Adsense and traffic detection

G is too smart and it detects traffic waves

[iwannano1]

Some of my good and (unique) content gets linked via popular site such as Digg and many other sites that drives lots of traffic. Sometime I submit my own story to them or it is done by someone else. Traffic is good :)

But my experience shows me that whenever this happens Adsense triggers somesort of filtering and my incomes goes down. Here is my data based upon last 5 popular stories:
Before digg and links traffic is around 10k unique - earnings $130-150
After digg and other traffic 50-60k unique - $60-$80 (NOTE CTR almost doubles but earning down by 50%)

The only gain is via TF.

It takes 3-4 days to reset this filter. Once traffic wave gone it returns to normal. Dam G is too smart. I noticed this new change recently. It wasn't there in past for sure.

To sum up I will say it is a loss for me and more bandwidth bill. Do have such experience? Can any one through some light on this weird phenomenon?

Also I am not sure if this will help to improve search engine ranking (I don't have any data). If G can detect digg effect for AS it can apply same filter to its own search engine too.

[Lagamorph]

My theory, ahem...

Digg is known as not being good traffic for clicks. Google doesn't know (or care) if you have a regular or a Digg visitor so everyone has the same chance of seeing good or bad ads.

10k unique is pretty good traffic, likely it is more page views than many advertisers will want to pay for and you're probably using up many good ads for your niche. Now multiply your traffic by 5 and you have to fill up the additional 40k uniques with lower paying ads. Now you have a worse average ad for each page view and only 1 out of 5 viewers is your usual non Digg traffic. So the people who are good clickers, whose numbers don't increase, now see cheaper ads than before, voilla, an overall earnings drop with no malice whatsoever.

Just a thought.

[edited by: Lagamorph at 9:29 am (utc) on Jan. 16, 2007]

[netmeg]

For my most-visited site, I always have a one-month spike during the summer where my pageviews per day increase a thousandfold. Last year I definitely noticed that as my traffic went up and up and up, the ads got worse and worse and the epc went down and down. Fortunately bandwidth cost is not an issue. As soon as traffic died down, the higher paying ads ($.70 and up) came back. Hard to believe it was coincidence, but I haven't been doing this long enough to tell. I'll have to see what happens this summer.

[danimal]

i'm guessing that the adsense algos must be reacting to traffic that is perceived as being untargeted?

i sometimes get spurts of viral traffic on brand new pages, and with the page design, it always generates a higher-than-normal epc that lasts until the traffic dies down, which takes anywhere from a couple of days to a week or more.

it's not digg traffic, tho... i wonder if the number of ad blocks on the page makes a difference.

[iwannano1]

I am sure Google software system reacts very differently to traffic spikes. Today is 3rd day and it started to recover now.

Lagamorph your theory seem quite logical to me.

So Next time I will disable Google ad for all users coming from Digg and display them TF ads ;) I will post back my result here.