Is This Google Financial Manipulation?

[HuskyPup]

Absolutely no way is this market forces...the switch has been flipped again at Google's behest!

Amazingly on the 2nd Sunday after New Year I am having a seemingly return to normality.

No one, absolutely NO ONE would believe this is a anywhere near a normal business trait...if you have to question my post ask this:

How many businesses worldwide suddenly decided this Sunday to increase their CPC expenditure by a minimum of 50%?

THIS STINKS, PERIOD!

I have now lost all of the trust, which was becoming desperately very low anyway, in Google...an extremely sad situation about which they obviously do not give a fig and...as a 98/99 Google beta tester...I'm very pi$$ed off BIG time!

It's not the money, it's their continued inconsistency and supposed algorithmic improvements that NO ONE contests.

Why?

[dhaliwal]

For past 5-6 years, there hasn't been any other option for online publishers.

Many companies tried, but they are not able to reach the levels of Google and this is the reason, Google is doing the way it wants.

[eniac]

Hope new innovations will come into place and we will get better SE than G. If there is no competition, one company does whatever he wants.

[Lapizuli]

I'm hurtin' for you, HuskyPup.

Is it possible - not saying it IS, just asking if there's a decent chance - that it's computer glitchiness or changes on the AdWords end, putting (unintentional or not) constraints on bids?

Every so often it seems they do advertiser sweeps, or folks in that forum complain of not being able to place bids or quality score glitchiness or whatever. That kind of thing has to affect us, and I could see it affecting some publishers but not all if it hit major advertisers in certain industries.

Anyway, it's a bad thing and I'm sorry it's happening to you. Bleh.

[Scurramunga]

It may be a combination of many complex factors factors, economic conditions included.

However I do agree with you in saying that some of the very sudden occurrences over many niches we have seen reported cannot be explained away as changed advertiser behaviour or market forces.

In saying this I am thinking back to the sudden ctr drop reported by many publishers a couple of years ago.

[nomis5]

Your earnings have returned to normal after a period of low earnings? Do I understand that correctly? And you are complaining?

[SEOPTI]

LOL nomis5, he is complaining because we have no control, no real background stats, it is completely unpredictable.

I think there is no way they can give us a full picture, they need to protect their adwords customers.

[Lexur]

It's not about the Adwords customers secrets, it's about the cut Google does on incomes because there's no other explanation about changing CTR, EPC an even traffic levels than some arbitraries decisions from the big G.
Anyway, anyone is still free to maintan his faith in The Company.

[incrediBILL]

there's no other explanation about changing CTR, EPC an even traffic levels

Yeah, no explanations whatsoever.

No shifting market trends, better competition, more competition (more supply than demand), advertiser AdWord budget cuts, more browsers using ad blockers, demographic changes, weather impacting online activity (49 states with snow!), nope, nothing could explain any of it except a good old Google conspiracy.

[Freedom]

I think their claims and complaints are legitimate. There is no reason to be condescending to their interpretation of events. eCPM can defy logic sometimes.

For the last 7 years, I have observed one consistent trait about Adsense that has never failed. Not once. eCPM on Thursday's is always half of what it is on other days of the week. Why Thursday? I have no idea. But ever single Thursday for the last 364 weeks, Google is throwing a 50 percent off sale on my eCPM. We are already intelligent enough to try to apply your stated obvious reasons to some events but the pieces don't always fit.

When I wake up Thursday morning, every Thursday morning, I know I am going to have a bad day on Adsense before I even log in.

[Lapizuli]

Freedom,

Not to imply that Google's as pure as the driven snow, and your Thursday Discount theory has a strange ring of truth to it, but...

Has at least one of your advertisers been consistently present over the last seven years? If so, maybe that one creates the world, so to speak, six days of the week and rests on Thursday...

It would be strange (not to mention costly) advertiser behavior, and it's not how I operate - I was erratic even before I was on a kid-induced schedule - but I know people who have kept the same schedule with their lives for decades. It could happen.

[incrediBILL]

There is no reason to be condescending to their interpretation of events. eCPM can defy logic sometimes.

There's also no reason to think Google is "out to get you" for everything that happens.

Google is primarily run on algorithms, with some minor human intervention, and when things go south you have to look at what caused it to go south.

Just because your traffic looks similar doesn't mean you're bringing in the right traffic.

Just because your ads look similar doesn't mean they pay the same.

Lots of things change, including the algorithm that smart prices your site, so one day you meet a certain quality level and a switch is flipped and the next day you don't.

Happens in AdWords all the time too.

Basically, if your site can't be adapted to meet these changes, it won't survive on the web, let alone pay well in AdSense.

[Freedom]

I've been doing this a long time too. I never said anything about Google was out to get me. I stated that logic doesn't always supply the answer sometimes, or with adequate satisfaction.

Besides, Google is run by how they tell you it's run. We can't make assumptions without actually knowing what goes on behind closed doors. The only actual, concrete data people have - is what they see in their adsense earnings. You can't blame them for believing more in what they see, than having blind faith in what a large corporation asks them to believe on good faith.

Ever since this recession, people don't trust large corporations anymore. I can't blame them for questioning Google's methods.

I apply these things in other areas as well. There is no way I would be caught dead investing in paper assets. If I can't touch it, walk on it, live in it, or control it, I'm not putting my money in it. Buy a stock because some 10 cent expert thinks it's good? Or, the company tells me they are hot? Laugh in their face.

In America, there is no such thing as experts anymore. Everybody is always pretending to have the answers and like they know what they are doing. It's one giant Potemkin village.

No, these posters should question Google, and what they are being told. All those reasons you posted above, knew about them 7 years ago. My site has seen ups and downs too, and it will continue to do so but is always north of 6 figures. Somehow, I think it will survive.

[incrediBILL]

We can't make assumptions without actually knowing what goes on behind closed doors. The only actual, concrete data people have - is what they see in their adsense earnings.

That's not true at all.

You can make assumptions based on observations, and since you can run both AdWords and AdSense it's easy enough to make a very site targeted ad campaign, get someone to click it for you, and compare how much you spent vs. how much you earned.

Many proved years ago it was a 70% split long before Google finally admitted it was a 71% split but nobody wanted to hear that.

I personally saw the amount on a contract for a Premium Publisher, nobody wanted to hear that either.

When the ads go off target, except the image ads, it's more often than not the actual on-page SEO is broken, proved it many times, but nobody wants to hear that either.

I see swings in CTR all the time, and it's always the result of the ads being displayed not matching what my visitors want, it either appeals, or it doesn't. Sometimes blocking a few of them solved the problem and in a couple of rare instances I had to solicit help from Google to fix what turned out to be a bug. However, Google doesn't actually control the CTR, your visitors do. Sometimes the best paying ads are the least interesting ads to your visitors yet Google pushes them hoping to get the bigger payouts.

Nobody said anything about trusting Google, the big corporation, my only point is that people like to just sit back and say "I did nothing new, now it's all in the toilet".

Just because nothing changed on the site doesn't mean something wasn't quite right in the first place which, once Google makes a correction, alters the outcome on your site.

This can be easily evidenced by the evolution of Google's WMT's which keep pointing out issues on sites that "never changed" but now need to change to fall back into line with the compliance validation being performed.

Obviously there have been a few sites that have inexplicably slid to rock bottom, but I'm sure if a little research was done there would be an explanation.

There is usually some kind of clue.

Like I said before, sites that can't adapt to these changes won't survive on the web.

[The Shower Scene]

Ever since this recession, people don't trust large corporations anymore.

Most people have not trusted corporations for longer than that. It's not unreasonable to believe that most companies will screw you as much as the law allows and then some. But it's also not unreasonable to allow that there could be other things going on in addition to the daily corporate screwing.

[Freedom]

Ok. I knew of those things, like I said. For instance, visitors to my site outside the USA produce a much smaller eCPM than my American visitors who provide a healthy eCPM. I've seen where new links or strong links to a section have boosted the eCPM tremendously, and if the links go stale, the eCPM drops.

I'm familiar with all those things. And I have been familiar with your posts for 5 years, as well as the one time I read your blog years ago. They all have a similar theme.

[Bddmed]

Google finally admitted it was a 71%

68%

[adsense.blogspot.com...]

[Scurramunga]

In America, there is no such thing as experts anymore. Everybody is always pretending to have the answers and like they know what they are doing

It's almost exactly the same in Australia, except that there is such a thing as experts because everyone is an expert.

[incrediBILL]

Well here's someone else with a similar theme: [webmasterworld.com...]