May 2012 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[HuskyPup]

Will the downwards spiral continue for some of us? Why do the supposed big earners hardly ever post?

Confused? "These questions—and many others—will be answered in this month's episode of...AdSense."

[netmeg]

ork ork ork... Now I gotta figure out a way to have that sign built and put up...

if you know what's good for you, you won't ask about the "state bird"

[JCKline]

Today is slow, but Sunday was my best day yet. I noticed CTR is up since G removed the scroll arrows from the ads. Coincidence, maybe, or it could be that they look less like ads (text, not images).

[JCKline]

Stuck or what?

[breeks]

Not stuck here just got a big click dump.

[Play_Bach]

> Stuck or what?

Mine hasn't moved all day either. :-(

[edinburgher]

It's now about a month since Adsense went fubar and still no word from anyone at the plex.

I fear it's only a matter of time before Adsense is explicitly mentioned in a suicide note. Will it take that sort of tragedy and subsequent bad publicity to knock some sense into Google?

[Lame_Wolf]

It's now about a month since Adsense went fubar and still no word from anyone at the plex.

Fubar to whom ?

Maybe the reason why you've not heard from them is because it is not fubar'd for everyone.

[edinburgher]

Maybe the reason why you've not heard from them is because it is not fubar'd for everyone.

Maybe not for everyone, but for a lot of people.

Anything that causes a sudden massive change for significant numbers of people deserves comment, even if it's only a bland "We've changed the algo". At least that way we'd know whether we should try to change things our end or wait until Google fix something.


edit: typo

[Lame_Wolf]

Maybe not for everyone, but for a lot of people.

Anything that causes a sudden massive change for significant numbers of people deserves comment, even if it's only a bland "We've changed the algo". At least that way we'd know whether we should try to change things our end or wait until Google fix something.

You don't work for Google, so you do not have any figures as to how many are doing well vs to those who are not.

All you are seeing are a set number of people complaining.

[NomadMan]

we should try to change things our end or wait until Google fix something.

Google (Adsense) changing things is a given - their 'sense of urgency' to communicate stuff is pretty low. Premium publishers with their own account manager can just pick up the phone and ask.

Adsense is still doing far too well for Google to change their communication style - especially to non-premium publishers.

Anyhow - The Display Network at the Google Adwords forum is pushed much harder now. Panda prolly made many advertisers abandon the dislay network.

The DIY Adwords advertisers are kept pretty busy managing their campaigns, they've seen a lot of changes too. The bar has gone way up; to create a successful Adwords campaign (conversions!) these days is hard. For small / medium sized business owners - quite a flew flying hours are needed to make anything from the new Adwords.

My guess? Quite a few have ditched the new Adwords......too complex, too much work........no conversions.

So what's left? Premium (Pro) Adwords advertisers stuffing pockets of Premium Adsense publishers. Who cares about the rest?

[zarathustra2011]

Yesterday was actually a reasonable day, but all I see on my site is totally irrelevant ads. Clicks are still way down, and the see-saw effect keeps playing out on alternative days.

[edinburgher]

I wonder if Google are experimenting with CPA ads. If CPA clicks aren't shown in the current reports unless they convert then it might explain some of what I'm seeing.

edit: typo again. It's too early in the morning for me...

[HuskyPup]

On brother, just when I have a half-decent click day my EPC crashes with the USA at 75% of May average, UK 59% and India 50%, all of them the lowest for the month...arghhh.

[jmccormac]

Good job profanity is banned here.

Regards...jmcc

[Lame_Wolf]

Good job profanity is banned here.

Yeah, she was banned a while back for swearing too much. I am pro fanity. I think they should free her. ;)

[explorador]

Still lower earnings since the last algo, except on weekends. Yesterday was the highest day of the month (a little bit higher than my normal higher days) but it is just an isolated event, the earnings have been lower overall.

[StoutFiles]

Accurate observations can not be made daily, weekly, or even monthly. Try mapping it out over years, noting page views, clicks, and similar months. You'll find that if your page views and clicks hold steady you'll likely be making less money, which is what most of you are experiencing anyway, but you'll at least have years of data to back it up.

[netmeg]

Well, I'm great. Already hit last year's May numbers and it's not even Memorial Day yet. Probably because I have more sites and traffic on the old sites is more than double last year too.

So it's not tanking for everyone.

Edinburgher, there is *no* waiting for Google "fix" things. Google almost never "fixes" anything because as far as they're concerned, they almost never break anything. At least, they almost never admit it.

If you're sitting around waiting for Google to fix something to make the AdSense money start rolling in again, then you are going to be sitting around waiting a looooong time. You have to be adaptable, and you have to have alternatives. YOU have to take control of your earnings.

[breeks]

Big improvement over the last few days but its too late to save May, Big drop from May 20011. Set a daily record for the month fours days in a row, so cautiously optimistic for June.

[edinburgher]

Edinburgher, there is *no* waiting for Google "fix" things. Google almost never "fixes" anything because as far as they're concerned, they almost never break anything. At least, they almost never admit it.

If you're sitting around waiting for Google to fix something to make the AdSense money start rolling in again, then you are going to be sitting around waiting a looooong time. You have to be adaptable, and you have to have alternatives. YOU have to take control of your earnings.

Oh, I'm trying. But not knowing if Adsense is working, lagged by weeks or (as I suspect) losing data I might just be wasting time. There's no way of correlating any changes I make with any changes in my income.

I'll carry on trying, because I'm not the type to sit back and ignore it. But without status information from Google I'm shooting in the dark.

Optimisation without reliable data - or at least reliably unreliable data - is next to impossible.

As to alternatives, I'm working on it and hope to ditch Adsense ASAP. But my current main alternative is seasonal and the season has just ended!

[netmeg]

But without status information from Google I'm shooting in the dark.

There is no such thing as status information from Google, and don't assume you will ever get it. That's what AdSense is, and it's not changing any time soon. It will always be shooting in the dark to some degree. Google gives us a system where all we have to do is place some code and wait for the money (assuming we stay in compliance with TOS). But in exchange for that extreme ease of use, we give up a boatload of control, and pretty much all communication.

If your AdSense suddenly tanks, you can use your limited options (experiment with styles and placements) to see if you can help it along, but that's about it. That's the program they offered, and what we signed up for. There's no "AdSense isn't working so maybe they'll fix it" - just occasionally some delayed stats.

There's no incentive for Google in changing this, because the advertisers are the important ones here, not the publishers.

There are a lot of reasons why earnings fluctuate, and there's a lot of posts here on that topic - it isn't *only* because of what Google does. But Google isn't prone to slicing their own earnings either, so if they do make some change, they're probably getting the best of it somewhere - just not from you.

[netmeg]

Ran an interesting experiment over the last couple days - one of my ad blocks was text only, and the CTR was way down but the EPC was through the roof. So I rotated some image ads in an even rotation, and today the CTR is *much* higher, and the EPC is *much* lower. Think I prefer the higher EPC.

[JCKline]

Yesterday was my low on the "saw blade", and so far today looks like the same thing, but I still have half a day to go.

[JCKline]

Wow, still dead. I guess the advertisers are out of money already.

[Lame_Wolf]

Wow, still dead. I guess the advertisers are out of money already.

Mine has been updating every 10 minutes for about 2 hours solid.

[JCKline]

Impressions climb, clicks stuck...I hope. Click dump me please!

[HuskyPup]

Now what's been broken?

6 clicks from the UK so far this morning with an EPC of 0.00, nothing, what the heck's going on, are advertisers charity cases now?

[NomadMan]

Dull days on Adsense - not much going on. Below average revenue. Some advertisers appeared on the stage again. 2 click dumps, sawtooth, business as usual.

And some interesting stuff from the Google Adsense help forums;

Hey all,

This is Andrew from the Ad Traffic Quality Team at Google. We're aware of a problem with a third-party crawler in the network that is generating invalid activity across a number of different publishers. We've recently made some changes to our filtering so that this invalid activity will be excluded more quickly from your earnings reports and the discrepancy between estimated and actual earnings will be smaller.

Andrew

[productforums.google.com ]

[WordsnCollision]

> Already hit last year's May numbers and it's not even Memorial Day yet.

Checked my own year-to-year and I've also hit last May's revs - actually did it on the 20th. All metrics are up about 40%. As good as that sounds, May '11 was a terrible month and June was even worse thanks to Panda 1.0.

[Lame_Wolf]

Already hit last year's May numbers and it's not even Memorial Day yet.

Off Topic : I couldn't remember when Memorial Day was this year, so I googled it.

Between the "x anount of results" and the first SERP, it says "Memorial Day is on Monday, May 28, 2012"

I don't recall Google doing this sort of thing before.