February 2011 AdSense Earnings

[HuskyPup]

No problems, I'll start it:-)

Am I supposedly to accept without question that on the 1st February 2011 that global advertisers in my industry suddenly decided to increase their bids and that visitors thought it was a good time to start clicking?

It was my best day since 18th November 2010.

Page impressions normal.

My CTR returned to normal, i.e. pre-Thanksgiving Day

My eCPM returned to normal, i.e. pre-Thanksgiving Day

My EPC retuned to normal, i.e. pre-Thanksgiving Day

My earnings returned to normal, i.e. pre-Thanksgiving Day

I am expected to believe this is a "normal" advertising market?

[HuskyPup]

Man that was quite a reporting delay. Maybe my CTR will catch up in another 5 minutes.

The Google Day has ended, I had a click dump and my CTR was normal...for a Sunday level of Page Impressions! More data loss plus my EPC was below average BUT I did make my daily minimum by a few cents.

BUT, and anyone else who has done this as an experiment go check your settings, a couple of weeks ago I enabled 3rd Paty and Interest Based Ads, somehow, and I must stress I am the only one who accesses this account, somehow these had been disabled.

I'm not saying this has been the reason for three out of the last four days being way down in comparison, we'll see what happens today.

I'm now of the opinion there are specific groups of publishers who, for whayever reason, have been caught-up in yet another Stupid Pricing (SP) algo update that started around Thanksgiving Day and it has now worked its way through their systems and without a reversal/SP change then this is our new reality regardless of how good and relevant our sites are.

<new topic?>
It would be interesting to know, probably another thread, just how many people who have been hit are not sending traffic to ecommerce sites but to informational sales brochure ones, certainly I am, it's just not feasible in my industry.
<end new topic>

To those of you who have never been hit by one of these "updates", you're lucky, however do not believe you are immune to it, G doesn't give a damn.

[mibrahim]

Settings: My settings were not changed. I had the IBA and Third party active, and they were active when I just checked.
I have been hit with this Adsense low eCPM. I don't send traffic anywhere.
Is there anyone with adsense premium membership that can give us some insight ?

[tristanperry]

My CTR had been slightly lower in Feb, and I had text&image ads being shown (and looking at my site, there seemed to be loads of image ads). So I changed to text ads only to see if that changed anything, and my CTR has now plummetted. Hmm. Is that normal? I'll leave it a couple more days to see if things settle down, but it seems strange since I thought that text only was meant to be the better option.

[WordsnCollision]

Terrible eCPM lately but it's no mystery to me: when I add new content, eCPM takes a hit. Why? Only thing I can think of is that new content drives more direct traffic, triggering Google's Smart Pricing. With no new content on my main page, a greater proportion of overall traffic comes from Google search. Very frustrating to be penalized for adding new pages with new Adsense ads!

[cien]

Another horrible day. Everything but impressions is in the dumps.

[eniac]

Everthing is normal and consistent.

Note: I do not say it is good. This is another horrible day but it is consistent anyway.

[StarryEyed]

Well yesterday ended up "so-so"...one of the better days in a month of bad ones, but it was still way below my average for June-Dec of 2010...Now today is laughable! I did check my settings, and they were not changed. I had IBA disabled because my earnings dropped last year when I had it enabled. Third party still active. I'm enabling IBA again because I have no where to go but up -judging by today's numbers. LOL

[BillyS]

Yesterday was great, today is okay. In the end, it all evens out.

[HuskyPup]

I've just been comparing the first 10 days of Feb 2011 v 2010 and it's thrown up some interesting metrics for me:

Actual EPC +9.75%
Actual Clicks -14%
Earnings -5.68%

The last three days' much reduced click volume of -16.67% hasn't done me any favours whatsoever and I wonder whether I've been a collateral victim of the rumoured 7th Feb algo update...now that would be nothing new would it?

[cien]

There we go again. No "beer money" today either. I'll be damned... ASA, what say you? I think your boys should work harder on their 80 than on their 20!

[SnoopyLoo]

Crazy day looks like the clicks are stuck (well I hope so) cause they haven't moved in like 6 hours (Youtube content report seems fine though) and I just had my record day in terms of traffic since September.

[Lame_Wolf]

Tis a dead day today. It is almost midnight here and the earnings are more like midday.

[HuskyPup]

Arghhh...what a frustrating day!

A rogue bot hit our servers ending up with the account being suspended for several hours resulting in losing at least 33% of our regular traffic and income HOWEVER we ended up with a normal income day and the HIGHEST average daily EPC we've ever seen!

So that's the solution is it, switch the darned sites off for a few hours every day?

What a crazy, crazy world.

[Lame_Wolf]

A rogue bot hit our servers ending up with the account being suspended for several hours resulting in losing at least 33% of our regular traffic and income

HP, can you please elaborate a bit on that ?

Did G suspend your account ? Or did the bot do something to the site which took it offline ?

I can't see how G suspending your account would lose you traffic.

[cien]

I think he meant his hosting account was suspended due to bot overwhelming the server his site is on, correct Huskypup?

[mibrahim]

Huskypup, I think you are right. Looking at my adsense performance page, the biggest drop happened Feb 7th. Feb 7th was the day google released the content farms update. And you are right in terms of CPC going up compared to Feb 2010, CTR going down, and overall the eCPM going down esp. after Feb 7th.
One possible analysis of that is more of the users visiting my website are more interested in content than before, that's why the CTR is down. That is also supported by the fact that the average pageviews per user is up - so more relevant users. CPC is up means that targeting is better than Feb 2010.
The problem is that the net effect of both on the eCPM (now RPM) is being down. Actually, although I'm having 39% more traffic compared to Feb 2010, I'm projecting to make in Feb 2011 less than what I made in Feb 2010.
I don't think switching google to another ad agency will work, since the problem is in the shape of the traffic we're getting.

[downhiller80]

[deleted]

[Play_Bach]

Slow and low. :-(

[indyank]

Lame_Wolf, Husky obviously meant the webhosting account got suspended because of excessive CPU usage..there is no way you can get a suspended adsense account restored so quickly :)

HOWEVER we ended up with a normal income day and the HIGHEST average daily EPC we've ever seen

Husky, You are right and this often happens.this is where the ceiling and the floor takes effect.To really fall below your floor (in this case), you need to have consistent low traffic.So, try switching off your site for a few days and then you will start to get lower income as you would expect :)

[HuskyPup]

I think he meant his hosting account was suspended due to bot overwhelming the server his site is on, correct Huskypup?

Nearly correct, only my main directory site was suspended by my host for being overhwekmed by a bot from the US. It was relentlessly hammering my Coppermine gallery for all its images at about 20 requests per second for quite some time.

It happened at prime US time for me, about 7 p.m. on a Friday night and I didn't notice until just gone 9.30 pm when I did a last check before going out and saw my earnings from that specific site were way down.

By the time we had it all sorted I'd lost most of Friday night's earnings but at least it was back up and running.

So, try switching off your site for a few days and then you will start to get lower income as you would expect :)

Saturday was excellent, back to my old norm. I have tried switching off before with no effect...probably coincidence?

[sabrebIade]

I got a click dump last night that saved yesterday from being one of my worst ever Adsense days.
Today seems to be a bit better, as in back to the new normal which is about half of 2010's normal for a day.
So basically I am making half of what I was in 2010 a day now.

[HuskyPup]

Fortunately my EPC seems to have stabilised and back to normal however my click volume for the first two weeks of this month v 2010 is just over -15% which is very disconcerting since it seems to be generally across the board and not one specific site.

[sabrebIade]

As they say...I have good news and bad news...LOL
Yesterday was my best day since October.
Almost like the "good old days".
Today, right back in the toilet.

[eniac]

yesterday was the worst day
today is the best of the worst day :(

[sid786]

My "good day" dates back to January.

This months' total earnings are down by around $1500-$2000 bucks, all thanks to the 28 days of February and the guy who flipped the Adsense switch. Earnings are, needless to say, down in the toilet.

Waiting for the month of March. I predict good days ahead. :)

[zerillos]

Interesting. I had the same CPU issues as Husky a few weeks back. Curiously, the earnings for that day were higher than ever. Even with the server going down several times, for several minutes each time, during the day.

This looks like something worth analizing.

[HuskyPup]

Ouch, ouch, ouch...Just why was my main B&M site's EPC slashed in two on Friday?

Just that one site, no other, everything normal apart from the ridiculous stupid pricing algo carving knife.

[incrediBILL]

Just why was my main B&M site's EPC slashed in two on Friday?

You have AdSense on a B&M site?

[HuskyPup]

You have AdSense on a B&M site?

Yep, always have had from the very beginning of AdSense.

[eniac]

every day it is getting worse and worse