January 2011 Adsense earnings

Adsense earnings analysis -

[chrisdonahue]

Hello Everyone: I ported the thread located here: [webmasterworld.com...]
as we were off topic in a few areas.

I'm highly interested in continuing the discussion about what other Publishers are seeing in 2011 with regard to their adsense earnings over years prior.

As I indicated, I noticed a substantial drop in earnings during the first few days of January 2011, after a record breaking December 2010.

Anyone noticing this trend is encouraged to share their feedback.

[jmccormac]

Yesterday was getting back to normal(ish). Today is a wipeout. Not sure if it some Goofle algorithm effect. Traffic is down or else reporting is delayed again.

Regards...jmcc

[HuskyPup]

I'm seeing holiday ads all over (one of) your sites.

Thanks and Yikes...image or text? Was that the .com site?

I saw some mobile and flight image ads the other day, I'll try disabling image ads on a couple of sites and see what happens.

[Bddmed]

Yes, the .com. Your top leaderboard shows text ads for holidays. The bottom big rectangle shows image ads with either holidays or a local energy supplier. Only on some pages I see one of the leaderboard spots filled with your 'construction' business.

Example leaderboard ad:
Explore Egypt on a budget 9,10 or 15 day tours in the Sun Cairo, Aswan,Luxor, Red Sea, Nile
... ad somewhat related ...
Gay Lesbian Egypt Jordan Gay Middle East Travel Experts Pyramids,Petra,Nile,Dead Sea,Cruise

[HuskyPup]

Thanks Bddmed but absolutely what I did not want to read.

I'm going to remove AdSense leaderboard and AdLinks from my two biggest sites starting new Googleday Saturday.

Needless to say this is less than impressive.

The heads-up is appreciated:-)

[walrus]

IBA, is a huge factor,
The select button -
<Do not show ads based on user interest or demographic categories>
does'nt seem to work,
On or off I still see IBA's half the ads, i suppose because there are'nt enough inventory(more publishers, saturated market) so they add IBA as last resort rather than alts or PSA's.

I know this has been said before but even as a user, i don't like IBA. When i go to visit your site about new fishing equipment, there is a good chance there are no relevant ads to entice me, as the ads are for the hotel rooms and gifts i already got, and have no need for.

[HuskyPup]

I've spent the entire morning pouring over AdSense data and nothing jumps out except that my reduction started a couple of days before Thanskgiving and took a steady slide downwards until Xmas where it has remained even though my traffic levels have not only returned to normal, yesterday overall was my busy day since the beginning of October.

Apart from, literally, a handful of days, every day since Thanksgiving did not reach my 2010 daily average! That's quite unbelieveable and something I have never, ever had before which then makes me wonder what else is at play here that I've never had before?

Is this G messing around or getting their targetting wrong, is this a completely new ball game, have many in my industry all come to the same conclusion over a few weeks that it's just not worth advertising heavily from December onwards until the New Year?

So, I just went to generate new codes without images to see if that would make any difference, went to check my stats and, you've guessed it, so far my EPC looks normal today and I've already earned more than in the first 12 hours of yesterday!

This is the weekend I forecast which traditionally sees a big bounce therefore I'm going to see what happens until Tuesday night and then slash and burn if necessary:-)

[jost]

Getting worse for me fuuuuuuu

[frank72]

@HuskyPup: gonna try this. I will let other users know if I see any improvments

[unLTD]

After rock solid last quarter, my EPC and earning fell by 55% in a single day on 30th December 2010, and have never returned any where near normal. It is already looking pretty shameful to keep these ads on my sites.

[incrediBILL]

I'm down about 30% from pre-xmas #s.

In past years it always rebounded in January but it's not quite there yet.

[jmccormac]

@incrediBILL Could this be the college/school demographic going missing for the Xmas holidays? Though I wonder if Google has mucked up its algorithm over Xmas and the lower traffic could be a result of this.

Regards...jmcc

[incrediBILL]

My site always tanks for a couple of weeks around xmas, then it always rebounds with a big bounce in January. This year the rebound was pathetic and there was certainly no bounce.

At the moment I'm thinking it's the rash of off topic image ads suddenly flooding the site.

About to disable image ads again and see what happens.

[HuskyPup]

This morning's recovery in EPC didn't last very long, back to the new norm again:-(

[eniac]

2-3 days ago I wrote the day was the worst. This is not true.
Beucase the worst day is today, 2-3 days ago I got 1 click in a whole day. Today no click yet

it seems like bad joke. is this 1 april today? :)

You know, sometimes G sends us some adsense optimization. They suggest us smt to do.
We do always testing to see any improvement for adsense.

Now I can see that, all of these are just crap. G has right to switch on and off the clicks. Whatever we do is not really important for adsense optimization.

You do optimization, G does adsense algo changes. :)

[Bddmed]

Husky,

Obviously I don't know on which sites you've been working. I just took a look at the one starting with E and ending with N.com.

My observations:
- The site is almost exclusively picture driven
- Navigation includes a large list of countries
- These countries are not excluded with an Adsense ignore tag

I believe Adsense really has a problem knowing what ads to target to your site. Maybe some general text on each page about your business would help.

I clicked Brazil this time to test and the first line in the leaderboard was:
Date Sexy Brazilian Women Brazilian Dating & Singles Site. Find the Perfect Brazilian Woman! (url removed)

This is obviously not what you want, but I think it's something that can be prevented by adding a little more text content.

Hope this helps, as always.

[JCKline]

My earnings started bad, then for 4 days have been a roller coaster of awful, good, awful, and good...so I'll assume tomaroow will be bad. Can't wait for Monday. :D

[eniac]

JCKline,
Are you sure monday will be good. or is it just a hope :)
everybody quited from holiday season but maybe G algo is still in holiday :)

[HuskyPup]

Hi Bddmed

Hmmm...I hope IBA ads aren't following you around!:-)

FWIW since the launch of G it's never had a problem with any of these pages and most have explanatory text both in the titlebar, meta description and meta keywords with h1 reflecting the same plus the image alt and title. You would be amazed just how many people searching for my products simply use keyword1, 2 and 3 and nothing else.

The country names are deliberately set-up like that and if you follow the url navigation path you will see what I mean.

Nearly all of them rank #1 for their respective keyword product and various images sent to me by other members here show accurate targetting therefore G, Y an B know precisely what these pages are about however I'm not saying AdSense doesn't from your location and I wonder if that's what you're seeing is some kind of crazy IBA.

Time for beer:-)

[Bddmed]

Well a lack of inventory for your widget over here might indeed be the cause. I'm sure it's not Brazilian babes following me around the web. The adlinks on your site are spot on. But the leaderboard and large rectangles aren't.

Enjoy the beer!
(Old Speckled Hen perhaps? ;))

[Lame_Wolf]

I am seeing an extreme amount of adverts for Google Adsense (and other Google products) and Paypal on other people's sites. The web is awash with them. Thankfully, I blocked them ages ago.

[jmccormac]

I see the Adsense adverts after checking Adsense. I really don't have a very high opinion of the intellects of the people behind IBA.

Regards...jmcc

[Lame_Wolf]

I see the Adsense adverts after checking Adsense. I really don't have a very high opinion of the intellects of the people behind IBA.

Thing is, I don't see them after checking adsense. I use a different browser for that. I have seen an influx of Google products (eg, Android, Google Places)
in the last few days. Seeing that I have never searched for a mobile (can't stand the ruddy things) or used/searched for Google Places, then it isn't IBA

[Scurramunga]

About to disable image ads again and see what happens.

Just did that after giving them another chance recently. Might try disabling third party ads also.

[unLTD]

Finally, after almost 9 days of continuous downturn, this morning (India time) my eCPM seems to have mysteriously rebounded back to normal and is holding for last 6 hours. I am seeing eCPM recovery across all the affected channels and in fact my day closed like a normal Saturdays. Sadly, I ended up wasting too much time in investigating the issue with still no clues in sight.

[frank72]

No sign of improvement here in Europe. The morning started as low as usual in the past 9 days.

[nick28]

No sign of improvement here in Europe. The morning started as low as usual in the past 9 days.

The same here:-((
Excactly from the 1. jan. traffic goes higher and higher, but CTR,EPC and eCPM go lower and lower.-((

Bad news is, there is no better alternatives to adsense, because almost all ad networks work with adsense, this is why adsense certified ad networks grows.

[HuskyPup]

Still almost 23% down on the same period 2010, this is a very bad start to the year after 18 months of steady improvements to the end of November for me.

Our B&M business is seeing its strongest start to a year with some huge enquiries and orders...this just does not make any rational sense...then again, is Google AdSense an oxymoron?

[piatkow]

I tried a new location for ads on a popular page and that channel had the best ever CTR that I have seen on my account in December. This month there hasn't been a single click on that channel so far.

[HuskyPup]

Interesting day so far, whilst not a huge amount of traffic because there is seemingly an AdSense delay if my logs are correct, but it is the 9th and my best earning url channel has suddenly jumped into life and the EPC is averaging what it did all 2010...that's a 57% increase and I've also had some single click values varying between USD 1.20 ~ 1.50 which I've not see for weeks and weeks!

Just how long will this last?

[sabrebIade]

So far I am up ever so slightly from 2010, but down like 300% from 2009.