Has anyone noticed a drop in impressions

[Sense_able]

I have started to use a couple of the new sizes and I have noticed a drop in impression over the last 12 hours or so.

Clicks are normal so it is sending my CTR sky high. I have written to google about it, I was just wondering if anyone else was getting this

[runboard]

Yes...

Clicks, CTR, EPC, bottom line for Feb 20 were as usual, but noticed a steep, unwarranted drop in impressions by about 20% (I have my own stats to compare with).

[tombola]

Drop in impressions and/or drop in SERPs?...

Hint: read the "Brandy"-threads in the Google News [webmasterworld.com] forum.

[Sense_able]

Many thanks

I know that my site is displaying the ads and my clicks are normal it is just as if the impressions are not being displayed as they should. I have only a slight decrease in traffic, no where near the decrease in impressions.

I am just wondering if it is a problem at Adsense

I am not too sure what the 'Brandy thing is all about'

Any clues? It sounds double dutch to me? I am not a guru

[Visi]

Seen the same effect...however too early to tell if changed back to previous method of counting impressions (in December we commented on the opposite effect happening) or just the servers catching up.

[ideavirus]

Impressions have almost reduced by half since yesterday. All my sites are up and working fine on which adsense is used.

I hope this is just temporary.

Cheers

[Sense_able]

I am just glad that it is not just me. Boy I love WebmasterWorld

[annaz1]

Yes, I have noticed the same!

[somerset]

No adverts at all are currently being displayed on any of my domains, even though the AdSense code is in place and have all been working OK until today.

[simonuk]

When I first used 5 ad skyscraper and placed it on my pages yesterday I noticed that on the pages they sometimes didn't show until I refreshed the page.

Today it is all working fine. That could well be the reason for your problems yesterday.

Simon.

[karatekid]

My impressions are way down, click through percentage is way up, and revenue is about the same as usual for this time of day. I suspect the impression count will catch up later or just under report today.

[ByronM]

Its been said before, your probably seeing a drop in impressions because Yahoo dropped google serps. If your not ranking in yahoo you could have potentially lost half or more of your google traffic/search engine referrs

[annej]

I've been finding that AdSense has not been showing up at all on IE 6.0, other times the ads are there but with no title. In Netscape 7.1 the ads seems to be showing more consistantly but sometimes the title is missing.

This has got to bring about a big drop in impressions. Mine were down to about half yesterday.

I hope this is something that AdSense can repair soon. I'm a newbie to AdSense so I don't know how common this sort of problem is. I'm hoping it is just adjustments they are making after the changes that were announced this week.

I don't think it's at all related to Brandy for me. My visitors are still up at normal. I've been lucky with the new Yahoo results so it's not that either.

I think we need to wait until AdSense is showing consistantly again before we try to analyze the effects of Brandy and the Yahoo switch. After all, impressions are bound to be down if there is no ad to click on.

[androidtech]

If you want more info on the Yahoo effect:

[webmasterworld.com...]

thx

[niz85]

my impressions are also down. i guess this is due to the change in yahoo search results.

[ByronM]

I've been finding that AdSense has not been showing up at all on IE 6.0, other times the ads are there but with no title. In Netscape 7.1 the ads seems to be showing more consistantly but sometimes the title is missing.

Try clearning your browser cache. I noticed the same thing before and clearing my cache fixed it right up!

[europeforvisitors]

My impressions aren't down, but my CTR was down by about 25% from Tuesday through Thursday (and I have enough impressions to represent a statistically valid sampling, IMHO). I have nearly 4,000 pages with a lot of different subtopics and targeted ads, so it's unlikely that one or two advertisers pulling out, exceeding their daily limits, etc. would have caused such a big drop. Maybe Google was playing with the AdSense algorithm again, or maybe geotargeting got screwed up for a few days while new languages were being phased in. Whatever the reason, CTR went back up to normal or slightly above-normal levels yesterday and is looking strong this morning.

[Yidaki]

>a drop in impression over the last 12 hours or so

It's amazing how fast you become concerned. Let the changes run for a while - let people get used to the new formats / layouts. Wait at least a week and then compare the results with what you had before. I had new formats doing realy bad at the beginning and after a few days/weeks the CTR started to increase! A new format, layout or position not always attracts more people immediately but after a few days or even weeks.

Also, don't forget natural flux - the pattern: Chaos! So you can't draw conclusions after 12 hours - often not even after a couple of days. Give it time!

[figment88]

clearly a lot of different people are seeing a lot of different unusual things.

Personally my CTR is running about 3x normal (impressions are lower, clicks about the same).

I do not think this can be attributed to the "yahoo effect" or low statistical samples, or blah blah blah.

Google seems to be reporting things differently.

[somerset]

annej

You are right, I have just checked my domains in IE6 and no adverts, and immediately just checking in Mozilla, and they appear - even after any number of refreshes (ctrl/f5).

As IE6 is the leading browser, this is a serious bug.

[Yidaki]

>IE6 and no adverts

I dont have IE 6 - actually i'm on a mac. Would some of you win users please be so kind to send a quick note to the adsense crew then!? Thanks!

[ken_b]

I just checked several of my pages with IE6 and the ads were showing fine.

[somerset]

ken_b

I've just sent you a sticky to ask you to check my pages in your IE6 browser. I'm on version 6.0.2800 on XP.

[markus007]

The way i see it there are 2 possibilities

1. Clicks are now being reported in nearly real time.

2. Fraud detection algorithm has changed, I've always suspected some of my visitors click on 2 or 3 ads, and google just discarded those clicks.

[annej]

Mine are back now too. It's been an on and off thing. It may have been regional too. But it had to affect ad impressions for some of us.

Once we are sure the ads are steady then we can start looking at Brandy and Yahoo factors. As of last night Brandy was still fluctuating.

I think sometimes here on the webmaster world forums we start stirring too many things into the soup and then are making wild guesses as to what is happening.

[Sense_able]

It's amazing how fast you become concerned. Let the changes run for a while - let people get used to the new formats / layouts. Wait at least a week and then compare the results with what you had before. I had new formats doing realy bad at the beginning and after a few days/weeks the CTR started to increase! A new format, layout or position not always attracts more people immediately but after a few days or even weeks.

I am not referring to the traffic at my site, I was referring to the impressions recorded by adsense. The fact that less or more people are coming from yahoo is irrelevant. I do have independent stats for my sites, and yes I am down about 5% in traffic due to yahoo.

However this is nothing in comparison to the 60% drop in impressions since I switched to the 5 ad skyscraper.

Revenue is normal
EPM is normal
CTR has been sent sky high

Yes this is something to be concerned about as I am aware that Adsense has software available that will pick up these spikes and may start churning out warning letters.

[JohnKelly]

I'm seeing a 15-20% error to the downside in reported impressions during 2/20 (usually the difference is less than 1%). EPC, CTR are normal.

Today (2/21) the stats have not updated since this morning, and CTR is about double the norm. However, this could be that the impressions have not been calculated in correctly.

Google may make updates to today's and yesterday's stats over the weekend, hopefully.

[Jebus]

Same here impressions way down but CTR is skyrocketing

[androidtech]

Jebus (and others),

"Same here impressions way down but CTR is skyrocketing"

Hmm. This might be a comment on the quality of traffic that was coming from Yahoo.

[rechecked our stats}
Actually our CTR is up too, although revenues are sharply off. More data to support the theory.

More extended theory.

I have heard many who are in very targeted niche's, especially when it comes to multi-word search phrases, complain they have nowhere near the ranking on Inktomi as they do on Google.

I'm guessing that Inktomi's search algorithm is weighted towards "broad matching". That would explain the difference in SERP positioning for niche keyword web sites/pages, and the improvement in CTR on the AdSense stats. Google's SERP's, latest update or not, appears to be better targeted than Inktomi's.

Now those of you reading this should be saying "wait a minute, if Yahoo was using Inktomi's engine before the drop, there should be no difference in stats since they were using the same engine."

True, but perhaps they were doing some keyphrase "pre-engineering" before submitting them to Google, OR, they've been doing hybrid searches between Google and Inktomi for some time now.

Just some pretty big speculation on my part. Not to state a fact, more to open the subject to discussion.

Thanks.

[Teshka]

>My impressions are way down, click through percentage is way up, and revenue is about the same as usual for this time of day. I suspect the impression count will catch up later or just under report today.

Same here. I haven't added any of the new adds, so I think it's just Adsense lagging on impression reports.