June 2011 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[HuskyPup]

Do we need to depress some of us for another month or, as coachm wrote:

It's funny at this point. I'm rooting for it to go lower, since I'd hardly lose any more money. Let's break a record!

Game on!

[jmccormac]

Changed one of the main ad slots on my site yesterday (A/B testing in a traditional slow time for the site). The figures are a bit strange in that today's figures haven't shown up yet. Yesterday's figures don't even show up on the new Adsense interface but they do on the old one. However today's figures don't show up at all on either which may indicate that the stats are completely lagged for the new ad slot (and perhaps other ad slots).

Regards...jmcc

[Atomic]

and perhaps other ad slots

I would wager on that.

[jmccormac]

Stats showing up in old interface. New one still lagged though. Either that or it is another low revenue day.

Regards...jmcc

[Play_Bach]

Click count frozen for hours.

[nuthin]

Same here, stats frozen anyone? Or very low low low earnings day. Must be tax time.

[azlinda]

I am so surprised. My stats have been moving right along all day. This is the first good day I've had since April 11th. I can hardly believe it!

[Play_Bach]

Lousy day here. Just goes to show how different things can be for any of us at any time.

[thatjen]

I have been lurking in the Adsense forum since the whole Panda thing happened, and I finally just joined. After Panda my traffic remained the same, but my CTR and eCPM went down about 30%. I've had Adsense sites since 2007 as a secondary income but this year I decided to really push myself into writing more articles and updating my sites more. Before Panda I went from thinking I could pay all my bills from my sites within a year's time to now, where I know I can't count on Adsense at all.

I know people have mentioned throttling before, and now I feel like my sites are being throttled as of last month - every day I've been earning around the same amount, whereas before there was a huge swing in either direction. Now if I have a day with low CTR I have a higher price per click, or vice versa. More traffic and more clicks mean less price per click, etc.

Anyway, this week has been bad! People were talking about the URLs being underlined as of this week in another thread, and I noticed something else as well. My CTR has gotten a lot worse this week and I noticed the 336x280 text unit (the one that brings in about half my revenue) changed, and the CTR on that unit tanked. I have my font size set to Large, and the font size has gotten smaller this week (I don't know what it was before - maybe 12, and now it's 10). Before the title of the ad really stood out, and now it's so small that it doesn't jump out at you. And Adsense added the URL next to the title (it was below the text before, wasn't it?) To me that takes away from the title, and obviously between the two changes no one wants to click. I also have a wide skyscraper on one site and ironically the text size got 2 points bigger there, and it looked so crappy I had to reduce the text size to Small.

Just now I changed out my 336x280 unit font from Verdana (my default font) to Arial, and the text looks bigger now. Yay! I'm hoping this will help, and maybe I'll make my new default font Arial for everything.

[Play_Bach]

The 336x280 has had the URL next to the title for awhile now. Don't know how anybody at AdSense can think that looks good, but whatever. Add the underlining and what once was a great ad block has been reduced to a confused mess.

[Mentat]

Ugly week-end, eCPM tanked...
And next week will be 4th of July so, another ugly week...

[zarathustra2011]

Now I know there's some wierdness going on. Yesterday was a fairly average day (bit below average really), then within the first hour of the new day when the clicks barely usually register, I find 5 clicks paying out over $13 which is not in keeping with how my stats normally operate. I wonder if these clicks actually came from yesterday, but didn't get processed until today. Even so I very rarely ever get that price per click, so am now wondering what the rest of the day will bring.

[zarathustra2011]

Earnings continue to rocket upwards - if it continues I'll have a normal day's earnings by lunchtime. Very wierd - seem to be getting the same ads, with some poorer quality, unrelated banner ads.
Google will probably claw half of it back before the day finishes. :)

[netmeg]

There is no reason in the world to believe (at the scale Google operates) that they are going to validate (or invalidate) every single click every single publisher gets within minutes of getting it. Think about it. If someone gets a few hundred or a few thousand clicks a day, there are no doubt some that Google can instantly tell are good, and some that Google can instantly tell are bad, and some that just don't precisely fit either pattern and it may set aside to check later. I mean, that's the way that *I* would do it.

Throttling - if there really were throttling, that would kill someone like me who has multiple seasonal sites, meaning very high peaks and very low valleys in between. I've been seeing some crazy numbers. No throttling.

[zarathustra2011]

I'm sure you're right regarding throttling, though I feel I've been throttled today. This morning was phenomenal, but this afternoon as dead as a dodo, so in the end looks like it will be a good day, but nothing that special.

[Play_Bach]

Things look bleak.

[Play_Bach]

@zarathustra2011

My earnings just took a BIG jump up in one click as well. Very weird, (but better up than down! ;-)

[zarathustra2011]

Definitely better jumping upwards.
Well yesterday was my best day ever, but not by a huge margin, given the awesome morning I had.
I've now got a message about Google +1, which I hadn't heard of before now, so am given it a quick test run on some of my pages.

[thatjen]

I was excited that I got the highest amount of pageviews I think I've ever received today (about 30% above average) - basically all search engine traffic, but my CTR and eCPM sucked, so in the end it didn't really help with earnings at all:(

Again every time I gain in one area, I lose in another area so no matter what I do I can't gain traction. Changing to Arial font has helped slightly today, but nothing is making people want to click on the 336x280 ads now that the URLS are next to the title.

[azlinda]

My CTR has tanked. It's the lowest it's ever been.

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday closed at 120%. No idea why.

[Atomic]

Yesterday closed at 120%. No idea why.

Because daily numbers are utterly meaningless. Who knows which day those stats are from? My guess is that each day our stats are from several different days as data trickles in.

[netmeg]

I suspect you are correct.

[andrewshim]

Because daily numbers are utterly meaningless. Who knows which day those stats are from? My guess is that each day our stats are from several different days as data trickles in.

There are hundreds of bingo ball machines in Google Adsense office. Little hamsters busily turn the wheels and spit out numbered balls. That's your earnings for the day. And today, my hamster's sleeping on the job.

[azlinda]

I'm slowly changing all my ads to Microsoft ads. This is getting ridiculous.

[icedowl]

andrewshim, I think my hamster's been sleeping next to your hamster.

[andrewshim]

andrewshim, I think my hamster's been sleeping next to your hamster.

I can hear Husky's snoring too...
Wait a minute... I hear TWO hamsters snoring... why does Husky have TWO hamsters?

[HuskyPup]

I invested heavily into hamster stock when the AdSense days were good and they continued breeding generating healthy offspring. Of course, with them being nocturnal creatures they thought it would be easy street for them and when I wasn't looking decided to slope off to speakeasys and other such dens of iniquity...that was their slippery downwards slide into near oblivion, their work ethic had gone and these days they're only capable of sleeping almost 24 hours a day...on the job...note to self...need new hamsters.

[HuskyPup]

I now have to report the death of my hamsters since nothing is moving, the worst 6 hours of AdSense I have ever seen...USD 1.50...and that's it so far for today...not enough to even buy a small beer:-(

[andrewshim]

I now have to report the death of my hamsters since nothing is moving

yep. dead hamsters generally don't move.
ohhh... you mean your stats! I'm doing only a little better than you right now, Husky - $1.69. Over here, that will buy me a Big Mac.

[netmeg]

I'm in my peak season and WAY up over last year. Life is good. Some weird little things I'm noticing though.

First - lots of back and forth with clicks. Like early this morning, one particular channel showed about $8 in earnings, then five minutes later $50, then in another five minutes, $15. This fluctuation thing is going nuts, particularly see it early in the day (but once I get enough clicks logged, and I get busy with my day, I probably just don't notice anymore)

Mobile EPCs are through the roof. Haven't seen a day with under a buck a click, and many where average was over two bucks a click (although the CTR is lower than non-mobile) Regular ad unit EPC at an all time high too - some days pushing a dollar per, but link unit EPC seems to have dropped precipitously in the past couple months.

AdSense for Search - totally tanked. I never really put it on these sites for the earnings, it was mostly just to have a decent and easy to implement search box, but in previous years it did provide *something*. Now it's about a cent or two per click. Why would those ads be different than the ads that display on the rest of the site? I don't get it. But I might as well have something without ads, so I'm going to look for another search product.