Adsense and Google search gone to pot

Adsense is bad, but Google search isn't too good either

[Thomas56]

My adsense figures are in keeping with the majority. Very bad.

My page views are around their normal average. I get around 140,000 page views a month, 60% from search engines from 4418 keywords and 17868 different keyphrases, according to AWStats as of morning of March 18, but my clicks are at about 20% of usual.

I've noticed that Google search isn't as good as it used to be. Lots of irrelevant returns. I did a search on ratings of my cell phone this morning and the second result was Obstetrician & Gynecologists in Washington.

After my cell phone search I wonder if there are others getting weird results and visiting sites out of curiosity raising the impression numbers, but not clicking on any Google ads.

Far reaching, but plausible.

I haven't been too impressed with Google trying to anticipate my searches using information from my previous searches. One interesting thing though, I'm in my 70s and my wife is sneaking up there and we haven't searched, nor are we interested in the services of Obstetricians.

Have you noticed that adsense is red underlined in Firefox and if you right click on it one of the replacement word choices is nonsense?

With all of their constant unnecessary changes has Google finally hit the Peter Principle?

I finally had to go to Bing to get some good cell phone results.

[incrediBILL]

My adsense figures are in keeping with the majority. Very bad.

How do you know the majority of AdSense users are doing bad?

The only fact we know for sure is that the majority of AdSense complainers are doing bad.

[Thomas56]

According to WordWeb dictionary the definition of complainers is "A person given to excessive complaints and crying and whining".

WordWeb also gives a definition for Forum as "A public meeting or assembly for open discussion".

The adsense situation appears to me to be more of a discussion by people in a quandary than crying and whining.

My site has been on the Internet for going on 12 years and I've been involved in Google adsense almost since its inception. I've spent countless hours making sure that my site complies with every adsense whim.

I have over 300 pages of free information concerning the craft that I spent a good portion of my life performing for a living.

My site hasn't changed, except to add more quality content, but I've seen changes to adsense which have brought my adsense income down by 600%.

You may call this crying and whining, that's your prerogative. I call it stating facts.

Google has been my search engine of choice for several years, so I was surprised at the results I got including Obstetricians and Gynecologists as a second choice while doing a search on a cell phone review. Here again you may call this crying and whining. I call it a problem with the search results.

Just curiosity, do you think that everyone who posts a problem on Webmasterworld forums trying to find an answer or to find if they are the only ones with that problem are crying and whining?

[incrediBILL]

Just curiosity, do you think that everyone who posts a problem on Webmasterworld forums trying to find an answer or to find if they are the only ones with that problem are crying and whining?

You read way too much into my comment.

My point was that happy people content with a product or service are less likely to post than someone unhappy with that product or service, therefore you're most likely to see more negative posts than positive posts.

We know there are many thousands of AdSense publishers yet you only see a small list of them seem to be complaining on any given forum.

Therefore, you could theorize that either most of the people unhappy with AdSense are lurking and fear reprisals from AdSense for posting, or those people are happy with AdSense and don't post because they have no complaints.

Not that anyone with a problem is whining, my point was and still is people happy with the service may be the majority because there's a lot more publishers than can obviously be accounted for based on the posts of complaints in the forums I visit.

</hypothesis>

[john28uk]

The only fact we know for sure is that the majority of AdSense complainers are doing bad.

incrediBILL has a real knack of saying it like it is :)

[Thomas56]

Depends on what "it" is.

I contend <hypothesize> that the posters in this forum are a fair representation of the general masses and that there is something broken in AdSense.

I've found in a comfortably long life that for every person that will do something there is a very, very large group that will stand and watch them.

I did a Google search on active people vs inactive people. The first result was a site with some interesting entries, "Active people use the Internet to express themselves and learn about their world…passive people watch TV", "Active people blog, submit op-eds to their newspaper, and are influencers…passive people purely consume news". Lots more that are interesting to read.

I guess I may not be the only one who thinks that the type of people who will post in the forum are good honest people stating their problem with AdSense, getting very diminished returns for a lot of work.

I don't think the AdSense people are vicious and waiting to pounce with reprisals. I do think they need to be made aware that there are a lot of people dependent on their abilities who are having problems with AdSense and what better way than to post in popular forums.

[AndyA]

Many years ago, when I worked in retail management, I had to take lots of training courses on customer service. We were told that for every one customer who actually goes to the trouble to complain about something, you can count on at least seven others who feel the same way, but won't say anything to you about it.

I would guess the members here who are running AS are a pretty small segment of AS publishers, so it's reasonable that many others are experiencing the same thing, but aren't stopping to comment on it.

[londrum]

i don't think adsense is getting worse, per se, its just that they've made it a lot harder to make easy money. in the old days you could just slap it on and click click click click you'd make a bit of money. but now the clicker actually has to do something worthwhile at the other end or you don't get the money.
so if your site is just sitting there with a page full of words, and doesn't actively promote and sell the product at the other end then it's going to get harder and harder. it's probably going to get even more harder as time goes by as google gets better at tracking what people do.

[ken_b]

We were told that for every one customer who actually goes to the trouble to complain about something, you can count on at least seven others who feel the same way, but won't say anything to you about it.

What did they tell you about what the happy people do?

How many other happy, satisfied AdSense users are there for every one that posts about their satisfaction with the program?

Count me among the overall happy ones.

[coachm]

I contend <hypothesize> that the posters in this forum are a fair representation of the general masses and that there is something broken in AdSense.

I've found in a comfortably long life that for every person that will do something there is a very, very large group that will stand and watch them.

There may be but it isn't proportional. We know that people who are upset complain way more than people who are happy talk about why they are happy. Lots of us don't bother with adsense forums -- it's not typical at ALL. A lot of serious business people are running their businesses and quite happy, and have realized that most of the adsense discussions aren't helpful.

I'm sure you've noticed the huge dropoff in adsense posts, right?

BTW, our March is better than Feb, and Feb was better than Jan, first time in a year we've seen significant improvements in ECPM and total revenues. We keep our adsense impressions pretty much constant.

As for weird results in ads and search results, I tend to think it's all the personalized behavioral stuff which, from where i sit is a disaster for almost everyone, users, searchers, webmasters, businesses. It's just stupid.

[AndyA]

What did they tell you about what the happy people do?

The happy ones aren't the ones you need to worry about. It's the unhappy ones who cause the problems.

Try to have a little compassion for those who aren't as thrilled with AS as you are right now. Your day may be coming.

[incrediBILL]

I guess I may not be the only one who thinks that the type of people who will post in the forum are good honest people stating their problem with AdSense, getting very diminished returns for a lot of work.

See, there again, not everyone posting is getting diminished returns.

I'm doing well and I'm sure netmeg and janedoe and others from this forum, including martinibuster, are doing quite well.

We're doing well in the thou$and$ per month kind of doing well.

One site I know personally is still pulling $80K/mo from AdSense and they've never posted here once.

Marcus Frind from PlentyOfFish [webmasterworld.com] posted here once upon a time but now he's an AdSense multi-millionaire and can't be bothered with this minutia.

I'd suggest instead of focusing on the negatives that you get back to the basics of learning now to earn more [webmasterworld.com] because AdSense fluctuations can be dealt with, but you have to address the problems with the site(s) to make it work.

You can still make a lot of money with AdSense, but your marketing and webmaster skills have to be top notch because it's all about targeting the right niche, the right audience, the right keywords, the right link building, etc.

If you do it all right, AdSense will pay, and if AdSense doesn't pay, other things will pay because nobody ever went broke being in the right place at the right time unless they were just too lazy to do what needed to be done to properly monetize their site and AdSense isn't always the answer.

[Thomas56]

Like I said before, I've catered to AdSense every whim, cache, compress, cut out some images, cut down the size of others and checked the optimization of what was left. I've never had anything but quality content in a niche. My page views are still the same, ad impressions are frighteningly high, but clicks are frighteningly low.

December was low income as it is every year, because my information is about projects people have going most of the year, other than the holiday season. January was back up to normal and February was exceptional, but March has hit dismal.

if your site is just sitting there with a page full of words, and doesn't actively promote and sell the product at the other end then it's going to get harder and harder.

I don't think AdSense would take kindly to promoting their ads and encouraging clicks.

I'll make this my last post on the subject. It really isn't beneficial to anyone. Seems to have gotten out of discussion quality.

[ken_b]

AdSense doesn't operate in a vacuum. You need to pay attention to what happens on the AdWords side of the system also. Visiting the AdWords forum on a regular basis is a good place to start.

[incrediBILL]

I don't think AdSense would take kindly to promoting their ads and encouraging clicks.

That's not what he meant, he meant to promote the projects or products on the page that you write about.

Basically, you need to get people in a buying mood, which will make them click the ads.

For instance, if you have a page about plumbing projects and AdSense shows plumbers instead of plumbing DIY suppliers, then you promote that while it's possible to DIY that it's best left to a professional that does it all the time which can save you time and money in the long run. That kind of promotion might entice people to click the ads, assuming plumbers are showing up in the ads, as they give up the DIY idea.

However, if most of your ads are about the DIY approach, sources and suppliers, then hype how easy DIY is and they should get the parts to get started NOW! Don't put that project off until tomorrow, start ordering your parts today.

That's not enticing people to click the links, it's enticing them to BUY, if they want to BUY they'll look for a place to buy, one such place is AdSense on the page.

That's why AdSense works magic in directories because AdSense is just as relevant content as the directory listings themselves. For instance you list 20 local plumbers per page and then AdSense shows more plumbers, the visitor is there to find a plumber so which one he clicks doesn't matter as any choice is perfectly valid.

Basically, it's a sales job.

Think of your site is a landing page to ramp up the customer to lead him to the AdSense advertiser to close the sale. You get your commission when the click occurs.

If the traffic happens but the clicks aren't occurring then either

a) you have the wrong traffic
b) you have the wrong ads showing for that traffic
c) your content doesn't work for that traffic

All of the above can be fixed.

[inactivist]

@incrediBILL, others:

Thanks for helping. I'm seeing low / slowing revenues, too, but I know I have some site updates to do to help counter the trend... thanks for the inspiration.

[netmeg]

Nobody ever wants to believe it, but from my observations (and personal experience) the people who, when a downturn occurs, look inward and say "what can I do better?" instead jumping to "why isn't Google doing better?" tend to be the most successful ones.

[inactivist]

@netmeg:

My sentiment exactly.

I can't control Google.

I can't control site visitors.

I can only control (and I hope change) my own behavior.

[nomis5]

I'm doing well from Adsense and this post is an exception to my normal rule of not posting in threads like this.

The OP has not the slightest clue how many or few are doing well or badly out of Adsense. Nor do I for that matter.

I do know, on average (ups and downs excluded), I am happy with the Adsense program. It's a bit pointless I suppose, to remark that if you don't like it then find something you do like.

[martinibuster]

I tend to take the AdSense sucks threads with a grain of salt. The sites we've seen or allowed to discuss generally were in less than ideal niches. (There was one guy who complained of irrelevant ads but it turned out the web page was an article about an arson so naturally Google was showing security related ads. The problem was the site content, not Google in that case.)The ones I can specifically recall that were less than ideal niches were a fan site of a dead celebrity, a science site, an exotic pet site and a movie celebrity site.

Another topic to take with a grain of salt are the ones posting that their adsense income is down 50% and what is always going on behind the scenes, what they always fail to mention, is that they are discussing a miniscule drop of actual income, like a drop from $5/day to $2.50 per day. The "50% drop" looks dramatic but it is misleading since the actual dollars being discussed is less than a cup of coffee and a pastry at Starbucks.

I'm not saying that everyone who complains about AdSense sucking does not have a legitimate complaint. There have been numerous instances where the AdSense algo experienced a freakout and needed retweaking. Some of the algo tweaks in the past haven't worked and have resulted in poor relevance, that's a fact. However, what I want to communicate is that of the sites and niches we have allowed to be openly discussed, they have all turned out to be a case not of Google sucking but that the issue was with the site itself or the niche.

[zdgn]

My AdSense earnings have been pretty steady. The only time I see a fluctuation towards the worse is when I have done something to a site, as we have discussed many times here, like redesign etc, or seen a fall in organic traffic, or some seasonal shift, etc.

Of course we all have our own gripes on what we think we "deserve" from AdSense but I have stopped worrying about AdSense factors I have no control over.

I pretty much run AdSense out of the box now: just a a couple of shady category blocks, that's it. No url filtering/channel targetting/advertiser blocking/third-party blocking/image ad blocking or any such tweaks or anything whose effect I can't see. Heck, I don't even pore over channels data anymore, just keep an eye on my overall earnings and they show no indication of any overall slump. A benefit of this hands-off approach is that I have more time maintaining and growing the sites, instead of their monetization.

I've learnt to keep it simple: AdSense's original promise that it delivers the best revenue-generating ad according to the content of my page in the order of the ad code placed. If it doesn't deliver that, well then I accept that my content ain't worth what I think it should be. The web's changing.

AdSense, indeed, as their sales pitch goes, is the only thing that has given me my sites' full revenue potential. No affiliate-program, direct sale or other monetizing effort yields such effortless lock-and-load return, all of which I've been using since long before AdSense arrived.

[maximillianos]

Ditto zdgn. Adsense is by far the best earning program for me. And I've tried hundredss of other networks and affiliate programs over the years.

No one comes close to what they provide. They do all the work and take a fraction of the earnings. Kudos to Google.

[JasonDX]

My site hasn't changed, except to add more quality content, but I've seen changes to adsense which have brought my adsense income down by 600%

You're definitely not alone. Comments like that were few and far between 3 or 4 years ago, but now we're seeing them at a much higher frequency. This was inevitable though. You see when you have a program that works as well as Adsense, the word gets around and eventually the program gets flooded with more and more publishers. Thousands upon thousands of new publishers are signing up every year and the number of new advertisers cannot keep up with the increased inventory. More and more publishers equals fewer and fewer ads for each publisher. Also, the more available unsold inventory results in lower cpc rates.

So there you have it. When everyone and their grandmother are working with Adsense, you're earnings are bound to drop unless you're in a niche which still has very little competition.

[JasonDX]

Adsense is by far the best earning program for me. And I've tried hundredss of other networks and affiliate programs over the years.

They were my best performer between 2003-2008. But with the steady drop in ctr I'm actualy earning more with another ad network.

[drall]

We now earn 35% of our peak in 2006. Same sites, more traffic, less earnings. Continuing to move inventory away via direct deals. Was fun while it lasted but for this adsense success story the tail has been told.

[incrediBILL]

more traffic

More traffic doesn't mean more money.

You need analyze where your traffic came from when you made lots of AdSense money and compare it to where it's coming from now.

For instance, I used to get a LOT of EU traffic which paid very well and suddenly it dipped and was replaced by a massive influx of traffic from India which didn't pay very well.

The solution was obvious, fix the problem with the loss of EU traffic and then AdSense was back up and paying well.

Other good traffic sources that don't pay seem to be Digg, Twitter, Stumble, etc. where people are just roaming links without any intent to research or purchase.

[ken_b]

But with the steady drop in ctr

I've had a big drop in CTR too, but EPC has risen enough to keep eCPM about where it was.

more traffic

Traffic is where I've lost income. But that is because of a shift in the serps. While I enjoyed being 1 - 3, I'm still doing OK at 4 - 8. I'm more or less neutral about the serps change. If anything I actually think the serps are probably better the way they are now. The change is that the widget dealers, parts, and service websites are on top and widget info sites like mine moved down a bit.

Here's what may be an interesting side story on the serps change and its affect on my AdSense earnings.

Before the serps change I got quite a few inquiries about buying some widget or another that they saw on my website.

Since I don't sell widgets, I set up a page that listed widget dealers around the country, and put an AdSense block on that page as well. Then I put a prominent link on my widget info pages that lead to the widget dealer page.

That pretty much made everyone happy. That page got a fair amount of traffic, about 1 out of 10 visitors follwed the link to it. Dealers started emailing me wanting to get a link on the page. I was no longer getting emails from visitors asking how much some widget was.

And AdSense did really well on that page.

Since the change in the serps AdSense still does well on that page, but my traffic to the page is down by half or so, I'd guess that is because more of the folks looking to buy widgets or parts are going directly to a widget dealer or parts vendor website. That's fine by me. It's pretty much a set and forget page. A few times a year I go through the links and clear out the deadwood and add a few new ones. That's it.

.

[JasonDX]

I've had a big drop in CTR too, but EPC has risen enough to keep eCPM about where it was.

My epc has also risen but not enough to make up for the ctr crash. What's your opinion on the recent ctr drop coinciding with an epc rise? I'm thinking fewer ads are being targeted to international traffic. Thats all I can think of since the drop was so sudden. Almost overnight in my case.

[incrediBILL]

What's your opinion on the recent ctr drop coinciding with an epc rise?

Again, a reasonable thing to figure out using AdSense reports in Google Analytics.

Compare where you were getting all the clicks from before and after the change in CTR.

Unless it's all because of junk ads it's usually possible to fix, you just have to figure out where it went first.

Of course the economy could also be to blame, but I'm seeing upturns in ad spend, not downturns at this time.

[ken_b]

What's your opinion on the recent ctr drop coinciding with an epc rise?

I'm not sure that can be generalized, it might be more of a site specific thing.

That said, here are some observations from my site.

I saw some CTR drop when AdSense changed how much of an ad was clickable.

But most of the drop in CTR has come since the serps changes I mentioned above. With more "shopping" visitors, who are more likely to click on an ad, apparently going directly to merchant sites I naturally lost some clicks.

On top of that, I'm seeing, at least where I am, a fairly big change in the type of sites whose ads appear on my site. For the most, the shopping comparison ads and other apparently low value ads are gone. They seem to have been out bid by big Brand Name companies whose ads can easily appear on page after page after page after page, seemingly endlessly, that drives down CTR.

Add to that that these Brand Names compete furiously, I can end up with endless pages of adblocks all showing Brand A, Brand B and Brand C etc, leaving little room for other advertisers.

I do see ads for some niche related smaller independent businesses, but not a lot, and not nearly as many as I thought AdWords would attract, which has always mystified me, but that's another thread.

But that big online auction still shows up a fair amount. It's only when I'm not seeing the Big Names and the online auction site ads that I see any of the apparently real low value shopping comparison ads anymore.

I might mention the Competitive ad filter while I'm at it. I have amybe 20 sites listed in there, and can't recall the last time I even looked at it.

What I do use aggressively is the "Ad Review" option for site targeted ads. I block about 80% of everything that shows up there.

(As far as what ads I actually see, I surf with cookies disallowed so I'm not seeing "interest based ads" as far as I can tell.)

Not sure any of that helps, but there it is.