Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have been with Google since the start of this year. My revenues started great, at around $400 per month. Then with every passing month, revenues would be cut by some 25-50%, even though my CTR is on the rise and so is page views.
This month, I have been hitting some painful lows. For example, my CPM, for the last week or so is down to something like 40 cents or so. It is really painful to watch a CPM drop from $2.50 to mere .40!
I have many options which I have to go through:
-Optimise my website a bit more.
-Just live with these earning and hope that one day, they will go up again.
-Drop Google altogether
So far, I think I will have to go with the second option, to wait and see.
To anyone reading this who can relate to my story, please share it.
I also want to ask you people: has your CPM gone really really low, and then rebounce back, weeks or months later? in other words, is there a hope to see the light at the end of the tunnel?
Have you ever heard of someone bouncing back from a really bad CPM back to a decent or a very good CPM?
Thanksss
Do a search query report. You need to get the SearchQuery.txt file from analog's website to configure it to understand the formats of all the different search engines' queries.
Hopefully you or your hosting service still have your server logs from the last several months. Do the report month by month and note what your top search engine referrals are.
Now, look at what the ads are on your page. You can't look back in time to see what your ads used to be, but hopefully you can remember.
Ask yourself: will the people who searched for THESE keywords want to click on THOSE ads? Are the kind of people who search for these keywords the sort to click on ads at all?
I have dramatically different clickthru rates among pages on a wide variety of topics. I can understand that the kind of people who read certain of my pages are not the sort to click on ads. Can you tell from your log files whether the kind of people reading your pages may have changed?
Also, are your ads actually relevant? If they're nonsensical, well you can contact adsense support and ask for help, but they're not really going to be able to serve you different ads at your request. But maybe they can help you understand, or use here can help you to create new content where the ads will really be relevant.
One thing which I have to mention which may help you guys to know why my CPM keeps going down. My website is a portal, with some 70% of contents based on forums, chat, web-based email, users pictures etc. And the other 30% has some content pages.
I think I have to build more conten pages.
Check your referrals. I know for a fact from analysing my logs (7 sites) that CPC & ECPM reduces to dirt once you lose your google traffic. Google pays very bad for Yahoo MSN or other SEs traffic.
Seems like Adsense income and google referrals go hand by hand. You lose the later and you might lose 50% to 75% of your Adsense $$.
Seems like Adsense income and google referrals go hand by hand. You lose the later and you might lose 50% to 75% of your Adsense $$.
Funnily enough, my highest-paying clicks come from sites that get virtually all their visitors from Yahoo and MSN.
I think that the original problem may be down to smart pricing - a portal site may be too general to generate good conversions from the clicks.
Google pays very bad for Yahoo MSN or other SEs traffic.
That's the kind of brilliant generalization that just has to be true!
I know for a fact from analysing my logs (7 sites) that CPC & ECPM reduces to dirt once you lose your google traffic. Google pays very bad for Yahoo MSN or other SEs traffic
Hold on a minute.
If I get this right you are saying that visitors pushed to a site from different SE´s pay different rates for a click on an ad.
Are you really sure about this.
I mean are you REALLY sure about this.
I've seen too many instances of a google referred click paying anywhere from $0.22 to $3.00 and higher (on some of my sites). $0.03 to $0.08 when its a yahoo or MSN “referred click”. Same pages same ads, different click price (according to referral).
And I’m not the first or the only one who've been reporting this interesting "phenomenon". Part of smart pricing I guess.
Heres something to think about: Anyone remembers the “related searches” links appearing on the bottom of Adsense ads aprox 1 year ago?
It makes alot of sense (for G) to examine and add the referral as a variable when running the "smart pricing" algo. I would have done the exact same if i believed, like G that my search and ad matching technology is superior to all other engines out there. I have no doubt they are weighting the referral (i can see it clearly on my logs and click payouts) and it shows BIG time on recent earnings for many other webmasters affected by smart pricing.
Obviously Google has become obsessed with "smart" algorithms, utilizing it from their search engine to virtually any service they offer.
While it has some sense in some areas, using it in Adsense program showed their lack of common Sense.
It is not only smart pricing and possible conversions, many other non-significant factors play a big role for your EPC/CPM.
Say you have a steady stream of sending regular clicks/leads/conversions from your site or even your traffic and consequently profit for advertisers is growing on pretty good pace. Should you expect more money? For many - no way.
Google wants you not only to provide good business, it wants your site to provide quality to the web and make the world better place, just like in their SERPS philosophy.
Actually it is very noble. Smart?
I've seen too many instances of a google referred click paying anywhere from $0.22 to $3.00 and higher (on some of my sites). $0.03 to $0.08 when its a yahoo or MSN “referred click”. Same pages same ads, different click price (according to referral).
How could you possibly know that unless you get 1 click a day?
I wish Google would enable this magical feature on my account so I could know how much each click is worth, and then be able to attribute that click to a specific search engine.
Seems just a little paranoid to me.
Brandon
How could you possibly know that unless you get 1 click a day?
Silly assumption.
No magic here. I had a site that lost all it's G referrals for almost a month (yet MSN and Yahoo traffic was unchanged). I noticed a considerable reduction in click payouts almost immediately after the G referrals traffic had stoped (down from $0.12 – 0.50 to $0.03 – 0.07).
G referrals traffic resumed aprox 2 weeks ago and with it the click payouts i am used to seeing over this site ($0.12 – 0.50).
One do's not need sophisticated statistical tools to notice such obvious correlation.
P.S.
Software download site with approx 2000 unique p/day.
And, of course, there are other factors that could have come into play, too.
I track my pages very closely via channels as well as server logs (i have a good idea of what pages are performing well etc.). So, i discounted this factor.
Another possible explanation for this may be the re-indexing of the site by G. I noticed low earnings (with other sites as well) every time the adsense boot re-index pages with adsense on. You get low earnings for awhile (possibly due to incorrect or general site wide targeting) and then a few days later you get spot on ads with better pay per click. So in other words, the re-indexing of the site may have been at play here.
I did not change anything major on the site to warrant such major re-indexing. So not really sure why it happened. This may have been the reason but I still strongly suspect weighting of referral by smart pricing. I’m currently in the process of setting some split testing on a few pages and will follow it more closely.
Another possible explanation for this may be the re-indexing of the site by G. I noticed low earnings (with other sites as well) every time the adsense boot re-index pages with adsense on. You get low earnings for awhile (possibly due to incorrect or general site wide targeting) and then a few days later you get spot on ads with better pay per click. So in other words, the re-indexing of the site may have been at play here.
I noticed a decline in CTR from April 23 to 26 (with a low of the 26th), followed by a jump. I've seen the same thing in other months. You may have something there.
What is likely happening is that a business started advertising, didn't see that they could opt out of contextual advertising, and set their price per click to the max. Then after a couple weeks they burned through their budget. After a couple weeks of throwing their money at it they get a clue and took some steps to:
1: Restrict what country their ads are shown
2: Create multiple campaigns for contextual/search advertising
3: Newbie advertiser drops out after spending all of their money
As far as the idea that Google traffic pays more, that's not right. If you say that there is a difference in terms of what Keyword phrases people use to find you in MSN as opposed to Google, then I can believe your assertion. Some phrases are money, and some are not. So someone coming in on a garbage phrase who sees an ad targeting that garbage phrase (bottom feeding advertiser) will be inclined to click on the lower epc ad.
