Google AdSense EPC decline starting this month!

[RealNames]

Have been a Google Adsense publisher since last August and was extremely happy with them until NOW. My earnings per click has stayed about the same (with a slight downward bias, which is considered normal) since I joined but my income has been rising steadily most months as I add more and more sites and pages and also improve pages and make the ad placements more noticable and better overall.

Several days ago I noticed a big drop in my EPC (earnings per click) soon after I got email announcing changes which might benefit some and be negative to others. It sounded like more will benefit overall. Not so with me from what it appears thus far. Why does that always happen to me anyway? Murphys Law perhaps?

My EPC has dropped significantly since getting that April Fools email from Google. It's a bit too early to say for sure but preliminary results indicate an approx' 50% decline in income per click. In fact, yesterday was an all time record high water mark day for me based on both impressions and clicks but my income was well below my average per day over the past few mos., as I estimated, about 50% very roughly. I will know for sure after a few more days of stats.

Has anyone else noticed this? Since I have been with AdSense almost from the beginning of the program and my foray into PPC I really know of no other PPC programs for webpages. I would appreciate member recommendations for other ppc programs so I may look into leaving Google and going elsewhere.

After spending lots of time & effort over 9-mos getting AdSense working very well on a lot of sites I do not at all appreciate what appears to be a major revenue decline.

!

[Alternative Future]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld RealNames,

I don't think you are alone, here is a thread talking about same issues as you:
[webmasterworld.com...]

-George

[alika]

except that -- as always mentioned here -- one's decline is another person's increase. our epc has significantly improved the first 6 days of april. let's see if the trend holds up.

[surfer67]

Maybe it's a new extended form of the "April fools joke". One that begins on April 1st and run indefinitely?

Anyone have any knowledge regarding the longest running April fools gags? Maybe there's a precedence here.

[varya]

I was reviewing my channel data this morning, and I noticed a day in late March in which one of my channels had a number of clicks, but zero revenue.

I've written to the Adsense team about this.

If they are now tracking PSA or "Ads by Google" clicks and counting them in the ctr, that would result in an apparent drop in EPC.