May 2011 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[HuskyPup]

For me, so far today 1st May, it has continued in the same vein of the past few days.

I've never experienced such bad endofmonthitis before, here's hoping for a kick-start Monday or Tuesday or whenever anyone, asides from us lot, go back to work!

[Play_Bach]

Still stuck. :-|

[zarathustra2011]

Unstuck for me now.

[plondon]

"Quite simply put, if I know the information Google is presenting is incorrect why the heck should I trust it for anything else unless I know for certain the site I am using is bona fide?"

I've found a number of searches have thrown up blatantly incorrect results, lately. And one or two sites clearly gaming the SEs.

For example, for the last week+ if I type 'google.com' into google search the first 3-5 results are the site www.dominargoogle.com

And for a week or more when I have typed 'paypal.com' the site paypal.com appears halfway down the results. With non-paypal properties ahead of it.

This wasn't the case 2 weeks ago. I regularly type these searches into google and these results are new.

One big lesson there is that even Panda is already being 'gamed' - so what was the point?

I agree with you, if google is getting these wrong, what else is messed up?

[Play_Bach]

Barely on life support today. :-(

[JCKline]

0 CTR so far, yet PPI earnings are unusually higher?

[ErnestHemingway]

After May 5th, the decline has been significant. Anyone noticed how everything (earnings, cpc, epcm, impressions) all is going down.

Could be Panda Update, but Adsense itself is going through a lot of changes, may be Google is keeping larger chunk of the money, may be more people are smart priced and good ads are shown on better sites.

I see frustration with a lot of members and I can understand for a lot of us Adsense was a major earning revenue. For us it helped us invest in tons of our startups but now we are 60% down in earnings per month and we barely touch figures that we used to touch.

[azlinda]

Whatever they did as far as maintenance yesterday, it did not help me. I'm down 60% all the way around.

[HuskyPup]

Anyone noticed how everything (earnings, cpc, epcm, impressions) all is going down.

I am still getting some excellent EPC values however my overall EPC average is down simply because my US earnings are way, way down therefore the lower value EPCs from whichever country make it seem worse than it is.

Frustration is definitely the right description, as if being in businesses is not hard enough it's very difficult trying to second-guess Google's intentions when, after years without hardly any kind of issue, holy cr@p is let loose with seemingly absolutely total disregard for anyone.

If this isn't evil I don't know what is?

[ascensions]

If this isn't evil I don't know what is?

Amen.

I shall add, mistakes can and often are forgiven if you attempt to make things right, the lack of such behavior is truly a statement of one's own self preservation and hubris rather than the greater good. To those of us here, it looks more like greed than good.

[netmeg]

Really? To me it's just math. It's not evil. It's not personal. It doesn't have any human (or inhuman) qualities at all. It's all a formula (or algorithm). It either works for you or it doesn't. And, unfortunately, just because it used to work doesn't mean it always will work.

This is Google 2011. For better or worse, it's what we got.

[ascensions]

The algorithm is math, the failure to act upon your actions after the fact when you recognize you've hurt thousands CAN be morally judged.

[HuskyPup]

It doesn't have any human (or inhuman) qualities at all.

The decisions made were by humans, the input was by humans and the consequences are being felt by humans.

[sailorjwd]

According to my click levels we are in the middle of the worst economic depression in history. I'm selling all stock tomorrow morning.

Both clicks today are wondering what is going on too.

[Play_Bach]

> Both clicks today are wondering what is going on too.

And I thought I had the low count today. Geesh. Hopefully a correction is on it's way, otherwise this will be the worst day all month.

[edited by: Play_Bach at 12:41 am (utc) on May 16, 2011]

[JCKline]

@Play_Bach, now I feel much better with my 3 clicks. :)

[Atomic]

I almost get the feeling that some people have the notion that Google owes them a certain income and/or traffic level. Where did this notion come from?

[ascensions]

With great power, comes great responsibility.

[Atomic]

This isn't a comic book, it's a business.

[WolfLover]

This is the part I just don't get. My CTR these last few months is down about 75% from what it used to be. Since the CTR has gone down so much, my eCPM has also suffered about a 67% decline on average.

I understand that one of my sites has less visitors after the Panda update, but what I don't understand is WHY that would make people click on ads less often. This month is the worst yet, with my earnings for this month so far, down about 67% from what it used to be on average.

Is there something I am missing here?

[netmeg]

but what I don't understand is WHY that would make people click on ads less often

different sources for traffic
non-relevant ads
mistargeted interest based ads
ad blindness
people fed up with google ads everywhere
ever shifting sets of advertisers
the economy

probly some other stuff I can't think of.

[sailorjwd]

@Atomic. helpful post. I'm simply trying to make the decision whether to remove adsense from my site or not.

If my site changes don't cause my panda penalty to be removed once I hear that it has been run again then I'll definitly remove all adsense.

[sailorjwd]

@netmeg
My decline happened over about 5 days. That rules out all but two in your list: Different traffic and bad ads.

I vote for different traffic. I think I'm only getting traffic from robots now.

[Atomic]

@sailorjwd Since this entire forum seems to have turned into a place to post "where's my money" and commiserate someone had to. So thank you.

[koan]

but what I don't understand is WHY that would make people click on ads less often

If it's anything like my flagship site getting pandalized, I would say with a 50% traffic loss, you lost the major clickers for the best keywords in that 50% also. 50% traffic loss turns to 80-90% adsense loss. No, it isn't much fun.

[zarathustra2011]

I know not many people will want to hear it, but I've had a 30% increase in earnings having taken some actions following my (relatively minor) downfall... I'm not saying it will last, as I know things can go sour.

It's taken many, many hours of experimentation, but changing certain ad formats for others, and changing their position, and the colour of links has really helped. For those who haven't tried it, you might want to do a bit of A/B testing as well, to monitor which ads bring in the most. I found blocking a few irrelevant advertisers improved things as well. Other than that I've just been adding to my content and trying to increase the size and quality of my site.

Fortunately I never got an angry Panda attacking my site, so traffic remains stable.

[plondon]

Based on all I've read, most posters in this thread seem to have largely text-based sites.

Any idea how/if video content sites have also been hit?
Or pure product sites with minimal text?

[koan]

Based on all I've read, most posters in this thread seem to have largely text-based sites.

Technically (and per their TOS), Adsense requires a minimum of textual content on a page.

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday earnings closed at 60% of average. Page impressions were the highest all month but click count was the second lowest. Crazy!

[ascensions]

This isn't a comic book, it's a business.

An irresponsible one apparently.

[plondon]

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Based on all I've read, most posters in this thread seem to have largely text-based sites.
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Technically (and per their TOS), Adsense requires a minimum of textual content on a page.
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I understand that, but video sites do still appear in the Google search results. (As do Flash sites which have no accessible text.)

I'm just curious to know if other content sites were also hit. Knowing what the effect has been on different types of content would help to pin down specifics. If a video site, with little text, is unaffected then some onpage factors can possibly be dismissed from the debate.