April 2012 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[HuskyPup]

March was one heck of a roller coaster ride for me and many others, let's hope they've ironed out whatever it is they've been attempting to do!

[IanCP]

@Play_Bach

Depressing isn't it?

When is AdSense going to let the grown ups back behind the wheel?

[Play_Bach]

> Depressing isn't it?

Yes, very.

[netmeg]

My ads (insofar as I can tell) are best they've ever been. When I get clicks, they are good paying clicks; better than any year I remember. I do have a new design, but the ads are essentially in the same place. Traffic is double what it was this time last year. But people just ain't clicking.

Mobile is way up - they don't click as much. The user intent here is not for shopping.

I've already posted my theories about how targeting affects clicks.

I'm sure there's ad blindness. I read something this week about how pretty much anything in a sidebar is a waste of time, and I'm starting to come around to that. Lord knows I rarely look at sidebars myself anymore.

Kind of a perfect storm thing going, I think.

I've already beat last April's entire earnings, which is great. I figure as long as I'm still moving upward, it's a success. But I'm definitely offering direct ads this year. And with double the traffic on the sites, I wouldn't expect DOUBLE the earnings, but I was kind of hoping for a little bit better than I'm doing.

[NomadMan]

I'm sure there's ad blindness.

I notice visitors from countries with the highest online presence click far less compared to visitors in countries where 24 hr internet is emerging. I created my own test "ads" so i know they see the same thing. The difference in CTR is huge.

Occasionally ask people in my area if they click ads and the answer is usually a straight No. "Just ignore these ads" or "hardly see them".

Always sort of expected people to click more on image ads, but it's text ads that do best.

[Play_Bach]

Dead again.

[jmccormac]

One click. Less than one and a half hours of the Irish business day to go and just one click! Perhaps the twiddlers aren't awake yet.

Regards...jmcc

[jpch]

I'm sure there's ad blindness. I read something this week about how pretty much anything in a sidebar is a waste of time, and I'm starting to come around to that.

Any chance you could provide a link to what you read?

[netmeg]

It might have been this one:

[cmo.com...]

(which wasn't about AdSense but banner ads in general - guess what, CTR is down for EVERYONE in 2012)

But it's possible it was something else; I know I read it within the past week, but I read a ton of blogs and sites every day.

If you google stuff like ad blindness and banner ad blindness, and use the advanced options to limit your search to the past month or past few months, you'll get lots of items. We're not the only ones talking about this by a long shot.

[jpch]

Thanks netmeg...Interesting read.

A recent MediaMind global benchmark study found that since the peak of their decline in 2008, the average click-through rate (CTR) has remained steadily at around 0.09 percent.

If my CTR ever gets that low I'll be in the hurt locker.

[HuskyPup]

I'm heading straight for that CTR...0.36% today so far...one small site has 2,300 Page Views and 2 clicks...Fubard beyond belief!

[tonyolm]

happy days are here again.... :)

[Play_Bach]

Click count stuck in limbo, again.

[andrewshim]

No need to worry about stats lag anymore. Panda has chewed me to a pulp, then killed me. Death came overnight.

[sam2san]

@andrewshim.. Its supposed to be a penguin you see..

[zarathustra2011]

Did google make some big changes around Wednesday time? When I look at Google analytics, most of my accounts showed a big drop in traffic. I assumed there were some overnight issues with my host, but when I checked Thursdays' stats, the traffic never recovered. Some sites are down about 75% these past two days, and I only ever have such radical fluctuations at the weekend, never during the week.

[HuskyPup]

Come back Panda, all is forgiven...!

Thursday saw my lowest-ever CTR day at 0.38% which is 41.7% of April's average, never, never, never have I seen such a figure.

Click volume was 55%.

However the day was partially saved by my highest EPC of the month at 179.2%, if it had been April's average it would have been a new low record. All US and UK higher values.

This programme is completely and utterly fubard, it's no longer in the ICU, it's been moved to the morgue.

And what traffic are they sending me? My highest unique visitors day of the year combined with my lowest page views per visitor...zombies? Oh yeah, I forgot, it's in the morgue.

[andrewshim]

@andrewshim.. Its supposed to be a penguin you see..

panda, penguin, pangolin, parakeet, poodle... still the same. Vicious killer.

[netmeg]

zarathustra2011 - there were two major updates in the past week; a Panda refresh on 4/19, and an anti-webspam (Brett calls it anti-seo) update that Google calls Penguin on 4/24. If you saw big drops on Wednesday, that's likely what hit you. You could spend some time in the Google SEO forum here reading up on it (but those items have drifted off into anti-Google rants and may not be helpful) or you could head over the searchengineland and look for anything marked Penguin; there's some good stuff over there. But it does sound like you were whacked.

[zarathustra2011]

Thanks Netmeg - appreciate the explanation. Penguin would explain it, though from what I've read my sites have no cloaking or keyword stuffing anywhere. It's all written in natural language. It hasn't impacted my main website at all, which again I find odd, as there's really no difference in the way I constructed any of my websites. My backlinks are all good, and I've no paid traffic, or links from spammy link farms. I don't get it.

[Leosghost]

If enough sites that are in your backlinks got hit ? ..you would lose position too..are those sites "linking in sites" ranking where they used to be, is where I'd look..

[netmeg]

(This is off topic from AdSense, but... because it's an algorithm change, supposedly there's no point filing for a reinclusion, but there is a link out there for sites that believe they were incorrectly hit)

[zarathustra2011]

Thanks - I'll address penguin in the dedicated forum, but I have submitted the forms to Google. I've not checked the sites that link to my own yet.

[blairsp]

Am I the only one with three times my normal earnings in March? Back to reality this month though!

[Play_Bach]

Another ridiculously low AdSense day in the making. :-(

[Lame_Wolf]

Another ridiculously low AdSense day in the making. :-(

Not here.
From last saturday i've unbepissed by Google's games.

[HuskyPup]

Cracking performance for me G, I'm now averaging both a click volume and CTR of 33% of just 12 months ago.

My guesstimate is that by July I'll be on zero'ish.

[JCKline]

I had 2 good days and then today came and died. The last 2 days were the only good days this entire month.

[tonyolm]

I'm happy :) What ever happened a few days ago has most definitely made a difference.

[zarathustra2011]

The penguin has squashed all my smaller websites, but my main website is also performing really badly, despite visitor numbers weren't affected. I'm down about 50%.

[jinxed]

Yesterday had normal traffic, but very low CPC.

Worst day this year by far for me.