Forum Moderators: martinibuster
On September 16, the same day my check for the prior month was approved, revenue dropped by 75% and has stayed at that level ever since. The impressions and clickthroughs are still the same.
It's as if Google looked at my account and thought, "Hmm... we're just going to arbitrarily cut 75% of this guy's revenue and take it for ourselves." Granted, that's probably not exactly what happened but I can find no other explanation. It seems implausible to me that it's the result of "normal fluctuations" that Google told me to expect in their canned response to the first e-mail I sent about this.
But, after I e-mailed a second time, I was told in a veiled sort of way that some changes had indeed occurred but that they didn't affect my account individually, and that it was for the betterment of Google's ad network as a whole.
Aside from being sorely disappointed (I'm over being mad) from losing a significant (and I mean significant) amount of monthly income, I wanted to know if anyone else has experienced this? I've come to the conclusion that Google made an arbitrary decision to reduce the revenue from certain types or sizes of sites (this is only my opinion). My site is just under "premiere" level (average about 2.8 million pageviews monthly), but is focused almost solely on Harry Potter, and the clickthrough revenue was never glorious. But when added up, they added up to a lot. Now it seems Google just decided they wanted more money for themselves, and with no transparency, there's no way to know if they're just keeping the extra money or what happened...
Like I said, frustrating and disappointing.
So... what happened?!
It's hard to call it arbitrary just because you don't know the reason. A reason exists, however Google is keeping it to themselves.
My guess is that it involves Smart Pricing and the value of the traffic you are sending to advertisers. If your traffic isn't coverting well for the advertisers, then it may be valued less.
Could be that they just noticed it during the payment review of your account when the checks were cut.
My site is just under "premiere" level (average about 2.8 million pageviews monthly)
Isn't premier 20 mil/month? If so, you're not close.
I have experienced the same exact problem since mid-June (50% drop). It has mostly recovered these last 2 weeks, but I know never to count on it anymore.
Isn't premier 20 mil/month? If so, you're not close.
Yes, or 10 million or something. I don't know what I was thinking - I've been doing so much optimizing and signing up for other ad networks since this happened that I got confused.
I've seen at least 5 other threads created this weekend about the same problem. Google obviously did something across the board near the end of September that affected us publishers.
I will never again rely on consistent AdSense revenue. I have diversified my ad inventory (providers) and removed many of the poorer-performing AdSense blocks and my CTR has already improved.
(announcing the addition of multiple ad blocks but not mentioning how greatly discounted the 2nd and 3rd blocks were, announcing websearch but saying nothing about how miniscule the clicks would pay, allowing bloggers to put adsense on their pages)
the only conclusion you can draw is that the program is in a nosedive. The plummet may go slowly at times, but the general downward direction of the program is difficult to deny.
It's not true at all. For many sites, Adsense is a stellar performer. Look around the other threads in this forum and you'll see many sites had a great September. Always remember that sites that are going well are generally not going to shout it to the world. Adsense also varies across geography, topic areas and a whole lot more.
DM
