Was Your AdSense Semi-Broken On Wednesday 5th December?

Bizarre Metrics

[HuskyPup]

After several days of consistent post-Glitch PI, EPC, CTR and eCPM, yesterday's PI and EPC metrics were a complete reversal with everything down between 30-35%.

The reduction in EPC was particularly noticeable in my AdLinks with the average EPC half that of my leaderboard. My PIs were significantly lower, similar to a busy Sunday, and bore no relationship to my own logs.

Although it's too early on Thursday to be confident, my metrics seem to have returned to their new norms.

Did anyone else see strange metrics like this?

[grigoroo]

I was below me recent levels but it didn't look out of range.

[radix]

CPC for 5 Dec was about 25-30% lower than the average of my sites' aggregate value from the recent weeks. On at least one of the sites ad targeting was absolutely ridiculous - recovered by early today.

Also, I noticed a significant drop (40%) of CPC for yesterday on the domain parking service that I use and which pulls ads from AdSense. However, most of the domains I have there are themed around one niche, so, I'd not draw any general conclusion from that. Still, the drop for yesterday is rather outstanding.

[europeforvisitors]

I've seen only two oddities in recent weeks, though neither has been extreme:

1) EPC is up somewhat;

2) CTR is down somewhat (which I ascribe to low seasonal demand--this is always my dead season).

The two effects have mostly cancelled each other out, yielding a month-to-date eCPM for December that's slightly (not dramatically, just slightly) better than November's.

[jomaxx]

No difference. eCPM was up slightly from the day before, down slightly from the same day last week. Nothing remarkable about it at all.

[icedowl]

What I've seen for both Tuesday and Wednesday is that PI's were up considerably but the CTR has dropped by about 80%. Average EPC is in a normal range.

[jomaxx]

P.S. How many clicks do you get in a day, roughly? A lot of the time, big swings are simply due to paying too much attention to results that aren't statistically significant, in other words due to the laws of the universe.

[HuskyPup]

How many clicks do you get in a day, roughly?

Enough to know when there's an anomally:-))

Clicks and CTR were on the post-Glitch norm, it was the huge difference in EPC between AdLinks and leaderboard plus much lower than average Page Impressions (as in several X,000 fewer).

As I already wrote, it seem to have resolved itself with today so far back to normal.

[radix]

CPC for 5 Dec

snip

of CPC for yesterday

Sorry for the typo in my previous msg, I meant CTR instead of CPC.

I'm in the low #*$! daily clicks club with about 10,000 page impressions.

Now I've just got back from a domain industry forum site. I was there to see whether anomalies are reported for 5 Dec. Couldn't spot any.

Instead, there is a several pages long discussion about negative changes in earnings starting in October. PM me for a link if interested.

* "#*$! daily clicks" should read x x x daily clicks - WebmasterWorld forum software is too smart to display the three x-es.

[MikeNoLastName]

I came in here today just to see if anyone else was having this problem and apparently so. Since Wednesday we have been seeing normal PI, slightly higher than normal PPC but a CTR which is about 33% less than usual (normally thousands of clicks per day with a deviance of <5% over the last year, so yes statstically significant). It's almost as if a third of the visitors were suddenly no longer seeing the ads which Google says is being served. Thus earnings overall are down at least 25%. Anyone know of any recent browser or Adsense changes which may have caused this?

[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 11:17 pm (utc) on Dec. 6, 2007]

[MikeNoLastName]

Well, folks, I think I just found the problem, at least in our case. I tracked the problem down to a couple of key (high traffic) pages. We don't use anything besides straight hand coded html on them. When I try to view them I get the following message:
"The website wants to run the following add-on: Microsoft data Access - Remote Data Services Dat...'from 'Microsoft Corporation'. If you trust the website and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click here..."

If you click okay, it tries to connect to an obscure subdomain on another server starting with" gttcp17.
and then locks up the whole browser window (at least on my computer). So as I previously guessed, visitors are unable to see any ads, or the page in question for that matter. My guess is this has something to do with the new video ads and some advertiser mis-programming their ad! Since it only happens a fraction of the time, I'm guessing it is only one ad... so far.
I can't even see which ad it is, so I can't filter them or give Adsense any details about it! Seems like a dangerous precedent to me!

[wyweb]

And on that note I believe I'll go check my ads...

[shadeofgray]

I have no video ads, but my CPC is down to 40% of normal, CTR is down to 70% of normal (it may be flucatuation, though). Very strange....

[shadeofgray]

Totals from December, 6. Same CTR, CPM/CPC down to 30% of normal.

Hope it just a temporaru glitch.

[shadeofgray]

Totals from December, 6. Same CTR, CPM/CPC down to 30% of normal.

Hope it just a temporary glitch.

[ArtistMike]

I keep telling you guys to rename your channels and see if it shocks AdSense back into normal range. But no... you don't try it.

Chuckle.

Mike

[shadeofgray]

I think I will wait for the next week. If nothing changes, I'll try it.

[MikeNoLastName]

>> "I keep telling you guys to rename your channels and see if it shocks AdSense back into normal range. But no... you don't try it. "

Tried it, limited effect, doesn't last long. Depends on how many of your channel bidders are legit vs. spammers. If you have a lot of spammers, they disappear and legitimate text related ads seep in, but spammers will come back within a week. If you have majority legit advertisers, like us, your PPC will go down immediately as you lose the legitimate advertisers and will take a long while to come back.

G is fighting a losing battle with MFA spammers which I doubt they will ever win and which can only get worse for everyone.

[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 10:38 am (utc) on Dec. 7, 2007]

[ArtistMike]

limited effect, doesn't last long. Depends on how many of your channel bidders are legit vs. spammers.
=============================

I have some legit ads on some very popular pages on my site, and the same ads come into the site at different price levels. It is not difficult for them to run the same ad at different prices and try and get the ad into your site at the lower cost.

Renaming the channel shakes up the system and the higher paying ads always come in. Shrug. At least in my case.

Mike

[jomaxx]

I seriously doubt that what you are seeing is a real effect.

[greatstart]

The 5th of December was just a little slower than the 4th or the 3rd. It was about 12% less for my eCPM. Just another roller coaster ride.

[HuskyPup]

Yikes!

It's Friday evening UK time and the first time I've logged-in since yesterday and I've been well and truly Click hammered having reported my lowest daily clicks of the year, just over 10% lower than New Year's Day!

What on earth is going on now? I earned 50% more last Sunday than on a normal weekday and today's clicks look just as bad.

My EPC has returned to the middle of my old trading range, it's the clicks, where have they all gone? Yesterday was 33% of my average daily clicks for 2007, I just do NOT believe all those were accidental or fraudulent.

Roll on our own advertising network on January 1st otherwise I'll be paying Google money for the privilege of appearing on MY sites!

[HuskyPup]

Does anyone know of a good proxy server that displays precisely what AdSense is being seen in another specific country, in this case the USA?

I just have this horrible feeling about my US ads:-(

[HaroldU]

Yep, today looks a lot like Christmas Day or another one of the lowest days of the year. Everyone must be out shopping. Offline.

And the month had started off so well, too.

[MikeNoLastName]

Just to update you all. My previously posted problem with Adsense Video ads, apparently WAS NOT the problem after all(Google has also independently confirmed that no video ads were attempted on the pages in question at the time indicated).
I received a notice last night from my ISP that a security weakness was discovered, and now fixed, in our server's recently upgraded operating system software which allowed hacking of our system kernel by someone trying to insert spyware onto visiting computers. Sooo... the reduced CTR was apparently due to visitors getting the message or virus checker warning and leaving our site after the ads were displayed (rightfully so!) or having their browser lock up as in my case, and not from not being able to see the ads due to Adsenses fault. Our CTR and CPM are now back to within normal tolerances.

[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 1:17 am (utc) on Dec. 8, 2007]

[martinibuster]

Happy belated Hanukkah [judaism.about.com]?

[Scurramunga]

Does anyone know of a good proxy server that displays precisely what AdSense is being seen in another specific country, in this case the USA?

Most public proxies I have found are unreliable. There is a preview tool called Googlelock that returns about 20 ad samples for each country. As far as I can tell it appears to be rather accurate.