Has AdSense Introduced A New Filter?

AdSense Page Impressions Down

[OptiRex]

This is not an earnings down, CTR, eCPM moan or groan!

My actual earnings are completely "normal" however I have noticed this week that my overall AdSense Page Impressions have been reduced by about 15%.

Has Google introduced a new filter to weed out the spiders and bots?

My real time logs are still showing the same overall visitors and page views etc.

Have you seen a reduction in reported Page Impressions meanwhile your actual earnings have remained constant?

Surely it's not just me!

[ann]

Hi there Opti-Rex.

At least I am not alone. Been seeing that on my highest PI days started 31st last month, they are cut way down then lower PI days they are as usual. With missing impressions there is also missing clicks? Right? Maybe?

I have been yelling in various threads about this and even started my own but didn't generate many posts so I really began to think I was alone.

Sorry about this happening to you but it's good to know I am not actually imagining things.

Hopefully they will "pull" the filter and....I guess I better shut up for now.

Ann

[OptiRex]

Hi Ann

My earnings are fine, I am simply seeing a reduction in reported Page Impressions consequently my CTR and eCPM are actually up.

Most bots seem to work, unbelievably, Monday to Friday, because my earnings are very good on a weekend however the Page Impressions are down by 40% compared to a weekday.

My logs are showing everything as normal, just AdSense Page Impression data is down.

[John Carpenter]

A possible explanation could be that due to connection problems (DDoS-ed Internet backbones, etc.) the Google ad servers were unable to deliver ads to certain countries or regions. Your site is hosted in a different part of the world than the Google servers, so your content made it to the visitors, but the ads did not. If this was the case, your site log would show more hits than the Google logs.

[hunderdown]

I've noticed the same thing--traffic is actually up this week, but Google page impressions are down.

Normal number of clicks, though, so I'm not particularly bothered by it.

[theRealairness]

My page impressions went down too, but my CTR went up. CTR per click is less though. :-(

[ann]

I believe my server is located in their neck of the woods. I don't know about you, Opti but I feel that by not counting PI's correctly then the clicks that go with them (possibly) is not counted either.

My income is still doing good but with this newest activity or lack there of it could be both our incomes would be going up but the latest activity is causing an unseen damper on higher income?

I am close to giving up on adsense first they cut my clicks in half some months ago, then sicced the crap ads on their publishers then when climbing out of the hole they dug for us along comes two more pitfalls (we mustn't forget their newest coding embarrassment which was recently discovered concerning downloads).

This whole situation is starting to stink, not just to me but to a lot of others that read and post on here.

I really like Google but it is no longer a set it and forget it company that can be trusted to look out for their publisher base by selling and showing only good ads to us. Not to mention falling down on the job of keeping the scrapers and MFA's out of both the base and the product.

*sigh*

Ann

[hunderdown]

ann, counting impressions *differently* from the way our logs do does not mean that they are counting them wrong. As someone suggested earlier in the thread, they could simply have found a way to filter out "impressions" generated by some kinds of bots. And those bots, of course, would not be generating clicks.

I'm going to wait and see, but so far, this month looks much like July, with the new filter, if that's what it is, not affecting my income so far.

[lordg]

Yes, my page impressions are down from usual. Good to know I"m not alone.

[Powdork]

me too

[andrewshim]

August 11- 13 saw almost 40% PI reduction for me. Clicks and earnings were also way below normal (whatever normal is for Adsense) for these 3 days. This could have been the effect of my giving my site a face-lift so I can't really say if it was a new filter...

Then yesterday and today (August 16 & 17), I'm seeing above average PI and earnings!

Go figger...

[europeforvisitors]

Everything looks pretty normal from where I sit: Traffic has been up somewhat this week (I got featured in a major newspaper over the weekend), but CTR has been just barely on the high side of the normal range. If any impressions were subtracted to account for bots, etc., the deduction didn't have much impact on CTR.

[Hobbs]

I'm not seeing what you are seeing
All things abnormally mormal here

There could be a simpler explanation
Just wait and see if there will be an "impressions dump"

[jomaxx]

I doubt very much it's related to web bots. No normal spider would execute the Javascript in order to generate ad impressions.

[ann]

Jomaxx,

That's what I was thinking. Seems the higher the traffic goes, the more PI's I get then Google cuts them down. On "normal" traffic days they are right where they are supposed to be. I am not talking about a massive traffic surge, just around 2 or 3 thousand extras.

I truly don't understand what is going on with all this coming out of the plex unless it is to get us to give up and move out which would make way for their proprietary programs like Froogle, advertising in the serps, etc. I truly hope I am wrong and they finally get things sorted out.

It is puzzling Opti, just hope you find an answer and tell all of us. :).

Ann

[Content_ed]

Impressions here are moving in lock-step with page views, but we don't run Adsense on most of our pages so the numbers aren't huge. Might be there is a filter, but it has a cut-off for traffic.

[Hobbs]

>unless it is to get us to give up and move out

There are easier ways to empty their publisher list if they wanted to, but that is way too remote to even try refuting.

[martinibuster]

One scenario I can think of could be an uptick in traffic from countries where AdSense may not have sufficient inventory, coupled to a downtick from countries where Google does have inventory, which would result in the same amount of actual pageviews/visitors but a decrease in AdSense imps.

Fwiw, my imps are the same.

[level80]

I noticed today impressions are far, far lower than they should be. In fact they're at June 27th to July 27th levels (after a recovery for a few weeks). I checked my search engine positions - and they're way down too - the way they were between June 27th and July 27th which makes me think Google has reverted to this set of results (or very close to it judging by the traffic).

Of course I may be overanalysing it all and it may just be an impressions/click dump about to happen? Anyone else have any thoughts on riding the Google Adsense rollercoaster? Has anyone else seen something similar or am I the only one?

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:32 am (utc) on Aug. 18, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] Fixed Bug. [/edit] [/edit][/1]

[Powdork]

In my case, the lower impressions were a result of colder weather, whihc means the beaches section gets wat fewer views. It rarely gets clicks though, which is why the earnings remained stable.

[jomaxx]

Usually AdSense stats are quite accurate and reasonably up to date. But it's only possible to answer these questions if you habe an independant means of measuring your site traffic, hopefully one that allows you to throw out the considerable distorting effect of web bots.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I see as much as 90% of my hits from bots (good and bad), so even a tiny change in treatment of their visits by G would be significant.

(And I'm sure that some bad bots WOULD try to execute JavaScript...)

Having said that, I have not noticed anything in particular over the last few days.

Rgds

Damon

[jomaxx]

IMO the only bot that would execute the JS and trigger AdSense impressions would be a specially-written clickbot. I have never observed (or heard of) any other kind of bot attempting to actually execute Javascript code, even rogue ones.

[DamonHD]

Hi jomaxx,

You may be right, but but (bad) bots do inexplicable/stupid/dangerous/expensive things.

Just requesting thousands of pages from my sites where the bots have lower-cased and truncated the URLs, etc, wastes CPU and bandwidth with no benefit to them (all the munged URLs are wrong!), but it happens.

So, some eejit (or nasty bot in a compromised home PC) executing JavaScript with or without realising the consequences, possibly to try to find and "scape" hidden pages or hurt someone on purpose? Are you telling me it's never happened and never will. So, as I say, since 90% of the "users" at any one of my servers at any one time are (bad) bots, only one of those has to misbehave to make a significant difference.

I hope you are right though!

Rgds

Damon