All ads the same, but CTR and eCPM way way down.

Could it be due to rouge bots?

[sven1977]

I'm having the following problem since one week or so. My earnings started to decrease last week and I thought it was the usual non-targeted-ads trouble. But then I checked all my sites and figured that it was certainly not the ads since they were very targeted, which is usually an indicator for good earnings. Anyway, my earnings are way down compared to last month (-50%) even though traffic has increased. It is mainly due to a lower CTR and eCPM, whereas the CPC is only slightly lower than usual. So I exclude smartpricing from my culprit list (would be too cheap anyway to always blame it on that).

My question is now: Could it be that there are now more rouge bots on my page aggressively spidering my content? My site is only about 9 months old. Maybe now that google spiders me more often, others spiders do, too, thus creating high traffic with zero clicks.

[hunderdown]

I don't get rouge bots, but I do get mascara bots on my site. I'm just glad I've been able to block the eyeliner bots.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Jean]

creating high traffic with zero clicks

Bot traffic would not register in AdSense stats and therefore I don't see it affecting your eCPM or CTR.

No matter what colour bot it is ;-)