October 2011 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[incrediBILL]

Thought I'd kick off the thread this month just to prove I'm still here ;)

[WordsnCollision]

According to Search Engine Land, "Here’s the Panda update schedule so far, as we've tracked and had confirmed by Google:"

Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011
Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011
Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011
Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011
Panda Update 2.4: August 12, 2011
Panda Update 2.5: September 28, 2011

If you check your Analytics records you'll likely notice some unusual stats on or around those roll-out dates.

[Lame_Wolf]

According to Search Engine Land, "Here’s the Panda update schedule so far, as we've tracked and had confirmed by Google:

Makes no difference if you were not affected.

And what does Panda got to do with CTR ? Sweet FA.

And "what taps have been turned off"... as quoted in this topic ?
Are adverts not appearing on the site ? what ?
I speak and understand English, but confused as to what "taps being turned off" means. AFAIA Concerned, taps being turned off means adverts are not appearing. But that wouldn't affect CTR because there wouldn't be any impressions.

IF your CTR is down, don't blame Panda. You may as well blame Global Warming for it, or that the planets are not aligned. Jeez, give Google a break.

[londrum]

maybe they are sending a different kind of traffic. wasn't panda supposed to have affected longtail traffic to smaller sites?
if you are only getting visits for "widgets" when you used to get it for the much tighter phrase "buy red widgets", then of course it's going to affect your CTR.

people are complaining all over the place that panda seems to be sending a lot more traffic to the branded sites.
when their traffic goes up so do their impressions and clicks, so there's less clicks for us. advertisers only have a limited budget. once their budget is busted its back to the lousy ads that no one clicks.

how can that not affect your CTR?

[jinxed]

maybe they are sending a different kind of traffic. wasn't panda supposed to have affected longtail traffic to smaller sites?
if you are only getting visits for "widgets" when you used to get it for the much tighter phrase "buy red widgets", then of course it's going to affect your CTR.

I agree. There is no way this would not have an affect.

[netmeg]

Of course there have been Pandas.

Personally I think the whole notion of Google sending the "wrong" traffic, or Panda having an effect on CTR is too silly for words.

[londrum]

what's silly about it?

people seem to be suggesting these last few months that longtail traffic is harder to come by if you're not one of the bigger 'brand' sites.
it's not good enough having a single page that discusses a particular subject anymore. you need a whole site devoted to it, or the bigger brands will beat you out.

if someone is searching for "big blue shiny widgets" and you had a page called "big blue shiny widgets" on your bananas site then you probably got a load of traffic before panda. but these days you might be beaten by a brand that is just called "widgets".

so you have lost a load of targetted traffic.
and targetted traffic looking at targetted ads is good for CTR.

[netmeg]

(I actually wrote a reply to this, but then decided what's the point and deleted it. If all you have is a hammer, everything is always going to look like a nail)

Yep, still think it's too silly an argument for words.

[Scurramunga]

Thought I'd kick off the thread this month just to prove I'm still here ;)

And who could blame you if you are not.

Adsense no longer has a pulse as far as many of us are concerned. Luckily there are other forums besides Adsense at WebmasterWorld

[burcot]

And what does Panda got to do with CTR ? Sweet FA.

example: If you have a site aimed at "city widgets" and google suddenly sends traffic for "widgets" your stats will suffer. Time on site, pageviews and definitely adsense ctr will fall of a cliff.

One of my sites is getting traffic for "various company names Ltd"
In some cases it is #1 for the search. There is no matching text on the whole site and def no anchor text in any incoming links.

[Lame_Wolf]

example: If you have a site aimed at "city widgets" and google suddenly sends traffic for "widgets" your stats will suffer. Time on site, pageviews and definitely adsense ctr will fall of a cliff.

Oh, come on. People were stating long before Panda about MFA sites and slow-loading sites, and people clicking on an advert "just to get out of there".

Plus, people have been complaining about off-topic adverts long before Panda.

Now is no different.

A friend of mine has a site. She has a donation button on there. Month in, month out she would receive $100 - $150. She hasn't had a single donation now for two complete months. I guess Panda is to blame for that too. <sighs>

If you haven't realised, there is another recession on plantet Earth, and most countries haven't left the last one. People are not in a spending/buying mood in a lot of niches. Go on, blame Panda for the recession too.

And as for people giving percentages is a waste of time and only meaningful to the poster.

If you are on $10 a day and come in here bleating on about you being 50% down, then it sounds real bad.

But if I am on $1000 a day and I came in here bleating on about being 1% down, I would either be laughed at, or be looked upon rather strangely, yet in monetary terms, i've lost more money than the other person.

There could be a number of reasons why CTR is down
1: Recession (and all the reasons that go with that)
2: Ad blindness
3: Crap adverts that noone is interested in.
4: Ad blockers
5: Pages not rendering propery (happens a lot on wordpress sites if using IE6) hence adverts being pushed way below the content, never to be seen, which leads to an impression but no click.

[thechromeguy]

I think its clear something happened the last few days, having a record breaking low the past 3 days. I have websites with premium domains or generic domains going to lows I have never seen before. In fact made more with casalemedia ads on my sites.

[Play_Bach]

Yup. Earnings have tanked here today as well. Awful.

[oakie]

Below average earnings here too , Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

[mike2010]

oh my gawwwd. My earnings yesterday were humuliating. Worst ever.

We need to find out what's going on here..

An official answer would be nice.

[koan]

An official answer would be nice.

In the history of all Adsense ups and downs, there was never an "official answer". If something else makes more money, switch over. Otherwise, bite the bullet.

[thechromeguy]

Just saw stats from a European newspaper, most ads are place inside travel and classified ads section. They took a 60% drop in revenue starting from October 3.

Seem like its back to Amazon to pay the bills.

[mike2010]

Just filled out an app for Casale Media here...

can't pay any bills with these amounts.

If 'their' (Google) out there creepin our posts here, they should at-least address this issue in an email announcement, etc. It's pretty noticeable from several posts here that there's a problem.

[thatjen]

I just noticed if you roll over the Adsense title link with your mouse it changes color to an opposite color (blue turns pink, for example). Anyone else notice this? I wonder if that will help or hurt CTR. I haven't checked my stats today but they were dismal yesterday.

[Freedom]

1,000s of different of advertiser across 1,000s of different subjects and they all decide to drop their advertising budget at the same exact time?

Google is skimming off the top. No doubt about it. When everyone's eCPM drops on the same day, it's skimming.

Adsense reps probably don't even have a clue about it. The whole thing would have to be done from higher.

[Lame_Wolf]

1,000s of different of advertiser across 1,000s of different subjects and they all decide to drop their advertising budget at the same exact time?

Not all. I've had a great weekend with Adsense, even on Saturday when my earnings normally drop.

[ElvisFan]

Some say Panda has no impact on adsense! So, why have my earnings drop to an all time low with every Panda update? This after a steady monthly income over a period of 5 years and traffic higher than ever.

Also, adsense adjusts daily for invalid clicks. So, why is it adjusted again at the end of the month? These extra adjustment again since Panda reared it ulgy head. So many questions and not enough answers

[vampke]

I just found this topic, trying to get to know if other people experienced the same thing as me. (if so i'd be buying google stock :) )
August was my best month ever (+40% in usual earnings, while slightly decreased traffic and steady clicks). September was better still and October seems to be even better.
Yesterday was my best day ever (20% better than previous best, 2x average of last 100 days).
I don't understand: nothing really changed on my websites. Not complaining though :)

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday was another very low earnings day here, barely 20% of average. :-(

[netmeg]

Google is skimming off the top. No doubt about it. When everyone's eCPM drops on the same day, it's skimming.

Everyone's didn't. The subset of users on WebmasterWorld, even on WebmasterWorld plus the Google AdSense Forum is still only a small percentage of the overall AdSense users. And usually the only ones talking are the ones who went down, so that further skews the perception.

I'm really getting fed up with people expressing opinions as though they were facts. They're not.

[Lame_Wolf]

I'm really getting fed up with people expressing opinions as though they were facts. They're not.

+1

[farmboy]

So many questions and not enough answers

Problem is, there are many people with questions who won't accept answers unless the answer is what they want to hear or what they want to assume.

FarmBoy

[mike2010]

I'm really getting fed up with people expressing opinions as though they were facts. They're not.

It's kind of like the protestors on wall street..

If you were affected, i'm sure you wouldn't be quiet about it either..

And there is no way to tell for sure if it is fact or not, as they don't give us full access to stats / advertisers....so basically all we can do is speculate when things go wrong.

[ken_b]

I'm really getting fed up with people expressing opinions as though they were facts. They're not.

That goes for both sides of any discussion here.

[Freedom]

I'm really getting fed up with people expressing opinions as though they were facts. They're not.

I guess I should have annotated all my posts as opinion, for your sake, although I thought it was obvious that all posts were implied as opinion.

I have my opinions and I use to express them here. I didn't realize I had to check with you before gathering an opinion. Maybe I should check with you on what all my opinions in life should be since you have all the answers.

I'm getting tired of people defending Google, blindly, and sycophantly, when it's a fact they've put 1,000s, maybe tens of 1,000s of webmasters out of work during the world's worst economic crisis in 80 years.

I've seen specific examples of where the Adsense department stepped outside of it's own Terms of Use to oppress webmasters to make hypocritical changes to their websites to conform to arbitrary rules that Google itself wasn't following. I've seen it, read the emails, and kept quite about it because of all the Google crusaders here.

What happens here seems to reflect what's happening across America. Nobody can respect anyone else's opinions and everybody wants every one else to be just like them, and they attack them when they are not. You see this play out in politics and across the cable news networks. The communication revolution has only increased the divide between people, not bridged them. It's turned into an ugly world and WebmasterWorld is just a reflection of that.

I am officially done with WebmasterWorld. I'm out. This place is too antagonistic and verbally combative. Nothing ever gets resolved. Too many self appointed experts go on the offensive. Membership and participation here has been dropping off and it's easy to see why as everything just turns in to a big shouting match laden with disrespect and inflated egos.

[netmeg]

When you say "No doubt about it" you are presenting an opinion as a fact. And when it comes to Google skimming off the AdSense, that's a pretty serious charge. So I absolutely stand by what I posted. You don't know it. I don't know it. And people who just skim here, or are new here don't know that you're just stating opinion, and that's how ridiculous crap gets floated out there and starts to obfuscate the *real* trends. So yea, I will call it when I see it. If you were paying attention, you'd know that I don't defend Google blindly or as a sycophant, but I also don't blame them for everything that goes awry or assume everything they do is evil because it's Google doing it.

But you're out, so you probably won't see this.