Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Aside from having a frustrating cold at the moment (achoo!), I'm rather bummed about having my AdSense revenue decline by over 90% in one week's time. This isn't a one or two day blip, either. After a pretty consistent weekly average of $x dollars a day, I've now earned 10% of $x daily over the last week.
Oddly, I'm getting approximately the same number of impressions as I was before, both reported by Google and by my own independent stats, and I've not made any appreciable changes in my sites' content.
Since I'm unemployed and sadly depending upon Google for part of my interim revenues, this is quite an unfortunate turn of events, and I have both the time and drive to try to "fix" things.
But I'm a bit flummoxed about where to start. Since I can't see what people are or were clicking on, I can't think of what I'd update on my sites.
Would Google be any help with this? If I wrote them, might they be able to say, well, we've lost a major advertiser that was showing up on your pages, or you have some negative trigger words on the pages that were previously earning you the most income, or...?
I'm not (and was not) earning in the triple digits daily, so something tells me I'm not of really great importance to Google. But I'm willing to try anything... heck, even sending homemade cookies to the AdSense team or whatnot :D
Oh wait a minute, they already get great desserts there. Nevermind. But you see my point! :)
Thanks in advance for any suggestions you might have for my troubleshooting.
So I e-mailed adsense-tech and adsense-support once again, and -- just in case my problem is unsolvable -- I kindly offered them some alternatives:
1) Interview me ([google.com ]); yes, I've already applied!
2) Have Marisa or GoogleGuy or Larry or Sergey treat me to lunch at the GooglePlex.
3) Give me another (post-Google-Dance) $300 AdWords credit :D
I'd be happy with any of the three, obviously, but maybe I'll get lucky and snag all of them. In that case, I won't care about my AdSense account anymore :D
They simply said... yes, Adam, we understand your concern. We're working on it. We'll let you know when we have a resolution.
It's sounding to me, then, that there's perhaps some glitch in their system that has (unfairly) blacklisted sites such as mine. If this was not the case, then I would have imagined them saying something instead like, "Sorry, there just aren't enough targeted ads that fit your site."
Still, I'm quite puzzled. And yes, frustrated.
It's sounding to me, then, that there's perhaps some glitch in their system that has (unfairly) blacklisted sites such as mine. If this was not the case, then I would have imagined them saying something instead like, "Sorry, there just aren't enough targeted ads that fit your site."
I mean the technology should be smart enough to pick a page with objectionable words, but it might also have a built in safe device that when trigered blacklists a whole site. That is something that any good programmer geek would do.
On a related story, today I was writing an article for my site and got to the point where I was going to write "laid the foundation", then I changed it to "built the foundation" at the last moment :)
Hope someone pushes the big green button for your site soon and the ads start flowing again.
Actually, I've removed session IDs from practically every page on my message board. And, using cloaking (which, I'm guessing is permitted in this context), I've made sure that bots NEVER see any session ids. So a loop doesn't seem likely.
But it certainly is possible that one or two pages on my 1,000+ page site had enough "trigger words" to get my entire site blacklisted, I suppose.
What's weird is that another one of my sites also has a little bit of controversial content, but it's still serving up ads just fine, even though it's MUCH less targeted than my primary site. Weird.
Clearly, Google has some definite de-wrinkling to do.
A comment on the PSAs.... I don't think impressions of those should count :(
I got a new theory that has to do with positioning. I just visited your site and found paid ads in a page that is using the banner, but all of the skyscraper ones are showing PSAs. I think is the one titled talk. Would changing the position of the ad {assuming that the layout is modular and put together with SSI} influence the type of ads that are shown?
I know my html pages are put together with Server Side Includes for easy updating.
Well I'll be danged! Based upon your prompting, and from what I can tell, the *ONLY* page on my main Web site that is showing paying ads is the one page in which I've used a horizontal (468x60) ad instead of a vertical one.
I'll drop a note to Google to see if this'll help them troubleshoot what's going on, and maybe I'll play with some page/ad layouts (though I REALLY do want to maintain my generally-consistent use of the vertical ads!)
Thanks much for the astute observation, Loanuniverse! :)
I thought that I would chime in here. I seem to be having a very similar problem, I have posted a new thread, and I will keep you updated as to what Google says.
I even copied a sample page from my main site (which is showing only PSAs) to my secondary site with AdSense (which is showing mostly paying ads), and even after a full day, the moved page (without the text "Sponsored Listings") is not showing any paying ads.
More interesting food for thought:
Pages posted during the past week on my secondary site (a blog) are ALSO showing PSAs. The newer pages are as topical, if not more topical, than my blog's older pages, which are still showing paying ads.
So this is getting more bizarre by the minute, and so far all I've gotten from Google is two form letters and a "we're looking into it" letter.
I'd think that if my entire AdSense account was blacklisted that I'd be showing 100% PSAs and my revenues would be zero. But my revenues are now 5-10% of early October... not zero.
Maybe I'm just being egocentric, but I wonder if I could win the "Weirdest AdSense Case" Award. :D
On October 18th I made some changes to how a couple of my domains were hosted (Domain x used to be a mirror of domain y, I changed things so that domain x had it's own content and got rid of domain y).
Even though I have been adding new content to my site on a regular basis none of the new pages are displaying targeted ads. I checked my logs and the Mediapartners bot has not visited my site since October 18th (over two weeks ago). Pages that were displaying targeted ads before the 18th are still showing targeted ads (except for my home page).
After exchanging several e-mails with Google AdSense support (to get past the first two or three form-mail replies) they say their Mediapartners bot gets 404 responses when attempting to retrieve my pages. My logs have no entries indicating the Mediapartners bot has attempted to access any pages since the 18th. The odd thing is that the regular search-engine Googlebot is able to visit all of my pages without any problems. There must be something different about how the two bots access pages.
Even though I have been adding new content to my site on a regular basis none of the new pages are displaying targeted ads.
Are you getting PSAs on those pages or paying ads that are mistargeted?
Even though I have been adding new content to my site on a regular basis none of the new pages are displaying targeted ads.Are you getting PSAs on those pages or paying ads that are mistargeted?
I'm getting PSA's on all new pages. The problem is the Mediapartners bot never retrieves the web page (from my point of view) and therefore isn't able to display any targeted ads.
"Did anyone here see a HUUGGGGEEE drop in the click-thru rate? CPC however, stays the same though."
I'm in far worst situation. My pages are flooded with non-targeted ads. I don't even know how to ask google for help.
I am also being flooded with non-targeted ads, but I think those who are getting only PSAs are in a worse situation than we are. After all, we are still generating some revenue on those pages. They aren't generating a penny.
Please, please, please email Google about it giving the URLs of pages where you are getting non-targeted ads. I've been doing that for almost two weeks now and the more people who do it, the better our chances of them taking us seriously and devoting additional resources to resolving the problem.
In my dream, Google just contacted me and wanted to put me into CPM program even though I don't have 20 mil page views.
lol
dream on.
As an experiment I took a page of content and placed it on my home PC (running a web server) and also setup an ethernet sniffer so I can see what's contained in the GET request made by the bot.
I put two pages up Saturday afternoon, before I setup the sniffer, and received two visits from the Mediapartners bot, these pages are now displaying targeted ads. Next I setup the sniffer on Sunday and that evening, this morning, and tonight, I created copies of these pages and visited them. So far I have been unable to get the bot to come back and take a look at these new pages.
I wonder why the bot won't come back, there's nothing on the pages I'm playing with that should cause the bot to blacklist the site.
...my main site is now showing mostly paying ads -- and few PSAs (except on my forum, where it's understandable that targeting is more of a challenge).
Many of the ads are different than the ones shown previously before my site's "Dark Ages," but relevance still appears to be decent, or perhaps even slightly better than before.
Not sure when my main site began displaying paid ads again... hopefully just in the last few minutes, upon looking at my (still dismal) earning stats :O.
Ah, wait a minute... I just got a short e-mail from Google dated 5 minutes ago (what uncanny timing!), that said:
1) Sorry for the delay in writing back.
2) Everything should be hunky-dory with your site's AdSense ads now.
3) If there are problems in the future, let us know.
Several mysteries still remain, however:
What exactly happened? Was this a temporary blacklisting of my specific site? Something weird with a temporary algorithm change that just happened to have nasty effects on my site (and perhaps others)?
Hmm. Perhaps I should just not look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak.
Well, back to our regularly scheduled programs...
I wonder if Overture is going to launch anytime soon. I will be one of the first to sign up. I will be checking daily.
-bzprod
1) Interview me (http://www.google.com/jobs/admins.html#adsense_assoc); yes, I've already applied!
2) Have Marisa or GoogleGuy or Larry or Sergey treat me to lunch at the GooglePlex.
3) Give me another (post-Google-Dance) $300 AdWords credit :D"
Adam,
Glad you got this situation resolved, so i'm guessing that they didn't offer you any of your alternative terms.
novice
I realize that Google peeps are massively swamped right now, but I did somewhat expect at least a smiley face in response to my list of alternatives.
---
Here's the really sad irony, though: My revenues, compared to last month (and the month before that, too!), are STILL down more than 90%. It's almost as if some Devil made a deal with my AdSense account and said, heh heh, we'll give him back his ads, but we'll reduce the impressions (that Google acknowledges), we'll reduce the number of clicks AND we'll reduce the price per click.
Anyway, I think it's clear that some (perhaps overeager) advertisers that were bidding on terms relevant to my site are not being quite so "generous" anymore, or somehow the targeting on my site has changed to less lucrative niches, I'm not sure. And to be frank, my main site isn't exactly a hotbed for relevancy. Truth be told, it started out as a personal site and the fact that I was able to make a living off of it for a few years was more of a fluke (and yes, some good skills! ;) than anything else.
So I think this thread has pretty much come to a resigned end, by no fault of Google's... or at least an end to my part of it, unless something drastically changes.
I got my stated wish (Give me back my ads!) but, as they say, be careful what you wish for. I'm just as broke as I was when this whole mess started :¦
The value per click has gone down from X cents to X/2 cents since the start of november pretty much. Has the goose which was laying the golden eggs been killed by someone too greedy? Another publisher "copied" my site into using adsense and being in the same market and of comparable size perhaps this has pushed down the EPC, certainly it took a few weeks after they signed up but the trend is constantly downhill if it doesn't pick up soon I may have to consider dropping adsense as I really do need to pay my costs which are significant... My site has about 20k impressions a day.
It didn't reach a conclusion but went through some interesting discussion of reasons.
