Adsense CTR down by half after crash.

Is it me or is your CTR down after adsense problems the last few days?

[my2cents]

My CTR has dropped in half since Adsense’s reporting problems two days ago. If I look at the last two months, my CTR never dropped below X. The last two days the CTR is now X/2.

Coincidence? Is anyone else having the same issue?

Thanks.

[jonathanleger]

My CTR is down about 25-30%, but oddly enough my earnings are only ever so slightly lower for the past few days. So my CTR is down, by my EPC is up!

[IanTurner]

No noticeable changes.

[Orson]

Since Sunday 22nd, my CTR suddenly halved, and has remained at the same level ever since. I changed nothing about the site, and the same advertisers are advertising. If anything, the number of advertisers is increasing.

I'm keeping an eye on the number of default ads that are apparently being shown. The logs suggest it's high. However, I haven't seen them appearing on the site at all... I'm kind of new to the website business, so I'm not an expert at decyphering these things, but it doesn't seem to make sense.

Since it's only been about 4 days, I'm not going to draw any conclusions yet. However everything had been pretty steady since last July, and then suddenly this...

[richmondsteve]

It's imperative that publishers implement AAs instead of PSAs and track AA impressions via web server logs or other logging mechanisms if they want to know the true percentage of impressions that are paying ads and want to know the true CTR (clicks of paying ads divided by paying ad impressions).

[Orson]

Yes - I am using an alternative ad (I called it default ad in my last post...not very clear, sorry). According to my server logs, there are a lot of AA impressions: but I never get to see them, for some reason. It's not my location either: it's the same if the site is viewed in other countries as well.

[trillianjedi]

No changes here.

[alika]

No changes here either.

Reporting crashes are not totally out of the norm, they happen from time to time. G usually corrects itself the next day, so I'm not perturbed about that. As long as I see a nice daily total at the end of the month, I'm happy.

[richmondsteve]

Orson, if your logs record the timestamp and http_referer then you might want to see if the AAs are being served up to specific pages or at specific times (if you haven't done so already). Some advertisers turn their ads off overnight, sometimes there's a supply/demand inbalance and if a page always is showing AAs you'll have the data to investigate further to see if trigger words, no ad supply, too little text, text that's not focused enough, etc. are to blame.

BTW, my AAs are regularly in the 5-15% range, though there have been extended periods in the 40-70% range. Without this type of analysis I'd have no idea the frequency AAs are shown or why. Orson, you might know much of this, but I thought it was worth pointing out for others.

[adfree]

almost no change, swinging up and down a tad

[FromRocky]

My CTR is down (~30%) for the last three days but my net earnings are up (~20%). This is based on Tuesday to Thursday average.

[Teshka]

My earnings (and often CTR) are always lower the last week of the month. It always bounces back in the first week of the next month.

[loanuniverse]

It's imperative that publishers implement AAs instead of PSAs and track AA impressions via web server logs or other logging mechanisms........

In addition, you can learn a lot about the visitors that get served those ads.

For example my site is 85% US traffic on average, but of the people getting defaults only 70% is from the US.

Googlebot, Alexa Robot and MSIE crawler seem to be able to access the default file, but there is no link to it other than the one imbeded in the adsense code.

Default ad people like Netscape more than the people getting showed the paid ads.

[Rodney]

no changes here

[CalArch90]

Monday was the best day I've had so far as a publisher and then both Tuesday and Wednesday earnings dropped off considerably. Today is looking much better again.

One thing I noticed is that on Tuesday and Wednesday the ads on my site were not as well targeted. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the server problems at Google, but it has definitely been the difference between good days and bad days.

[Chicken Juggler]

I am having the best ever because I rank much better in Ink than Google. I have always had double didgit CTR. My average click value has doubled recently as well. I attribute that to Google finaly getting their act together. I have not seen any ads from other states on my very specific State oriented site.