So just what effect has the RODEO maintenance done to your earnings?

Bizarre after effects of May 13th maintenance...

[OptiRex]

Hobbs wrote:

Yeah the ups and downs are Las Vegas style nowadays OptiRex, why aren't we giving those 'maintenance downs' names like in the updates?

I vote for calling this one Rodeo

Me? I'll quote from earlier today:

I am seeing totally extreme CTR and eCPM swings from one day to the next that I have never seen before.

Today, Tuesday, compared to Monday my CTR is up 60% and my eCPM up by 105%!

My site in 3 years has never varied +/-20% from its average CTR and eCPM.

IF, yeah if, today continues in the same vein I shall easily have my best-ever day since my earnings are already looking as they normally do 3-4 hours ahead.

Therefore what will tomorrow bring, further new low records?

This is bizarre, what are they doing?

As a continuation from the above, my earnings after 12 hours have already exceeded my daily average, my CTR and eCPM are still running at never before seen levels and I...am totally confused!

I've been busy checking my logs to see if there seems to be anything unusual, but no, all looks completely "normal".

I love the earnings however just what is going to be the fallout from this?

Who else has seen similar patterns?

Extremely high or low levels never experienced before?

[OptiRex]

Can anyone list things I should check or can check?

There have been many, many discussions about this, probably the easiest thing to do would be to click on this site search link:

[google.com...]

[GoldenHammer]

It dropped -50% vs the daily average on the 1st hit, and now it keeps at -30% in the following days.

See if it would recover better in the next week or this will be the new norm.

[pcooklin]

Morning - My eCPM is still down by 80% which has now made it a non viable model to continue buying traffic. Thanks for everyone's comments.

I have read all the posts I can and from what I can see, it's not the advertisers as the advertisers are the same, Im still getting the same ads etc but the EPC has dropped by 5/6 of what it was.

I dont believe that ALL their budgets ran out on the same day so I must assume Ive been smart priced out.

Interestly, it happend 2ithin 24 hours on contacting Google about my account, I might have grassed myself up. My advice would be not to show google your website which is silly as it was good for them too, and the advertiser as thwey were getting lots of relevant clicks at relatively low prices, but now its not worth doing.

Which other PPC engines would you suggest, anyone had any success with another? How hard is YPN to get in to?

Ive got to break the news to my family and cancel the ferrari...:)

[Hobbs]

the 17th earnings were 35% lower than normal/expected
the 18th is too early to tell but if I have been Rodeo'd it should be better.

Yesterday I decided to stop looking at my stats and earnings and work on content for a change, but today I heard of Toldan's geting banned (sad), so I will be keeping a hawk's eye on clicks again!

[OptiRex]

Have I mentioned "normal" before? :-)

I'm very pleased to say that yesterday's performance could not have been more predictable once "my flux" had settled down.

Absolutely everything on the button and, although it's a bit early in the day to judge, today's stats are looking "normal".

Is anyone still experiencing the Rodeo ride?

Just what am I going to do now that bit of excitement, hopefully, is over?

[Hobbs]

great OptiRex, it appears like the 18th is on track (so far) for me too.

Now back to beans counting.

[drall]

Since the maint our ctr on our largest property has dropped 40%, no change of course on our part and we can see no real reason why ctr would drop so much right after the maint.

[walrus]

Is anyone still experiencing the Rodeo ride?

Yup, I have been thrown from the horse and its a hard landing.

[pcooklin]

walrus - are you using a ppc model for your campaign to get traffic?

I hear back from Google though, not sure what I can and cant say about it...can we put google emails on here?

[yummybanas]

Rodeo over for me. It looks like I may have been smartpriced though as my EPC is down 5%, but still doing well.

Boy, I'm glad that's over though.

[OptiRex]

can we put google emails on here?

You need to precis it into your own words.

[pcooklin]

OK...not sure if this will help but G said that they couldnt see anything in their technical data to indicate any changes and for me to check external factors, if no external factors can be found then it might well be a short term blip. I should look at my stats for more clues.

One thing that I have noticed. I used to buy huge traffic for one domain which totalled 99% of my CPM. I then started adding traffic to site B, It was fine for a few days and then suddenly dropped accorss the board.

Ive just checked my stats and both domains with 3 main pages = the same CPM as before if added up. This doesnt work for me but it makes you wonder if the CPM has been spread across all ad spaces..more testing.

Any thoughts?

[pcooklin]

Ive been looking over my stats/grpahs for the last 2 years and theres definite trends of very high peaks and then lows. My question is this:

If we are paying for traffic on a large scale, naturally its only viable to do so when the model works in our favor, but will this affect the CPM swings. Can we just opt in when the stats are good or do we need to consistent traffic to flush the low cpm away?

According to my stats, even when the site wasn't experiencing any real traffic and making practically no money 2 years ago, the stats still show huge peaks and lows in cpm..

This is more like the stock market every day...

any thoughts?

Glad your stats are back on track guys.

[Hobbs]

Can we just opt in when the stats are good

Try that question in the AdWords forum
[webmasterworld.com...]

[pcooklin]

lol..yes, you have a point.

[pcooklin]

perhaps we could go one better and get adwords users to let us know when they're max bid is...

[pcooklin]

typos *their.

OK..So we should all pay for traffic even when its going against us. Sure, this is bad for adwords but they can and probabaly do the same - switch engines when cpc are high, thats just good business sense.

I know it ends up increasing the swings but its probably going on.

[yummybanas]

Today was spectacular. Way above my normal average. 70% earning increase across all my sites. Looks like Google made up for the lost days in the end!

[walrus]

walrus - are you using a ppc model for your campaign to get traffic?

No, never tried that yet, still developing.

[OptiRex]

Do we assume that most have stabilised now at a new level?

If so, are your earnings for 13th - 19th May 2006:

1. Higher

2. Same

3. Lower

Mine?

4.78% higher after the disastrous Saturday followed by the amazing Sunday.

[edward301]

Rodeo has left me on a painful bottom.

in terms of earnings:
14th was my lowest day this year
15th was my highest
16th down %40
17th up %70
18th down %80
19th down %5
20th up %50 (so far)

my CTR & eCPM seem to have mad cow disease and have yet to stabilise.

*percentages are guesstimates

[danimal]

>>>are your earnings for 13th - 19th May 2006:<<<

i think that my average epc was on an upward trend before rodeo, but in general, this whole month has been all over the map... can't make any determinations based on a week of data.

[Hobbs]

Stable (as it can be for AdSense really)

All normal Xcept EPC that is lower now but that could be attributed to more things than I can count on 2 hands and 2 feet, and since this is an AdSense issue I should be more vague and say x number of people's hands and feet where x is a whole number between 1 and 99, and some or all of the people might not possess or have extra fingers or toes.

Now that's TOS compliant disclosure.

[OptiRex]

can't make any determinations based on a week of data.

But how was the full week's data compared to the first 12 days?

[Content_ed]

This past week was our worst of the year by far, with earnings down nearly 40%. That said, eCPM has stabalized, and we're showing less ads in an attempt to reset the account from our recent Adlinks campaign, and a few other issues that always make it so hard to compare apples with apples in Adsense. We weren't using Adsense on many pages last year at this time, so we have no way to normalize our site to season, but our traffic and widget sales traditionally slow down as colleges are winding up the school year in the US.

Looking on the bright side, our lower earnings the last two months mean a lower estimated tax payment due in three weeks:-)

[danimal]

if you talk to adsense support enough, sooner or later they will tell you to compare day of the week against the matching day of the week, not week against week... but the stats reporting isn't set up to do that?

tough call on the 13-19, i guess that i must have dodged the bullet on this one... the weekend of the 13 & 14 drove the average epc for the week up, which is unusual for me, and it skewed the stats.

the main thing that i can see is that, in general, it seems like the more traffic i give adsense, the lower the epc goes... days of the week reflect that.

[OptiRex]

Without doubt this, 20th/21st May, has been my most successful earning's weekend ever.

If this is a foretaste of things to come I shall be very happy.

One thing I have specifically noticed from my channels is a substantial increase in EPC for my smaller satellite sites.

Has anyone else seen significantly better or worse returns.

[Celicaphile]

My earnings have pretty much taken a nose dive... I'm down 50% on avg since the maintenance. This is gonna hurt. I guess it's time to send out the press release for my new site and and see if I can get this thing kick started... :(

[walrus]

I hesitate to admit it so soon but out of respect for this forum and Adsense, I must admit it seems to have normalized again. What a wild ride.

[danimal]

>>>Without doubt this, 20th/21st May, has been my most successful earning's weekend ever.<<<

lousy weekend here, it was the worst sunday that i've seen in months.