March 2013 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[HuskyPup]

February was up and down like a yo-yo for me, calm down dear:-)

[jost]

I don't think google has a clue to what they have really done.

I still have the arrows, and CTR is still dead.
So maybe I wasn't targeted this time, and something else is going on.


My hypothesis is that when they rolled out this change, they hit the RESET button on the targeting statistics and its going to take time for googles engine to re-learn what ad's to put on what sites again.

Im starting to see normal ad's today and CTR creeped up a bit, so we will see.


Otherwise, google just made up a bunch of excuses to royally screw us and they are hiding the real reason in the big CTR drop.

[breeks]

Arrows all over my sites. CTR was average yesterday, today only half of that. The only way I cam bring up CTR is to turn off images ads.

[edinburgher]

My hypothesis is that when they rolled out this change, they hit the RESET button on the targeting statistics and its going to take time for googles engine to re-learn what ad's to put on what sites again.

I think you're probably right. And I can see why it might be necessary if they're introducing a new factor into the algorithm. But why on earth can't Google just *tell us*?

[ember]

Otherwise, google just made up a bunch of excuses to royally screw us and they are hiding the real reason in the big CTR drop.

Doubtful.

[breeks]

Exactly half the CTR compared to yesterday. After a few normal days of CTR back in the dumps big time. (with arrows) I have one advertiser all over my sites like Groupon used to be, blocking to see if that helps.

[FrostyMug]

Interesting, when was Nessie rolled out?

[Chris13]

I'm very new to adsense. Site has only been up since Oct and I've been following this discussion with great interest because me CTR cut in half and CPC dropped by 40% and has mostly been down.

My site clearly has been hit by this change. In reading google's response that you all have been so kind to post, it implies that google feels there are inadvertant clicks.

I designed the pages to make it very hard for someone to inadvertantly click.

So, I'd like to run something by you more experienced folks. I have a site that I started for New York and had planned from the beginning to take to other cities under the same site. I expanded it to LA at the end of Jan and that's when ads got wierd and there was be ads for businesses from LA displayed in NY and vice versa, but you couldn't always tell by the ad itself.

I noticed I'd start getting as many as 7 clicks from a user on a single IP address. I don't believe 7 clicks can be inadvertant. This would happen once or twice a day, and my site is running around 100 clicks a day.

I'd report these to google when I found them. Never got a response. But google's system would find them and remove the income for those clicks, but leave the click in the count.

This change has caused me to rethink putting multiple cities under one domain and I'm looking for some input on this, if possible.

My page design leaves little chance of inadvertant click in that the ad space is quite clear, but today I put a border on the ads just to make them more clear.

Any thoughts on this?

[jost]

How do you know 7 clicks are coming from one IP address?

[Chris13]

You can't tell the ip address directly because it's all in an iframe that you can't access to any of it.

I have a LOT of pages about specific things. Not every page gets viewed every day, it all depends on what's happening that day. So it's just a matter of using google analytics to see what url had clicks and I can check my logs to see which ip addresses visited that page.

If I do this a various times during the day, then I can narrow it down to what ip address is the offender, most of the time.

But, I started having trouble when I added a second city. Then ads became incorrect for the area and they are still wrong six weeks later. I believe this is part of the problem I'm having. An ad might be of interest to someone, but once they click they find out it's for something 2500 miles away, rather than down the road. That's a click that doesn't help anyone.

I don't know if adsense will work through this or not. I just have too little experience with adsense to make a judgement.

[deadsea]

My site is clearly in the group of 5000 that had "nessie" arrows removed. On a scale from 0-100, my RPM has been all over the place in the last few months.

November 2012: RPM holding steady at 50

December 12, 2012: RPM shoots up to 90. I concluded that Google had introduced the nessie arrows onto my site that day.

December and January: RPM gradually declines from 90 to 65. I assume that users are becoming accustomed to the nessie arrows and clicking on them less.

February: RPM is steady at 65

March 9th: RPM falls to 40. I find out here that nessie arrows were removed from my site. Both my CTR and CPCs fell on that day. (I made no site changes in the weeks leading up to this.)

On March 9th, only my desktop traffic is down. My smartphone traffic is converting just as well, if not better than before. Nessie arrows are still appearing on smartphone and tablets, but not on desktop.

Targeting of ads on the desktop seems to be totally broken. Testing fresh profiles on a variety of desktop browsers shows ads for cars, education, insurance, and laptop computers. Nothing that is actually in my niche. Ads on smartphones and tablets show ads related to my niche.

(Does this nessie update deserve its own thread here?)

[HuskyPup]

All back to 2013 normal for me Thursday except for EPC, down 33%, and once again it was the desktop, it's a good job the USA and Canada like their tablets in the evenings!

[jost]

Some stats:

Initial CTR: 52% down
CTR now: 32% down (its been creeping up)

Net profits: still down 50%

[jpch]

Everything's back to normal now (and there are arrows all over my sites) but I'm still wondering if they blipped the whole network while they were making these changes.

My thoughts exactly! Thankfully I'm seeing my most "normal" day in over a week.

[Chris13]

Going back to Dec 9th, saw a 35% increase in RPM going forward and CPC rose about 25%.

I had doubled the size of the site on the day after Thanksgiving and had figured increase was due to the increased traffic as pages got indexed.

Clearly google realizes that the addition of the arrow buttons had an affect on already existing site designs, as their solution was to remove the arrow buttons.

But unsure of what to do going forward, however. Sorta in a holding pattern at the moment.

[Chris13]

I experimented last night and turned off interest based ads. Twelve hours later, the CTR dropped to almost nothing. When I checked the ads, it showed about 50% related ads, but also showed an ad in German and many dis-related ads.

So being one of those 5000 sites, means content ads are fubar, at least for the time being.

[JCKline]

Yesterday ended a good 3 day ride...now I'm back in the pit. Hope today ends well, but it doesn't look good so far.

[FrostyMug]

Just like 'DeadSea', 'Chris13', and others...

Earnings jumped with Nessie about 50% higher Dec '12, and I'm definitely one of 5,000 as I do not see the arrows on desktop, only tablet/smartphones.

Site NOT TOUCHED since I redesigned after 'above the fold' Jan 19 hit, more than a year ago. Redesign was to remove extra ads and leave 1 on each page, below fold.

I'm definitely experiencing smart pricing in addition to ex-Nessie. CPC down 50%, RPM down more than 50%, clicks down too - all this accounts to loss of 50% and return to pre-Nessie earnings.

But... I see what Google is saying in their explanation, definitely see how earnings jumped with Nessie through my records.

I'm OK with the change & I'm always thankful for any $ I earn through my site. It's a hobby, I have a full time job. Just wanted to understand how and why... so now I know.

[breeks]

Today best CTR and best CPC of the month. Yesterday was the worst of the month. Up and down, by the end of the month it will average out.

[deadsea]

As far as "false clicks" from nessie, I have a form near one of the ads. I certainly see how the arrow could be misconstrued as the button to submit the form.

Given how much better the CTR rate is for nessie, I really wish that it could disabled just on the placements that could be confusing.

[Play_Bach]

Another highest click count all month yesterday, but lowest CPC by far. Second worst earnings day for March. Already today earnings have nearly caught to yesterday and it's only 4:00 AM here. Hopefully, whatever happened to my CPC yesterday is done.

[HuskyPup]

EPC back to 2013 average Friday however click volume way down, I've not had one day in March with a 2013 average earning's day yet.

[JCKline]

Another dead day yesterday. Three good days at the beginning of the week, now it back to the bad days at the beginning of the month. WTF

[HuskyPup]

Second-lowest Page Views of 2013 on Saturday however an above average CTR and EPC generated an 88.2% earnings with 85.8% of it from the USA, the UK didn't turn up, they must all have been watching rugby or something else!

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday was another low earner. Makes five days in a row. :-(

[jost]

Win a photoshoot in NYC!

Really funny seeing this AD on my karate site, on someone elses bass fishing site, and on someone elses funny picture site.

WTF is google doing with their targeting? OR COMPLETE LACK OF?

I havent heard any explanation from google as to why CTR has been cut in half for people that were *NOT* affected by their change, and still show arrows on all their ad's.

Profits still down 50% (all my sites still show the google arrow, so they are full of #*$!)

[Play_Bach]

The lowness continues...

[Play_Bach]

High invalid (?) click count and near record low CPC yesterday resulted in another dismal earnings day. Good thing I spent all day in the pub celebrating St. Patricks Day!

[jost]

Play_Bach - high invalid click count? Is this a guess on your part or is there some google number im not aware of that shows how many invalid clicks you are getting?

[HuskyPup]

Lowest page views of the year at 65.4%
Lowest click volume of the year at 50%
Lowest earning day of the year at 43%

Nope, there's absolutely nothing wrong with AdSense whatsoever!

[Play_Bach]

Play_Bach - high invalid click count? Is this a guess on your part or is there some google number im not aware of that shows how many invalid clicks you are getting?

@jost - I'm calling any clicks worth zero as invalid. Yesterday I had a bunch of worthless clicks from countries other than the USA (where I'm based). I don't know why AdSense didn't like those clicks, but as far as I'm concerned, they're invalid.