Forum Moderators: martinibuster
There was a shift in my % of PSA's and was wondering if it had been changed....
I have seen impressions plummet and CTR increase despite the fact that the traffic to my site has been stable. Revenue hasn't changed much.
Previously my CTR had been rock solid for the last month.
I have 18k pages, so I can't check everyone of them for PSAs, but the ads I am seeing seem to be the usual bunch.
The two knee-jerk reasons that spring to mind are a reporting glitch caused by thanksgiving or PSAs not counting for impressions anymore.
I know there are too many other variables involved to come to any clear conclusions, but am I the only one seeing this?
Anyone seeing any change here over the last 2-3 days. I have seen impressions plummet and CTR increase despite the fact that the traffic to my site has been stable.
AdSense impressions and total user impressions dropped 20-40% on each of several sites I work with. A weekend drop is normal for these sites and since the vast majority of users are US-based the larger than normal drop is consistent with Thanksgiving traffic patterns I've seen in the past.
The AdSense impressions didn't look out of whack to me so perhaps lower than normal human user impressions were offset by higher than normal bot traffic on your site (just speculating a possibility).
Revenue hasn't changed much.
In my case I noticed nearly the same. CTR was up significantly, EPC was up slightly and even though impressions were down significantly, revenue change was negligible.
I have 18k pages, so I can't check everyone of them for PSAs, but the ads I am seeing seem to be the usual bunch.
Might I suggest implementing alternate ads. Then, not only can you monetize your ad space by showing something other than PSAs (even if just internal links, content or something else with some sort of value, if not affiliate links), but it's quite trivial to track/log alternate ad views, including a breakdown by page. I do it and regularly analyze the data to determine where to show AdSense, what alternate ads to show, etc.
My sites didn't actually get a dip in traffic over the last weekend (the subject matter works well enough for Holidays) - just a reduction in reported impressions - ie they were not in agreement with each other.
I hadn't actually notices any PSAs showing at all previously (hence I hadn't bothered with alternative ads), but now I think about it, its possible that geo-targeting is showing some ads to me (UK based) and PSAs to US visitors, which is where most of my traffic comes from. So I will probably follow your advice and put up some US targeted alternative ads just to cover my bets - thanks for reminding me.
Detailed analysis is not too useful for my sites - they are auto generated content, and I don't have control over the content. I can't easily hand adjust any pages, just change the server side includes on individual sites, so acting on analysis has to be a 'broad' action rather than individual pages.
Having said that, reported impressions for Monday were a much closer match to my actual page views - so maybe it was the reporting glitch thing after all.
Nevertheless, every time Google reporting gives me a little scare, it prompts me to go throw a whole load more content up there.
Methinks, its time to crank up the database to html tool again;)
I don't think alternate ads can hurt so I'm glad you're giving it a go. Worst case you'll be able to track the % of impressions that aren't showing paying AdSense ads, best case you'll be able to monetize those impressions. I'm not sure in what way you can only make broad changes, but using alternate ads I'm able to determine pages that never show paying AdSense ads and manually exclude them from enabling AdSense code and through sessions/cookies (or in some cases IPs which is less reliable) I'm able to ensure that duplicate ads aren't shown to the same user in the same session via the alternate ads. I built all of my sites in a modular fashion and they're database-driven so excluding/including pages (and whole sections) and setting rules is pretty straightforward. Hope that's of some value to you.
If you learn anything from implementing alternate ads let us know.
Not to belabor the point, but do we know for a fact that AdSense reported clicks don't count clicks on PSA's or alternate ads?
They do not count as clicks in AdSense reports. That's because the PSA links go directly to the destination site instead of being routed through a URL owned by Google and the alternate ad feature simply loads code from a URL of your chosing so Google has no visibility into those clicks either.
Thus a point I've stated in this forum numerous times - CTR and impressions as reported by the AdSense reports are misleading. I adjust impressions accordingly based on my own alternate ad tracking stats on my server and also analyze the effectiveness (impressions, clicks, CPM, revenue) of any affiliate programs I run via the alternate ads so I have the real full picture.
thanks, but its not that
I have been running adsense for months with c 20k impressions a day - I know my stats pretty well, they haven't fluctuated like this before. There has always been a fair correlation between my measured impressions and Googles version. I have allowed for hours difference, plus its present over a few days consistently.
This is different - CTR up considerably, impressions way lower than my real page views. All the ads I am seeing seem to be the same with no PSA s showing (from the UK anyway)
Its not that I don't understand how statistics work, this is a major change in what used to be a consistent pattern.
I just wondered if I was the only one - seems I am, so I will hunt down a US proxy, run some more detailed tests and report back if I find an answer.
