January 2012 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Habtom]

I had a good run in 2011 - managed to add one more figure to my monthly AdSense earnings.

January historically is not a bad month for me. What are your hopes and plans for January and the new year?

Half an hour too early according to WebmasterWorld server clock :)

[jmccormac]

So the people in Adsense and Analytics are underreporting traffic and advertising?

Regards...jmcc

[HuskyPup]

Well, my metrics are obviously down owing to the AdSense ~13 hour outage some of us experienced. Do I assume you did not?

This really does beg a more serious question.

Why were some of us affected and not others and not in just one country? This lends even more credence to my view that Google can actually directly affect our earnings at a stroke whilst other publishers say "nothing's happened", witness my 50% slashing last 6th May 2011, just how many accounts could they simply downgrade and where do those earnings go?

On one specific day the entire world does not suddenly stop clicking at the same time. I have had too many coincidences over the years with Google now to believe otherwise.

[jmccormac]

Earnings have been rather dire. After reading that book "In The Plex", it seems to be that Google is the new Microsoft. I've been contemplating ripping out Analytics from my main site for a while. As for Google's much vaunted search capabilities, they have a fatal vulnerability and no amount of happy-clappies can solve it.

Regards...jmcc

[HuskyPup]

I ripped out Analytics ages ago and you have to ensure everything is deleted, all my back-up Gmail accounts are in the firing line now.

Will it make any difference to my earnings, no but I shall feel better not being so easily tracked all over the place, yep, I know they have lots of information about my sites anyway however the harder I make it for them the better.

After all I am unique, just like everyone else:-)

[Play_Bach]

HuskyPup - glad to see you're still here :-)
As for what I going on with AdSense, Analytics and Google and it's SERPS - well, beats me. However, I'm not convinced having Analytics is a negative, so I'm leaving them in for now. How did you come to the conclusion Analytics wasn't a good idea?

[HuskyPup]

How did you come to the conclusion Analytics wasn't a good idea?

Because I'm an old fuddy duddy!

I did Pure and Applied mathematics in my teens, I've been in business for more than 40 years, I like to do my own stuff for what I want to know, not what someone else wants to tell me! Sure some of the charts are pretty however to get the real "feel" of a business I like to sit there with pencil and paper, extrapolate, mess about and generally enjoy myself.

I've brought businesses back from the brink of extinction that many business schools wouldn't even consider salvageable simply because they don't "understand" the business, I don't have people like that working for me:-)

Anyway, I also felt that G the scraper had been given more than sufficient information, all the people who had helped them to where they are for free, yep, me included as a beta tester in the 90s, therefore I concluded it was time to pick up my toys and take them back more under my control.

It certainly would not surprise me whatsoever if Google actually keeps analytics running for sites even when they've supposedly been deleted. FWIW I haven't missed analytics whatsoever.

[zerillos]

... and you have to load another .js in every page...

[SEOPTI]

Even the fbi.gov site has analytics installed. Hope their AS earnings won't decrease LOL

[eddieh]

If you want something to replace G analytics, which is under your control, try the OS program PIWIK (add an org to the name).

It does everything that GA does but you run it on your own domain. The only thing it doesn't (or didn't) do was track adsense. However, Statcounter will do that. I use statcounter across all my sites and it gives more than enough data for what I need.

If you are taking GA off your sites, don't forget to remove the tracking scripts from your code.

[HuskyPup]

Sunday's reported Page Views came back to normal and agreed with my figures for the first time in several days.

The clicks shown in the brief report top right differ by 4 clicks to those shown in both Country and URL reports!

My "supposed" clicks' average total were normal however my EPC was dreadful at 70% of average therefore it was yet another crappy January day with earnings still well below average and running at 58.4% v the same period January 2011...my Tax Inspector is never going to believe this!

Fingers crossed that they have now sorted out this G self-induced mini disaster for some of us.

[zarathustra2011]

My earnings seemed quite low today, and when I check my main website, all my ads appear blank! I've tried my other sites and they are okay, but I'm very concerned my website isn't showing anything - any idea why this might be?!

[zarathustra2011]

Actually, I've now tried the other pages, and it is just the homepage that isn't showing ads. Very strange indeed!

[zarathustra2011]

I tried reuploading the homepage - really don't know what's going on. All I get, on virtually all my pages, is some ad for a university that is completely and utterly irrelevant to my website, and often the other text ad spaces aren't even filled.

[ThatsBoBo]

I just saw this on the official Adsense forum:

==========================================================
We've identified an issue with AdSense for Content ads not showing on some
publishers' sites. Our engineers are working to investigate and resolve
the issue as quickly as possible.

Thanks for your patience in the meantime, and I do apologize for the
inconvenience.
==========================================================

[google.com...]

[zarathustra2011]

Thanks ThatsBoBo. Somewhere else they stated that they knew about the same problem on the 20th January and fixed it for all publishers, Google's closure on the matter seemed to be somewhat premature.

[Play_Bach]

Click count very low for this time of day, again. :-(

[jmccormac]

Makes you wonder what they've bozoed this time.

Regards...jmcc

[snickles121]

CTR is low here today too.

[zarathustra2011]

20 hours later, and my ads are still screwed. Lowest earnings in about 4 years.

[Play_Bach]

According to AWStats, I had the most visitors for nearly six weeks yesterday, yet earnings were but a fraction. :-(

[jmccormac]

No sign of Adsenseguy or Googleguy any more. Adsense seems to be completely banjaxed these days.

Regards...jmcc

[snickles121]

Play_Bach, I am in the same boat, but at least the traffic is there. Hopefully next month will improve.

[eddieh]

I may be wrong here but it seems that this so called 'issue' with adsense not displaying ads on certain sites is only affecting publishers outside of the US. That in itself is odd since I for one host all my sites in the US although I am UK based. This so called 'issue' seems to be very 'targeted' from where I am sitting.

Although I can still see ads across all my sites and they are receiving clicks, those clicks are not being credited resulting in revenue reduction which is getting worse by the day. There is something going on behind the scenes here although exactly what, I wouldn't like to say.

BTW - What ever happened to the Adsense Team based in Ireland - Do they still exist. I used to get regular communications from them but haven't heard a thing for several months at least.

[Slashus]

Eddieh: The new aggressive click scrubbing started in mid-October. Isn't it great?

[WordsnCollision]

Worst day of the month yesterday, all metrics below average - and it hasn't been a very good week either. Maybe Google will cheer me up with a PIP today.

[HuskyPup]

Awesome Google, awesome!

Monday's click volume the highest since October 27th 2011 at 167.2%.

Highest CTR since 16th November 2011 at 135.5%.

EPC second-lowest this year at 80%.

Therefore eCPM 108.5% and Earnings 133%.

WHY can I NEVER have a HIGH click volume day with a HIGH EPC?

[TerryZule]

Well I'll chime in. Same boat guys exactly - our traffic numbers are dead on the same level and from the USA. Yet, for a week now we have been getting paid less than half of what we usually make. We usually make between $130-$160 daily, and now we are at $60-$80.

Something reeeeaaaallllly going on weird here. So we have been moving hard over to affiliate pay-per-call programs to recoup. We've recouped a third of our Adsense losses, but that's it.

And you know what. We are turning our back on Adsense as of this week all together after an 8 year run with them as our main source of income. We will keep their ads running, along with Infolinks, and with affiliate links on our string of sites.

We are now launching a new business locally doing PPC for local companies. Can't ride the Adsense rollercoaster any longer.

[HuskyPup]

Tuesday's Pge Views normal, click volume 110%, CTR 81% and EPC 84%.

Earnings 93% but compared to October and November which I would now have expected to return to, 81%.

With all the other crap Google's just announced I feel it's the end of the AdSense party, I really can't be doing with all this pathetic nonsense.

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday earnings closed again at under 50% of average. :-(

[ThatsBoBo]

The past two days have been amazing. Everything way up. Today is going well thus far. No PIP yet :(