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!

[backdraft7]

Sorry, I just noticed this was an Adsense topic....but I guess it works both ways...If you not getting Adsense clicks, the advertisers are obviously not getting the visits or sales revenue either. Not good for the cash flow through Google.
The problem here is that even if the organic results are poor, wouldn't it reason that Adwords would be pulling in good results for the advertisers? It's not. So the problems we are seeing appear to be upstream of even the Adwords system or inline with the entire Google data processing system.

[HuskyPup]

So the problems we are seeing appear to be upstream of even the Adwords system or inline with the entire Google data processing system.

That's what I've been considering as well and especially since the worst of it has happened since last weekend with daily earnings being about 60% of the previous week's average including my second and third-lowest days ever since 2004.

If this really is a Google issue then surely someone at The Plex must have noticed their decrease in earnings?

Or doesn't anyone know how to repair it just like the SERPs debacle?

[Play_Bach]

Stuck.

[jmccormac]

This is utterly borked. Where the hell did Google get these people? Are they running the whole thing on Microsoft Access?

Regards...jmcc

[snickles121]

Is it Christmas, because my traffic and earnings think it is. Merry Xmas.

Thats not meant in a good way either.

[JCKline]

This is merely a hunch, but my earnings were OK (still below average) until today, CTR above average, but CPC is garbage (even in the US). The only thing I did (two days ago) IF IT IS ME, is I used the new "shown ads" interface and blocked a bunch of ads that I thinks are just...bad. Maybe some of these ads were raising the eCPM, CPC. Now I get an increase in CTR, but earnings are horrible. I will see what happens tomorrow, and if it's just as bad at the end of the day, I'll start unblocking to see.

[Frost_Angel]

Is it Easter that's causing this horrid plummet? This is bad. It's starting to freak me out a little. I mean... hey, Panda pretty much turned me into a xanax popping maniac, now the Easter bunny is gonna finish me off. LOL

[snickles121]

Im sure its Easter, but much worse than last year and alot earlier. I was doing pretty good until Thursday then traffic took a nose dive.

All keywords remain the same for rankings for me.

Probably be back to normal on Monday or Tuesday.

[snickles121]

I would also like to add as a theory is that maybe the economy stabled out more this year and more people this year were able to take trips this holiday because of money problems easing up, compared to the last previous years. Not to worry.

[backdraft7]

From what I'm seeing on both the Google SERP discussions and here, as well as all other SEO forums around the web, the defecation is really hitting the oscillation right now. The economic impact has got to be tremendous. I'd love to see this hit CNN and get the media involved. This is like Zorg from the Fifth Element saying "Fire One Million!". I can see that black ooze dripping down Larry Page's forehead already.
;^)

Oh wait...for CNN to report it, it would have to be something mindless and non technical.

[Frost_Angel]

I just went through my site to see exactly what kind of ads were being served. I try to do this at least once or twice a week. OMG. I just had to block about 27 ads. All OFF topic and truly stupid for my sites topic. Be sure to check this on your site(s) - just in case that is playing into your earnings too.

[Play_Bach]

The problem with blocking ads for me is the fact that what I see is not necessarily what my visitors see. I gave up on trying to do Google's job of serving relevant ads a long time ago. It's frustrating to know that what was once a highly relevant and well targeted ad network has changed to serving up gumbo instead, c'est la vie.

p.s. Click count/earnings still stuck from where they were over five hours ago.

[furshka]

March was the best month. A little surprised to see the final earnings adjusted to about 60% of total. Thursday and today the lowest this month. Overall, April is looking like March.

[furshka]

By today, I mean Saturday.

[Play_Bach]

11:21pm here and click count/earnings STILL unchanged. :-|

[Play_Bach]

11:21pm here and click count/earnings STILL unchanged. :-|

[zarathustra2011]

Yesterday seemed to be about damage limitation. Poor by what I've become accustomed to, but at the same time, I was grateful it hadn't fallen as badly as the day before that. This morning is an encouraging start, but on a bank holiday Easter weekend, I'm not expecting miracles by the end of the day.

Looking at my records for April last year, I also had a very sporadic and unpredictable month, that climbed upwards in May, and gatherered in momentum and consistency in the following months. Hopefully it's an annual trend!

[HuskyPup]

I've just compared 1-7 April 2012 v 17-23 April 2011 and bear in mind, for the UK, this was the start not only of Easter but an extended Royal Wedding couple of weeks when I expected earnings to drop.

Clicks 45.1%
CTR 80.9%
EPC 85.2%
eCPM 68.3%
Earnings 38.04%

It's seemingly an AdSense disaster zone therefore for the next couple of days I'm removing AdSense from my biggest URL channel.

Whatever happens my CTR will certainly improve simply because thousands of impressions delivering virtually zero clicks will be taken out of the equation.

I hoped that it would never come to this but if the option is promoting and selling my widgets v almost zero AdSense earnings, then there is no choice.

[zerillos]

Come on guys. Let's talk alternatives. Adsense is not viable solution anymore

[zarathustra2011]

Ironically I seem to be doing pretty well today - a lot of clicks for the time of day with a reasonable payout, and just as I decided to upload a new version of my website. Hope I don't end up killing things, as I was planning to upload it all on a bad day when I felt I had little to lose (all psychological I know).

[netmeg]

Come on guys. Let's talk alternatives. Adsense is not viable solution anymore

First of all, this is the AdSense forum, so we talk about AdSense here, and second of all, everyone is pretty much aware that for most people there *are* no real alternatives.

Decided to shake it up a bit and restyled some ads to be somewhat "louder" (and less blended) and saw some pretty good results.

Maybe it's time for a new coat of paint.

[jmccormac]

Seems that it is some kind of festering combination of a search "algorithm" that completely banjaxes SERPs and a mangling of Adsense (a contextual advertising system that worked) by a bunch of twiddlers who thought that they could make it better. Adsense really needs to get back to the contextual element.

Regards...jmcc

[Lame_Wolf]

Thank you netmeg for saying what I was thinking. I have been biting my tongue on this.

[NomadMan]

With search now flavored with personalized local search and suggested search, Ads being straight off-mark seems to be recurring thing now.

I see traffic go up, with Adsense revenue spikes (relevant ads) mixed with days of total 'lights out'(ads offmark).

Just a thought;

With all the personalized & local search being pinned to a visitor (as a background) - it seems Adsense can't figure out what ads to display if background & website content do not match by far....

[HuskyPup]

It's seemingly an AdSense disaster zone therefore for the next couple of days I'm removing AdSense from my biggest URL channel.

Well, I really do not know what to write other than WTF is going on?

In the 9 hours since I uploaded three ads rotating on a javascript I have had no less than 930% more clicks than my daily average 1-7 April !.!.!

Either I create fantastic ads (this I know not to be true) or visitors really are bored with Google ads.

All three ads are 728 x 90 images.

Opinions please.

[NomadMan]

Might be interesting to do some test with Adwords - setup a campaign on the content network....

The first remark from @backdraft7 indicates (a part of) the problem sits further upstream

I would certainly start tweaking Adwords campaigns when traffic on landing pages starts to decline upto full campaign suspension....

[netmeg]

Do your home made ads stand out more than the Google ads did? Cause I noticed when I significantly changed the style and colors, my CTR went up. Dunno if it will last, but it is what it is.

[Play_Bach]

Ridiculously low today. :-(

[Play_Bach]

I think I'm about ready to try stronger medication.

[HuskyPup]

Do your home made ads stand out more than the Google ads did?

Two of them certainly do.

1. Customer logo on white background linked to his site.

2. Widget ad, black background linked to trademarked, keyword domain.

3. Ad designed to look like a Google ad, white backround, blue links.

It is a Coppermine gallery using Water Drop theme, plain white background, the url is example.com/coppermine/

Traffic to this site overall has been about 50% of normal, for me this was to be expected at Easter.

The click thrus generated in the first 24 hours have basically been 2,700% better than AdSense and evenly distributed across all three exit links...that surprised me.

In other words the clicks have been coming through more per HOUR than AdSense has been doing per DAY. So far today I have received ten serious enquiries and this is on a holiday.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, I have many questions buzzing around in my head however the main one has to be why are people clicking on my ads but not AdSense?

The clicks are genuine, not machine generated, in case anyone was wondering.