Want Adsense success? Never update your site.

[glitterball]

Although Google wants us to believe the opposite, I have observed a massive decline in Adsense earnings in the period after making design changes to a site every time I have done this in the last few years.
Specifically I am talking about layout changes that affect all pages (or at least most of them) on a domain.

The current panic to make every website that I own friendly to 320 pixel-wide displays is causing the same issue again with CTR tanking in the days after the changes.
The sites still look the same on Desktops, but the CTR tanks anyway in the first few days after each site is updated.

[avalon37]

I'm in partial agreement. I have never once received recommendations from AdSense (and I'm talking about multiple in person personal meetings with the premium publisher consultants) that resulted in improved earnings. All that talk about how many ads on a page affecting earnings, and on and on...there's no concrete data behind it. And one site I manage is 300 million pageviews a month which is why AdSense is always contacting me personally to test their new ideas. And for a while I did to foster the business relationship - all the while knowing it would not produce results.

So I never implement their recommendations. That said, I make design changes on my sites all the time to get ads in the best possible places and those changes DO typically result in higher click thru rates. Also, AdSense is constantly changing things so what they might recommend in February might not produce any improvement for you. But 6 months down the line it does help which is bizarre and all too commonplace at this point. But yeah, there is no way I am making my sites more mobile friendly out of fear of losing revenue on AdSense. My mobile traffic is about 30% so I'll keep an eye out to see if my mobile traffic starts to dip when the whole new "mobile friendly" requirement is in place. But with Google, I continue to maintain the position of I'll believe it when I see it.

[MarkBrownAdGuy]

But it returns to previous levels after those first couple of days or not?

I'm considering to switch to responsive design on one of my Adsense sites, but now you got me a bit scared. :)

[glitterball]

But it returns to previous levels after those first couple of days or not?

I'll let you know in a few days!

Some of my smaller sites returned to normal CTR rates 2-3 days after making them mobile-friendly. Still waiting for my biggest site to come back to normal levels.

In the past other site-wide changes have taken months to return to previous levels.

[netmeg]

Obviously, everyone doesn't have the same results.

[Swanny007]

I am converting my sites to be responsive for my visitors and because Google will punish me if I don't (in a sense). If I take a hit on revenue, so be it. I'd rather make a bit less money than get pushed back a page or two in the search result rankings. That will also result in making less money.

[dolcevita]

Agree with Avalon.Me too do not gonna make site more mobile friendly and change to responsive because of fear losing revenue.My mobile traffic is only 10%.Of I lose position on mobile search then I can live with it.Desktop traffic is much more important at this time. It is golden time for my website with traffic growing each month and SERP is stable.

[super70s]

Can someone explain what's happening when you convert your site to mobile, and it passes "awesomely" at google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/, and then you start getting emails from google saying such and such pages on the same domain have all these problems with being mobile unfriendly -- the same kind of emails you received before you ever converted your site to mobile. Are they trying to drive people insane or what.

[breeks]

Weekends my mobile traffic runs up to 70% - weekdays about 30% (people at work) so the only choice was to go responsive.

If your mobile traffic is low it might be a good idea to wait it out and see how the mobile friendly update pans out.

My feeling is next months update is stage one. Stage two will effect desktop search.

[ember]

I'm waiting to change to responsive. I'm learning how to do it so I'm ready if needed. Right now, though, my desktop and tablet RPM are the same and are 85% to 90% of my traffic, so I don't plan to change everything to accommodate mobile at the expense of desktop/tablet.

[netmeg]

Can someone explain what's happening when you convert your site to mobile, and it passes "awesomely" at google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/,

Because they're not measuring on a site basis, but on a page basis. And also, they're not quite measuring the same thing; I think the tool is more measuring load time and the notices from GWT have more to do with usability.

But no argument they're going about it in a bonehead fashion.

[super70s]

Well I really know nothing about converting sites to mobile, and I don't particularly want to. I just let Dudamobile take care of it, after which I made a few tweaks to the main page. And I'd have to shell out $7/mo. to Duda just to get them to stop blocking the Adsense ads.

If Google is so hot & bothered about sites going mobile, why don't they just buy Duda or at least provide some similar tool so people can easily convert and not have to spend extra money just to get their Adsense to load.

BTW if anyone knows of a better service that doesn't block Adsense unless you pony up, let me know and I'll dump Duda.

[dolcevita]

Dudamobile seems to be interesting project and do very good job. Thank you super70s for let me know about it.

But... They create mobile website under m.whatever.com. Not sure how Google will rank it. If you for example have position 5 for whatever.com/whatever and you made mobile friendly under new url m.whatever.com/whatever?

[Swanny007]

I ran duda for a while, eventually decided I'd rather have one copy of my site under my own control. Duda is a really great product IMHO even though I would not use it again.

[super70s]

But... They create mobile website under m.whatever.com. Not sure how Google will rank it. If you for example have position 5 for whatever.com/whatever and you made mobile friendly under new url m.whatever.com/whatever?

The way I understand it, if you have that redirect code in the header and then someone with a mobile device types in your normal URL, your site loads. I don't think the redirect URL is ever ranked on its own.

I only started using them because of all the warnings about your SERP suffering if you don't have a mobile version. But after reading this thread it might have done more harm than good.

[dolcevita]

I understand it about redirection but what about position for new mobile page.Responsive page should probably keep same SERP but new mobile page is page woth its own url.

[IanCP]

I'm kind of in agreement.

With the thread subject.

[nickreynolds]

Too many concerns to make me change atm.
My non responsive design sites are i believe at their optimum for earnings - Losing a bit of mobile trafic may be a better option than a responsive design which overall loses ctr
21 April will be an interesting day.
However, I'm also thinking - is this an opportunity? are their sites i have that could gain rankings by changing if the competitors dont

[ken_b]

When it comes to switching to a responsive design, it might be worth looking at what your competitors are doing.

Of course they could be holding off til April 21 before dumping a reworked design online.

.

[glitterball]

Still running at about 33% of the CTR prior to the latest updates.
My theory is that something must get reset and it takes several weeks/months to get tuned in again.

[eek2121]

Hard to say. My first iteration of my main site was mobile unfriendly. However that was many years ago, and I quickly redesigned the entire thing from the ground up to be responsive. This whole mobile move is not affecting me in the least. In Google's eyes my site is close to perfect. My competitors don't even know this update exists...looking forward to see how much of an impact this will have on my rankings. The top competitor in my niche hasn't updated their website in 2 years and doesn't have a mobile version of the site. They were once the only place to go if you wanted content for this niche.