Hundreds of click and $0.00 in earnings

any ideas what's wrong?

[oddsod]

I helped a friend buy a site that didn't have Adsense on it. He put some good content on (about 30-40 pages over the last 3 months) and is getting natural links and traffic. Yet, Adsense earns $0. All pages show relevant ads in the US/Canada/UK/Australia markets, his CTR is a modest 2%, he's had about 400 clicks in the last two months but exactly $0 in earnings.

The site can't be banned because if it were then ads wouldn't show. A similar site of mine attracts an EPC of about $0.20. Even if he was smartpriced by 50% he should have got $40. Or $4. Or $0.04! But, nothing. Zilch.

Sometimes Adsense takes a day or two to catch up with stats. This $0 earnings has been going on for over two months!

Any ideas?

[IanCP]

Have him contact AdSense

[oddsod]

He did have that genius idea too ;) but I wanted to see what people here thought and if anyone experienced it before.

[celgins]

I've never had it happen to my account, but it could be that Google is having a problem with click quality and may be investigating their origins.

[Hobbs]

If your friend is making AdSense money from other sites but not this one, then this new site he just bought must have been previously banned from AdSense.

[jomaxx]

That would have to be my guess, too, either it was already banned or was blocked after your friend started running ads on it for borderline content. Assuming these are truly natural clicks.

[CentennialEmpire]

If the site is banned it should show public service announcements, should it not?

What's not kosher here is advertisers are advertising and Google, presumably, is earning money from the exposures (presumably, but why would Google willingly advertise sites it knows it's not making money on?).

[ken_b]

Does he have this site in his allowed sites list?

[MyNewPC]

If he chose the Allowed Sites option and that site wasn't on the list, neither impressions nor clicks would be recorded so that's not the issue.

[zett]

Where does the click traffic come from? If the traffic is not coming from established Adsense markets (e.g. the U.S., or Canada) then this might be something to investigate.

(I presume that the most obvious reason, i.e. clicking the ads on his own site, is not something that applies to your friend.)

[marbles21]

I'm going through the same thing to and my website is allowed. I get plenty of impressions and clicks but it is not showing up in Adsense. wow I know I wasn't the only one going through this but i was told you still get paid as long as your pub id Is on the website I hope so some activity show up in my Adsense
and some don't the tracking is very low. Adsense should check that out though.

[oddsod]

Does he have this site in his allowed sites list?

Wow, you know what, I didn't think of that. Dumb, dumb, dumb. No, he didn't have this in his allowed list. He's enabled it now and we have to see if MyNewPC is right in that sites not allowed don't show impressions/clicks in the URL channel.

He does have one other site in his account that's working fine and earning money. I've advised him to set "allow any site to show ads for my account". I've never had a problem with that in that past on any of my accounts*. That'll prevent him losing a lot of money like he did here!
They are in various Ltd company names

Maybe Google should automatically include in the approved list any site you've set a URL channel for.

marbles, do you have any other sites on your account and are they earning normally?

<added> If it's the case that Google does show impressions and clicks for URL channels even if those are unauthorized sites this opens up the possibility that you can monitor how much of traffic those spongers/scrapers etc are getting on the strength of your content. ;) Heck, you could even play some games with them by creating some dodgy pages (remember to block google and mediabot from those pages in robots.txt - hehe)

[rocker]

...we have to see if MyNewPC is right in that sites not allowed don't show impressions/clicks in the URL channel.

MyNewPc is correct, ads will show but clicks and impressions won't be recorded/counted.

[eeek]

I didn't think of that. Dumb, dumb, dumb. No, he didn't have this in his allowed list.

That's why I am very reluctant to activate the allowed list feature.

[oddsod]

rocker, it appears that if you haven't enabled a domain but have setup a URL channel Google will show impressions and clicks for that channel but no earnings. So, MyNewPc, something may have changed but clicks/impressions are being recorded.

Which opens up some neat possibilities as per my previous post :)

[rocker]

rocker, it appears that if you haven't enabled a domain but have setup a URL channel Google will show impressions and clicks for that channel but no earnings.

oddsod, this is what I found in the AdSense help section.

What happens to sites or URLs not on my Allowed Sites list?

If a site or URL displaying your AdSense ad code is not on your Allowed Sites list, ads will still show on that site or URL; however, impressions and clicks will not be recorded, advertisers will not be charged, and you will not receive any earnings for that site.

[google.com...]

[oddsod]

Maybe this account works differently for some reason but what he has experienced is counter to what they claim on their site.

[rocker]

oddsod, it's been a few days now, has he added the domain to his Site Allowed feature? If so, has he generated any income from the clicks?

/edit/ fix grammar

[oddsod]

Yes, enabling this domain in the approved list has resolved his problem. Thanks for all the help.