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For me November was a extremely good month. I was getting EPC in the $2.5 - $3 range, clicks were high, earnings were consistently at record breaking levels - life was good.
1st December rolls round and suddenly EPC drops down to the $1 - $1.5 range, yet traffic and clicks remain about the same (roughly).
What’s going on?!
I can take a look at the website with the preview tool, but the biggest country of visitors, isn't mine, so the tool only gives you an approximation of the ads being displayed. I can ban any known offenders (like ring tone ads etc) but would this just be filling up the filters unnecessarily?
Can you good people offer any suggestions?
Thanks
1. Site is in 3rd level domain under .ru
2. Site is bi-lingual. 1/3 of visitors see Russian content and 2/3 - content in English.
3. Only 20% of visitors are from US.
4. I have relatively large number of visitors because of large number of unique pages (15000-20000), not because of high rating by some popular words. That is, there is a lot of rarely visited pages.
1. Site is in 3rd level domain under .ru
2. Site is bi-lingual. 1/3 of visitors see Russian content and 2/3 - content in English.
3. Only 20% of visitors are from US.
4. I have relatively large number of visitors because of large number of unique pages (15000-20000), not because of high rating by some popular words. That is, there is a lot of rarely visited pages.
(All content in English, about 65%-70% visitors live in the US, a gTLD.)
I guess, G needs some better numbers, for its shares to zoom up a bit more so that ....
I've now seen two posts invoking this theory--that Google manipulates the payout percentage to publishers to help their share price. This poster attributes lower earnings to Google taking a larger cut. The other poster had experienced better earnings in December, and so he believed that Google was increasing the payout percentage because they were doing so well that they were going to hit their targets and could afford to give more to the publishers.
Both those posters can't be right, and I suspect both of them are wrong. Even if you have no respect for Google's business ethics, from a pure business perspective, it would make no sense for Google to play with the AdSense income in this way--too easy for them to be found out. It might make sense if they were in an Enron situation and had to play a game, pumping up earnings with non-existent income. But Google has real income.
Google may indeed be tweaking payout percentage based on their assessment of publisher sites, and that would explain why some sites are seeing declines at the same time as others are seeing increases. But that's a different story.
Maybe it is Google:
1) first implemting QS to (theoretically) prune MFAs from the system.
2) then, while raising the kw bids for pages with low QS, significantly lowering them for other advertisers across the board in November to entice more of them into the content network (as the Italian email suggested).
3) all of this happened with awkward side effects, (as usual) and lots of people are seeing either wild fluctuations or marked, sudden declines in income.
people can put out a MFA site in hours, then they go to another and another,
as with ecpm dropping 50% I have seen almost 100%+ drops
first implemting QS to (theoretically) prune MFAs from the system.
Smarter MFA's seem to be capable of circumventing the QS as I have already observed.
No change in our traffic across all sites and only a minimal dip in ctr but epc has been obliterated.
This is not smart pricing in our case and was told roughly what the italian team quoted earlier in this thread, that is all I can say.
Quit smoking 4 years ago and saved that last smoke for a day like today :)
[edited by: drall at 10:44 pm (utc) on Dec. 13, 2006]
I would know if in the past someone of you had a so lower CPC... and after the situation came back normally?
is that the first time in the Ads story?
However, after what happened at Enron and WorldCom (not to mention the "intelligence" that got us into Iraq), even the patently absurd is deemed possible today.
... and it's Christmas season. Jay Leno showed an actual ad with a picture of Santa Claus praying over the baby Jesus the other night. So, far-fetched? Maybe not.
i noticed our ecpm moving up sine late Novembers crash but still not pre nov numbers.
maybe this is a learning algorithm that will decide where clicks are created from interest or where clicks are screams for a site not MFA
lets see how things turn up...
for one thing this is a major issue because it seems like a lot of people have dropped income brackets, which could also mean big G is losing money with this latest "update" as well.... since they prosper when we prosper
Maybe the targeting data needed to be rebuilt after the last maintenence?
A. does a recent change in the site content help you avoid the smartpricing?
B. Is a dynamic content helps (other links, articles etc.)?
C. Does a duplicate content hurts?
D. If the content of the site is with "selling approach" like G mentioned in their example about the digital cameras - does it make any different?
Smart pricing is built around the idea that if a click is less likely to convert into a sale or other action, then the advertiser should pay less. The biggest factor in smart pricing is past history. How did clicks on your site or sites convert last week, last month, last year? If Google does not have conversion information, then it looks at other factors, or so we believe.
Content may indirectly affect conversions, of course. If you have made changes to site content that change the number of people clicking or that change your traffic, smart pricing could come into play.
Note too that there are things that would reduce your EPC that are not smart pricing--changes in the ads appearing on your site, changes in advertiser's budgets, maybe even a "penalty" factor for sites not seen as being quality sites (much debated, but it may exist).
To answer your questions:
A. Maybe. Improve your content, make people less likely to click, and perhaps conversions will be better.
B. Not necessarily.
C. Not directly.
D. It seems to. I have noted better earnings on pages with reviews of specific products than on pages with general information. But this may be down to conversions, of course.
AdSense is a very complicated system. Try to gather as much evidence as you can and avoid jumping to simple conclusions.
In the end, all that matters is what works for your site. If you have made changes that improve earnings, keep them. If they have no effect, then try something else.
In the end, all that matters is what works for your site. If you have made changes that improve earnings, keep them. If they have no effect, then try something else.
ditto
itloc
** I've a very narrow niche with a very limited advertising pool
Lovejoy - out
it might be worth visting this post from this time last year [webmasterworld.com...]I think this is a totally different situation.
My ecpm has climbed back a little over the last few days. Today it is back to pre November numbers. Lets hope it stays there.
I think this is a totally different situation.
Maybe. But what I am suggesting is that there may be seasonal factors coming in to play also. I seem to recall tearing my hair out last year for those three or four weeks after the US Thanksgiving holiday.
Maybe. But what I am suggesting is that there may be seasonal factors coming in to play also.
Yes. I seem to read a lot about the seasonal fluctuations during Nov & Dec. I'm sure things will stabilize after New Years Day.
I seem to recall tearing my hair out last year for those three or four weeks after the US Thanksgiving holiday.
ahhh... then you will be experienced enough to write about hair-loss. Hair-loss ads inventory is impressive and payout is hair-raising! ;)
ahhh... then you will be experienced enough to write about hair-loss. Hair-loss ads inventory is impressive and payout is hair-raising!
[edited by: Scurramunga at 2:09 am (utc) on Dec. 16, 2006]
Errrm errr Adsense?
- December CTR: down (a not-so-nice non-surprise).
- December eCPM: down, because of the decline in CTR.
Why the decline in CTR? For some topics, it's probably seasonal (people may have other things on their minds in December besides planning a trip to Edmonton, Alberta or barbecuing in their back yards), but it's always possible that another factor is at work: For example, Google could have adjusted its definition of a valid or billable click.
Side note: Our site has never been noticeably affected by season (like e.g. tourism-related sites).
[OT] By the way, I believe disclosing the eCPM is in fact not against the AdSense TOS, because eCPM can be easily computed from two quantities that we are officially allowed to disclose (i.e. earnings and number of page views). eCPM = earnings / pageviews * 1000. (However, the AdSense TOS still does prevent disclosing EPC, CTR and number of clicks per day.)
[edited by: John_Carpenter at 12:38 pm (utc) on Dec. 16, 2006]
[edited by: Genuine1 at 2:01 pm (utc) on Dec. 16, 2006]
But your earnings and traffic/clicks are probably low (say less than 100 dollars a day) so that statistically its almost meaningless to check
