will show a pop-up and click “Turn off Auto optimize” button.
- You will see a success message showing “Your Auto optimize settings have been saved”.
This will stop any experiments currently running automatically by Google in your account and the button will show as “Auto optimize off”. You can see the status of such experiments are changed to “Stopped” in your experiments list.
Using Suggestions Only for Auto Optimize
As you can see, there is a “Suggestions only” option available in addition to turning Auto optimize on or off. You will also see this option showing as a “Turn on Suggestions only” on the pop-up. The problem with this option is that it will still run automatic experiments without prior communication to you. The only difference is that “Suggestions only” will not apply the result of an experiment. You need to manually check the performance of original and variation in the experiment and decide which one to choose.
This will not help much as the experiment still run for 15 days affecting your earnings.
