Confused About Current Changes - Website SHOULD be performing better

Google Adsense

[mdurrant]

I'm confused. Weren't the recent changes described as offering more revenue to the websites who offer better leads?

I run a widely popular PR6 website host & review directory. I receive $2,000+ month in comission revenue off 3 rotated (non adsense) banners ALONE, which have a referral link to 3 website hosting companies offering a comission-per-sale. I send hundreds of sales per month to those companies according to Commission Junction.

I cannot track my leads with the companies listed in the directories since they are listed in there on a free and PPC basis, not per-lead, but I'm sure if the companies continue to advertise on the site, they are getting business from my website.

I run a Google adsense banner in the rotation which weighs about 10k impressions per day. My EPC the past week has dropped sharply from the lower-mid x.xx's per click, to a paltry mid 0.xx per click, in all, I've noticed an 80% approximate drop in EPC.

Does this make sense? I sent it to google along with their description and they sent me the generic reply everyone here is getting. I smell something fishy... Does that drop seem right based on what they offered as a reason for the EPC changes...?

[jomaxx]

There has been a lot of talk about tracking conversions and the quality of leads, but all I have seen Google say directly is that onpage factors drive the algorithm. Specifically the text that triggers a given ad, and its relevance to that ad.

This is what was stated by Google in its email, and it was reiterated in this forum by AdSenseAdvisor.

[Sunflux]

Hmm, I was just re-reading that message myself. If it IS in fact the only factor taken into the discount (ie. Google isn't playing other games), then the discounts are too high.

Google can't even match relevant ads to my site lately, so how can they be relied upon to judge the relative worth of clicks from those pages? It's probably the same algorithm matching "fruit concentrate" on pages about "seizure disorder" that's responsible for calculating a click's worth!

[mdurrant]

All of the sudden I'm getting an average mid x.xx per click again now... Interesting. Maybe I jumped the gun on my wild assumptions, but if the coming days are anything like yesterday, it should be a pretty good week (at least a couple notches better then it used to be)

[Sunflux]

{salivating over the thought of $x.xx per click}

[freeflight2]

same confusion here: one site converts dramatically better than the other -> both are down the same.

[europeforvisitors]

I'm confused. Weren't the recent changes described as offering more revenue to the websites who offer better leads?

Google's announcement said that, while the changes would impact different publishers in different ways, they expected that the changes would result in "most publishers seeing more relevant ads and a slight increase in the number of clicks from ads on their site." Google claims that this should translate into higher revenues, except for the "few publishers" who will see a decline in revenues.

In the short run, however, ad targeting seems to have gotten worse, not better, resulting in lower clickthrough rates and revenues. And the discounts given to advertisers will continue to reduce earnings per click and total revenues for publishers until (or unless) the new pricing scheme results in more advertisers competing for space on content sites.

Clickthrough rates should recover as ad targeting improves over time; whether increased advertiser competition can compensate for discounted bids is open to question. Even the overall picture improves over the long haul, it's pretty obvious that, for now, some (many?) publishers are getting hit with both lower CTR and lower EPC and are earning less money as a result.