After yesterdays bizarre outage, earnings down by 10X

I think it might be because of an algorithm change with smart-pricing

[sr123]

Yesterday a whole bunch of us noticed that there was some kind of an outage with Adsense as primarily PSAs and alternate ads were displaying (as a recent thread in the forum shows).

My CTR and earnings dropped big time.

Today, I noticed that the ads are back, but my CTR is significantly lower and my earnings are down by about 10 times normal.

I run one of the authority sites in my niche, and believe me, there are plenty of advertisers in my niche, but for some reason this is happening.

I think Google made some kind of an algorithm change yesterday (hence the temporary outage), and whatever change they made, it hit my site very negatively.

What gets me the most though is that there has been an influx of spammy made-for-adsense sites in my niche over the last year, and Google just keeps on accepting them. If I am correct that there has been a shift in algorithm, my guess is it's to catch the spammy sites. I think Googles approach is to accept most sites that apply, and just try to catch the bad ones algorithmically via their smart-pricing mechanism. I think this is an over-reliance on technologically policing Adsense, and it invariably catches some good sites that are innocent of any wrongdoing. It would be far better, and in the long-term interest of Google, to do more human-based vetting of sites. That way they won't alienate the good publishers that get caught up in their filters.

I know I am making a lot of assumptions and speculation, but I can't think of any other reason for what has happened to my site with Adsense. I can only hope it is a temporary thing.

My site, which was running for a few years before I ever even applied for Adsense, and which I have built through countless hours of hard work, research, and commitment to quality, seems to be triggering something now. Probably because a lot of spammers steal my content and link to me. I can't explain the 10-fold drop in earnings in the manner of one single day, in any other way.

Can't wait till YPN becomes available in Canada.

[spaceylacie]

Since "Black Friday", as it's been dubbed, I have seen a sudden increase in my eCPM. I have gotten back to pre-Dec.29th numbers(I think that's the correct date, when all the large rectangles switched to 2 ads).

The sudden decrease on Dec. 29th followed by a sudden increase on January 26th(back to pre-Dec. 29th numbers) was a difference of **% change in eCPM, along with total revenue increasing by the same percentage. CTR is also up, but I haven't looked in depth at this so don't know the exact percentages.

Added(after removing the exact %)
** I get a little worried about posting exact numbers per Google TOS

[dollarshort]

Give it a couple of days then start worrying, seen it before.

[lcampers]

things seem back to normal except for one strange thing. my adsense for search has jumped to absurd levels in the past week, the CTR for it is 30% almost.

Anyone else seeing this?

[dollarshort]

Probably one of your better advertisers dropped out, this can cause a domino effect, as the highest bidder pays 2 cents more than the next highest bidder, to me thats the theory behind smart pricing. Theres alot of bogus theorys on smart pricing circulating on this board.

[europeforvisitors]

things seem back to normal except for one strange thing. my adsense for search has jumped to absurd levels in the past week, the CTR for it is 30% almost.

My search CTR and eCPM are nearly always high, but yesterday they were stratospheric. (The sample was pretty small, though--on my site, search queries are from 1/1000th to 1/500th of my content impressions.)

[fearlessrick]

Whatever Google did (was doing, is still doing, maybe started, stopped and started over), it seems to have aided targetting immensely. All of the pages I checked after 6 pm ET were showing the full contingent of ads - 4 in medium rectangles, 4 in 120-wide skyscrapers and 5 in the 160-wide - with new advertisers as wide ranging as my pages (which can literally cover an hustorical year's worth of specific information).

CPM bottomed out and is recovering nicely. What I thought may be worst day in 8 months is turning out to be just slightly below this month's average.

Who know's? Tomorrow it will be another dipsy-doodle on the Google-coaster. Just glad I'm already bi-polar.

[activeco]

Optirex, my message was not addressed to you. Sorry for the confusion.

[solidgas]

I am fairly new to adsense and you all are right this is a roller-coaster. I first thought I was doing a good job raising me eCPM to almost double, but know Saturday, sunday and today the eCPM has plumited 75%.

I can't tell if the decline is due to the changes i made to placement, or if it is google going through an update. I guess I will have to sit back and watch to see what happens.

January was my best month ever. Well over my costs to support the site, in fact more than enough to cover all my sites for the month.

[netmeg]

Yea, my Saturday had a huge surge for some reason as well.

[littlegiant]

I was having a fabulous month until Friday. Then my CTR and eCPM went into the toilet. It's been up and down since (e.g up until 6pm Saturday it was terrible and then suddenly picked up and I ended up having a somewhat below average day). Yesterday finished slightly below average. Today so far, back in the crapper again. I've also noticed that the most generic poorly targetted ads are starting to display on a lot of my pages. And I might add also that I've haven't touched a thing at my site since Christmas so these changes are definitely on account of something new that Google has thrown into the mix.

sr123, thanks for sharing. I think some of your analysis is spot on and very illuminating.

[JollyK]

Strange: usually I'm one of the ones dropping down in income, but Sunday was one of my best Sundays ever. Then again, Saturday I created about 80 new channels. It seems like whenever I make any change to the pages or google ad code, my income goes up for a few days, then drops again.

No idea. Rollercoaster is right. :-)

JK

[eric_guy77]

Same here...my income dropped around 50% as well.

Eric
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[edited by: engine at 6:30 pm (utc) on Jan. 30, 2006]
[edit reason] No sigs, See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]