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.

[trebuchet]

@Ironside, never heard of Oscars, then again I'm not a fish buff. You're right about football and carp fishing though, the pie is much larger but has to be cut into hundreds of slices. I would never bother getting into a niche like that. Also carp fishing sites would do no good here in Australia because carp are noxious pests and it's actually illegal to return them to the water alive. :)

[RedBar]

A diabolical day from the USA Saturday, my lowest PVs for April at 61.8% and second-lowest of 2015 at 51.5%, with EPC at 73.33% resulting in my lowest earnings' day of April, way, way out of my normal spread.

[netmeg]

Yesterday was pretty dismal all day but overnight clicks pulled it out. Today is off to a good start. I'm way up over last April, so assuming no heavy clawbacks, all good here. Advertising mailing going out next week.

[AlexB77]

Same here, way over entire April of last year. Saturday was very strong and Sunday is looking good so far. US clicks are over $1.5 and rising.

[RedBar]

Is anyone going straight down the middle on average, neither well up nor massively down?

What are these widely varying results telling us? Why are formerly previously good earning sites seeing such a downturn in their earnings?

I'm fairly certain why for my niche widgets that it all has to do with weight, transportation and labour costs.

Interesingly netmeg is mostly about events etc, she's delivering information whereas many of the ones who have told me they're having problems are all about their actual products.

Any thoughts?

[MrSavage]

Yesterday was miraculous. Today is progressing well.

[ember]

Is anyone going straight down the middle on average

Me. Neither up or down. Just where I usually am.

I do not sell anything. I just offer information. Well written, totally original information. No UGC. No fancy pages.

[jbayabas]

Extremely high ctr and earnings for me today in months. It's so unreal. It's hard for me to believe it.

[alika]

Good to see we're not the only ones. I was getting ready to turn off the ads in case the extremely high numbers - CTR and eCPM are a result of an attack

[RedBar]

For a bit of balance my worst day in ages, unbelievably low numbers.

[Vader1206]

Having higher-than-number clicks and RPM than usual today, looked at my channels and certain pages (like categories) are getting bombed. This hasn't happened in about a year. Hoping Google doesn't blame me for it; since there seem to be others commenting on the same thing it must be widespread.

[studee]

something is surely messing in, way too high figures today, 4X earning ,ctr not that high but high RPM 4X thank usual. taking ads off seems to good idea ? any suggestions!

[nubchai]

Since April started I've seen progressively better numbers across the board. The only change I made was to go with responsive ads. It feels good but I know better than to think it's going to stay good lol :)

[Sillysoft]

Hey guys, been lurking for awhile first time posting. I too am having extremely high numbers today after having one of my worst days in a year yesterday. I have seen this happen one other time where even with my ads disabled on the site, they are still receiving clicks and earning money. I hope Google does not ban me for this, should I report invalid clicks? Last time they just took it out at the end of the month.

[ember]

Yep, very high ctr on one site. Looks like the bots are back. Same thing as about a year ago. Seems to be happening to a lot of people, so I am not that worried. Looking for bots to block and might let Google know I'm doing what I can to slow the clicks.

[Sillysoft]

The weird part is the clicks are even happening when no one is on my site or if I take down my site for a few minutes I still see clicks and earnings. Right now I have zero ads activated on my site and its still showing clicks and earnings and there is no one on my site right now, at least according to Google Analytics.

[alika]

Even Analytics is showing the high numbers in the Adsense Pages report. I've had instances when Adsense is reporting abnormally high numbers but Analytics is not showing it. This time, even Analytics is showing the insanely high CTR

[AlexB77]

I am not so sure about bots as all my clicks are simply a result of the high traffic from my main countries and referrals. Just finished checking my site logs and found nothing suspicious.

[ember]

This time, even Analytics is showing the insanely high CTR

Same here. Analytics is showing pages with 0 views but a lot of clicks. Last time these did not make it into Analytics.

[Sillysoft]

So what are you guys doing about it? I removed all ads from my site, though it seems like a waste of time because the ads are still receiving clicks and earnings. Again, I saw this one other time and no matter what I did the ads would still show clicks and earnings. I took down my site for over an hour and still received over 100 clicks in that span. There is also a way to disable the ads in adsense, forgot what it was called, and again did not stop my ads from getting a ton more clicks/earnings.

[MrSavage]

I'm continuing to rise today in an odd, usual way. It's good, don't get me wrong. It just seems odd to have normal rises during the day. Basically this brings back memories if nothing else. That said, I'll wait until the end of the day to say for sure what's going down today.

[jbayabas]

I guess goog is making us hope that these numbers are real. Very very mean.

[Sillysoft]

Update on my side, after about 10 minutes of disabling all ads on my site, the clicks/earnings have stopped. Dunno if I should add them back. One thing though I just realized, I dont have Google analytics connected to my adsense account. Whoops!

[System]

The following 7 messages were cut out to new thread by incredibill. New thread at: google_adsense/4744625.htm [webmasterworld.com]
4:19 pm on May 1, 2015 (PST -8)

[Sillysoft]

Well when the CTR is almost at 200% and 100 visits but almost 300 clicks, you kind of think something is up.

[alika]

I think this is kind of sad that when earnings are up, the assumption is that it's a bot attack.

When you see earnings that are 1,800% higher than what you got for the same day last week, you know that it is not your normal Adsense income increase

[System]

The following 6 messages were cut out to new thread by incredibill. New thread at: google_adsense/4744620.htm [webmasterworld.com]
4:15 pm on May 1, 2015 (PST -8)

[ember]

Must be making them and costing clients millions. Hmmmm

Those clicks will be clawed back and the money returned to the advertisers. Maybe today, maybe at the end of the month.

[Sillysoft]

I have contacted xlhost, they said to email [e-mail]. I did that and they said they will make a note in their system as well for them to check. I sent them all of the ips. This pisses me off, I really hope I dont get banned. I also reported my findings to google using their invalid click reporting form.

Hopefully they will just take back the money at the end of the month like before.

[Sillysoft]

Google doesnt block because google says its up the site owners to take care of invalid click issues.

I am glad I built a custom ad class for google adsense. In a config file I can just switch to disable and all ads are removed from the site, instead of manually doing it, just for this occasion.