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.

[Mentat]

Well, back to the slump, regular/low CPC and going down each hour...

[wasconet]

guess big G is retaliating with low CPC today :(

[kireb]

Are we still having issues or are my earnings for the first hours of Tuesday just superb? Isnt today the day of the big Google shake up?

[nubchai]

Thanks Kireb...I understand now.

[Broadway]

Yes, is this Adsense/Bot thing over? My stats seem normal. Just now I went ahead and unblocked FireFox 27 but left the IP blocking in place. Does that seem the thing to do at this point?

[ember]

Does that seem the thing to do at this point?

It does seem that Google has gotten a handle on it and that it is over. At least for now. Last year it seemed over as well and then returned (and then ended again). I've unblocked FF 27 but am keeping xlhost blocked since they've caused trouble in the past as well.

[Broadway]

Ok thanks. And thanks again for everyone who posted technical aspects of figuring this out and dealing with it.

By the way, as posted in this thread, I emailed both XLHost and EE.net. No reason not to let them know we expect better of them.

[Sillysoft]

My earnings are WAY down today. I am hoping this has something to do with the recent updates to my sites. Within the last 2 weeks I revamped all my sites with a mobile version (Bootstrap). I saw huge spikes the first couple of days when I changed out the site, then traffic just went down after that. So hopefully within another week or 2 things will go back up.

I updated because about a month ago I started receiving messages from webmaster tool stating that my sites were not mobile friendly and that Google has either downgraded the rankings of these sites for mobile or removed them altogether. Obviously we all know they updated their stuff today for mobile. But I did notice my traffic going down a couple of days after receiving these warning messages via webmaster tool earlier this month

And yes I know any major changes can cause your rankings to go down for awhile while Google adjusts. For the longest time I didn't care about mobile because I was making decent money, but after going through GA reports I notice that my sites are starting to get way more traffic from mobile devices than desktop.

[ember]

My earnings are WAY down today.

So it's because of traffic dropping? Has your rpm changed?

[netmeg]

I dunno, I've been way up all week (and I wasn't hit by the bot attack at all) My big season normally starts between May 1 and May 15, but it's a whole month early this year. No complaints on my end. Even AdSense for Search is up (and I use that more for the custom search capabilities than the ads, as it's never made a ton of money)

[Sillysoft]

Compared to this time last month all the numbers are pretty similar, except the amount of traffic and number of clicks. For example 3 days after I got this message for one of my medium sites I went from averaging 5000 unique visitors a day to 2000-2500 a day. I didnt change anything, no new competition and I keep track of my SERPS and no changes there either. So I just came to the conclusion it had something to do with the mobile warning I got from Google webmaster tool.

[netmeg]

Sillysoft - it could be the mobile change, but it also could be something else. Google makes over 500 changes a year; that's almost two a day. I'd start deep diving into figuring out if it was a sitewide drop across all pages, or just a few.

[AlexB77]

Sillysoft - If you did not change any URLs and only made your site responsive, you should be back to the previous state within a month or so, but only if you did not change anything else. I have had the same exact problem last year, when I have changed my site to responsive and everything came back just the same way it walked out. If you have any slight doubts about changes that you made any accidental changes that you did not want to make then you may need to do what netmeg suggested.

[Sillysoft]

Well the issue is the traffic was starting to drop prior to making the changes. Coincidentally this issue started a couple of days after receiving that warning message from google webmaster about not having a mobile friendly site.

However, some sites/pages I did change the url as doing research I found a better url structure. But I always create 301 redirects from the old pages to the new pages. I assume that will take time to pass on the juice to those pages as well. I also changed the content of the pages. But again the traffic drops started prior to doing this.

[AlexB77]

All numbers on my main income sites are very steady and has been since January. Only one of my sites was slightly affected by this attack, but it was generally my fault.

Having a strong day today and actually with this new change that G made today I am starting to feel it in both traffic and clicks from mobiles are up by 10%

[Whatagreatdayitis]

The mobile version of my site looked terrible, so I'm going to stick with the same old unresponsive, nonmobile-friendly design. So far stats are better than they were last week.

[MrSavage]

Yesterday one of the weakest days. Today may actually beat that low by quite a bit.

[kireb]

Business as usual. Good RPM, still blocking Firefox 27, desktop traffic 91%, key countries doing well. Not much changed compared to last week.

[MrSavage]

If things don't change overnight...worst....f'ing....day.....ever.

[RedBar]

Red bar time? My US PVs are way, way down compared to my logs.

[Ironside]

The last two days have been my best this month, however today has gone back to what I have got used to, absolute rubbish, haven't even reached a measly £1 yet today.

[Ironside]

I think Google are making fun of me. You know the "scorecard" Inside the AdSense accounts? I now have five blue circles for revenue optimisation, yet my earnings have never been as low.

[glitterball]

Dire CTR on my main site today.

[MrSavage]

I don't want to sound overly dramatic on what I'm seeing, but does anyone remember that movie, the original, Total Recall? Remember the part where the air is cutoff and people are slumping all over the place? In a way, this is how I feel. I feel the air being closed off, and it's almost lights out for me if this goes very much further. In the movie, somebody controlled the air. In this instance Google is controlling the ads showing and the rates at which I get paid. For whatever reason, I'm pretty much seeing a collapse. As a stock market goes, I once had value, but it's turned to pretty much no value at all in terms of Adsense revenues. I will have a hard time checking stats over the next while. I'm one of those poor souls in Total Recall. I can't blame myself for most of what I'm seeing because at one point, same content, I could fetch worthwhile revenues via Adsense. At this point, my account must fall into a certain grouping. I can only think that there is a natural, slow, subtle, pruning taking place. I know for fact the times when I was overflowing with money, it had EVERYTHING to do with the ads and the relevance of those ads to my content. Take that aspect out, and it would be like selling dildos in a gun store. Some might buy one, but I don't think that's the target market. I bet customers might ask why you're trying to sell those when they came in to buy ammo for their gun. Logic says it doesn't add up selling something that has nothing to do with your customers. Sure, 1% might buy. No loss for the manufacturer, afterall it's your store and shelf space. Why would they care when they cash in elsewhere and your gun store is just a source of unloading excess inventory of dildos?

[Vader1206]

My CPC is actually really good today... it might be related to a new theme I instituted... CTR isn't up, but the CPC is better.

[Sillysoft]

Had somewhat of a rally late yesterday evening. I was looking at -100 for the day but pulled through and got -14. Still lower, but I will take it compared to what it was going to be. The one site where traffic had fallen the CPC just started going up and up as the day went on to over a dollar a click. But I can expect the ups and downs to continue while I wait for Google to settle down with my site having the urls and content changed along with a mobile responsive website.

I also am noticing some sites are now being dominated by mobile visitors vs desktop. One site its 80& mobile and 20% desktop. I hope this means Google is liking my new mobile template, my competitors have not updated to a mobile layout, hoping that as well will help me out. Or maybe Im looking into this mobile update from Google a little too much?

[netmeg]

Hoping my stats are stuck, nothing's moved for hours.

In the movie, somebody controlled the air. In this instance Google is controlling the ads showing and the rates at which I get paid. For whatever reason, I'm pretty much seeing a collapse.

MrSavage, if you want control of your air, you need to take it. Google is not going to hand it to you.

[RedBar]

After half a Google day and my US stats are completely stuck, I've either been chucked out of their SERPs or there's a massive backlog.

[Sillysoft]

I was reviewing my stats like I always do and noticed this new message at the top. Anyone else received this message? And what does it mean?

"One goal of Matched content is to increase user engagement. Your page RPM and other metrics might be affected by this increase."

[wa desert rat]

My stats are lower today than "normal" but not so bad that I'm that worried about it. I have only 4 blue "stars" in revenue but even that is normal. It just means that I haven't crammed in as many ads as G would prefer. :P

Glad this latest episode only lasted two days. Last year it was a lot longer and a lot more traumatic.

WDR