April 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[Mentat]

March was a UP/Down month for many, but was generally a quiet month.

April has "two Easters" (Catholic on 5th and Orthodox on 12), an official Google update on 21 (mobile algo) and probably the doorway pages update.

In the last yeast, Google rolled some big updates on holidays, so it's time to prepare yourself for a rough month.

[Sillysoft]

I wish they wouldnt limit the number of channels that you can use. Im already at the 500 level.

[netmeg]

Write em and ask for more. If you can make a good case, they might give you some more.

[roycerus]

I was hoping Google was going to say "Its all good... this is your new daily average now!"

[edited by: roycerus at 7:10 pm (utc) on Apr 20, 2015]

[StevieP]

Yes, it would certainly be nice if someone from Google gave us a friendly hello. But I'm sure they're busy.

[StevieP]

I've re-activated my AdSense ads. So far, it does seem like things are back to normal. I never thought I'd be so happy to see lower earnings.

[ember]

I never thought I'd be so happy to see lower earnings.

Yes, it makes you appreciate what you have. Better to have an account with lower earnings than no account at all.

[nomis5]

One thing I can tell for sure is that only US clicks are affected as the rest of the countries are remain in the dark.

Well I'll be as happy as Larry if you are correct! All I can say is I see x5 earnings from one of my UK (.co.uk) websites and they are stuck like glue to Firefox 27. I get almost zilch visitors from anywhere other than the UK and the site is a UK one through and through.

I will report back early May and if your analysis of UK sites is correct I will bow to your better judgement and then go out for a slap-up meal courtesy of those increased earnings. Here's truly hoping you are correct.

[dethfire]

Today has been really great, but with all the rumors going around I am sure we'll see a big claw back sometime today

[ShoDown]

Before these adsense clicks happened I was randomly checking analytics and noticed a 99% bounce rate from two versions of Firefox and was scrambling thinking my site was messed up, now it totally makes sense. Maybe bots were testing my website before the click bot came through?

[londrum]

The last time this happened last year they left the stats the same, but lowered the payout at the end of the month. So dont be surprised if the high numbers don't change

[paparoysan]

one of my sites got increased CTR (36%) from french ip address too. not usa only.

[CommandDork]

"The last time this happened last year they left the stats the same, but lowered the payout at the end of the month. So dont be surprised if the high numbers don't change "

Yes, and your reports will forever be skewed because of this :/

[nubchai]

I'm still seeing good performance. CTR is a bit lower than yesterday, but still I'm happy so far.

[breeks]

No spike here same miserable CTR as usual :)

[netmeg]

(BTW the bots aren't really using Firefox; it's not terribly difficult to spoof a browser header. I've had bot attacks from supposedly old versions of IE too)

[avalon37]

Seeing a pretty big spike is contextually UNRELATED ads the last couple of days.

[ruip]

End of the day....
More 29% revenue v same day last week, (ips blocked at 4 PM and firefox 27, too) RPM 56.8% more.
I receive(2PM) a first response from support telling nothing is wrong with reports asking form more information (i send a report yesterday late night).

Server logs with (firefox v27) in last months (from January 1) have many entries from regular users. Blocking browser block some natural visitors too, in my case, 1% .
It's first time i have this issue in 8 years with adsense.

[nubchai]

MY RPM and clicks are almost on par with a week ago. It feels like it's back to normal.

[kireb]

When can I get my Firefox 27 visitors back? Might be 1%, but still bad for business and impression of my site. Will Google come out with information or will they stay eerie quiet?

[Selen]

I hope RedBar (the member here) hasn't read the news about the bots attacks so that he could enjoy the spike while he can (it applies to most of us I guess ;).

[Mike343]

Seems like they are doing heavy clawbacks even for legitimate clicks as well. Back to that same bullshit as before which I finally recovered from just for this to happen.

[Sillysoft]

@Mike343

What do you mean? Are they taking away money from you today?

[kireb]

Weird: the Firefox 27 problem with 99% up bounce rate of 99% and avg session time of less than a second is not new at all. It's been going on for at least a year. GA stats are pretty clear about this. That the bots are actually screwing up clicks is something of the last days. But this loophole has been open for quite a while.

[StevieP]

I haven't had so much as a dime taken away from me yet. I fully expect to lose most of my earnings from the past couple of days eventually (and rightfully so), but so far nothing. My reports still show ridiculously high earnings.

[nubchai]

Stevie they usually wait until the month closes and then adjust downward. That being said, I hope you get to keep your earnings.

[Mike343]

@Sillysoft not so much as taking away but not counting legitimate traffic now.

[frankleeceo]

Response from adsense team from the email:

"This invalid traffic will be removed before finalized revenue is reported at the end of the month. As a result, publishers may see a larger than normal difference between estimated earnings and finalized revenue for the month of April 2015.

This invalid traffic is no longer being counted toward estimated earnings as of April 21, 2015. Since Google does not block this traffic, publishers may continue to see it reflected in their weblogs."

seems boilerplate enough so sharing this.

[nubchai]

"This invalid traffic is no longer being counted toward estimated earnings as of April 21, 2015. Since Google does not block this traffic, publishers may continue to see it reflected in their weblog"

Not sure I understand this. Do they mean they're filtering any additional invalid traffic so it won't go into estimated earning? In other words the revenue we're seeing now is valid. ? But we may still see invalid clicks and impressions in web analytics?

[kireb]

What they are saying is that they won't deduct the invalid clicks on the days they appeared, like Google normally does, but deduct all of them at the end of the month when estimated total earnings is converted in current balance.

This is the easy way out for them, but horrible for our statistics. Normally the difference between estimated and current is about 0.3% for me, so I can draw statistical conclusions from the standard Adsense Reports and compare periods, see averages, et..

Now we might see a difference of maybe 5 to 10%. So your Reports for April are kind of useless. The only way around this is to make your own reports in excel.

[RedBar]

I hope RedBar (the member here) hasn't read the news about the bots attacks so that he could enjoy the spike while he can (it applies to most of us I guess ;).

Not even a twitch, Monday was as near to an April average day as possible...no fun for me in AdSense fantasy land...I would have blown it all on beer last night if I'd seen exciting numbers again:-)