is form with post method containing one button with action equal to url to page with ad a bad idea?

Question

I'm trying to figure out why on one section of my site I'm earning only one cent RPM.

Here's an example of how the web page is setup:

It consists of an adsense advertisement, a large image with an option to add it to a shopping cart, or add it to a favorites list.

When either option is selected, the same page is loaded again with adsense again but this time, an additional message appears on the page indicating the selected operation is successful.

I wanted to avoid random spiders from crawling such links because I don't want my database filled with entries from fake users, so I figured using buttons via HTML code similar to this would be wonderful:

<form action="http://example.com/special-item/add-to-cart" method="POST">
<input type="submit" value="Add to cart"></form>

In the past, I tried the anchor tag with the nofollow option, but I'm afraid to continue because search engines follow get requests more than post requests.

So I'm trying to understand why my RPM is low. Does google not like status messages such as what I make? or does my form violate webmaster guidelines according to google? or do I really have to replace those status pages with some ridiculous 300 word essay that is a bloated rendition of a simple status?

Before suggesting using javascript, I want people to be able to place an order without requiring javascript.

Can someone point me in the right direction? I unfortunately do not have a way to contact the adsense team directly. I'm not asking for code specifically. I'm just asking what I'm doing wrong here so I have at least an idea on how to correct my issue.

Answer 1

There is no exact way to know why this is happening without having access to your site and AdSense records but what it sounds like is happening is...

The Google AdSense spider could be seeing the resulting page as a duplicate page even though the URL is the same but would be seeing that the content changes based on the form post. In this situation Google may be serving lower value ads as they don't know exactly how to handle the page and what the purpose of the page is.

What I have always recommended doing in the past is that the resulting page URL from the form submission should be at a different page URL, such as www.example.con/form.html on submit goes to www.example.com/success. When this is done it shows up as two different pages.

You will also need to accept that the results page will generally carry lower quality ads as it is not unique content based on Google's assessment rather it is simply showing a result page based on the users submission. This is one option but more than likely what is happening.