Prediction: May 2014 will be the worst month of all time

[avalon37]

So, it appears as though AdSense has permanently replaced the smaller circle arrow in the text ads with the much larger square version. I've seen it consistently across all devices and I don't think I ever saw it before on smartphones. This will have huge negative consequences for publishers that are opted into text ads. I'm already seeing a huge CTR drop as a result.

Unless AdSense changes this "switch" I predict it will be every publishers worst CTR month ever, and as a result, your worst month as a publisher adjust for traffic.

Google - unbelievable.

[scottb]

Jbayabas, I manage about 20 sites for clients and my own company with access to AdSense stats for most of them. They range in size from large to small and cut across various categories of content.

The largest one and one of the smallest both plunged around March as yours did. They are in two completely different categories, more than seven years old, have strong Adsense scorecards, strong authority, etc. Nothing changed about either site. They just dropped.

Adsense for the others hasn't changed at all. The size of the site doesn't seem to be a factor.

FYI, only the most sophisticated Adwords advertisers decide where their ads appear.

[edited by: scottb at 10:43 am (utc) on May 20, 2014]

[scottb]

Jbayabas, I manage about 20 sites for clients and my own company with access to AdSense stats for most of them. They range in size from large to small and cut across various categories of content.

The largest one and one of the smallest both plunged around March as yours did. They are in two completely different categories, more than seven years old, have strong Adsense scorecards, strong authority, etc. Nothing changed about either site. They just dropped.

Adsense for the others hasn't changed at all. The size of the site doesn't seem to be a factor.

FYI, only the most sophisticated Adwords advertisers decide where their ads appear.

[netmeg]

Sometimes I wonder that the ones who are not affected are low earners who don't have a big data to compare.

Nope.

There is an irony in suggesting and advising more investment of time in improving a website, adding content, etc for an apparent and "out of my hands" source of customers (people who click) which is paying less than ever.

Improving a business model and improving a website are not necessarily the same thing. If I was experiencing huge drops in AdSense (but my traffic was still more or less the same) then I'd probably start looking deeper into user intent, and why people are coming to my sites, and try to figure out how to attract more people who are somewhere in a buying cycle. If I can't, then maybe I start looking for a new business model and create a site for that.

The one constant is that things change. Niches can be saturated, or played out over time. Audiences change. Advertisers change. Everything changes.

FYI, only the most sophisticated Adwords advertisers decide where their ads appear.

Not entirely the case, but they're also the ones who spend the most money.

[jbayabas]

The largest one and one of the smallest both plunged around March as yours did. They are in two completely different categories, more than seven years old, have strong Adsense scorecards, strong authority, etc. Nothing changed about either site. They just dropped.

So does this mean we're screwed? Do you think this is only temporary? Do you think it will get better come November during shopping season? The 40-50% loss has been steady since March. On top of it all, the clickbombing that happened the same period got me paranoid every day. I comfort myself that at least it's not less than 50%, at least I still have Adsense. But damn that 5k a month deduction is hard to let go. My lifestyle has changed now and I lost confidence in my ability to earn money. The regret of leaving my high paying day job 7 years ago to focus on Adsense still keeps popping in my mind.

Im so depressed. Reading all your comments knowing i'm not alone makes me feel a little better.. just a little bit. *big sigh

[Ironside]

What number does the revenue optimisation scorecard go up to. Mine is on five at the moment, but this month has still been quite a bit down on previous months.

[blueweb]

Network revenues aren't growing very fast, but they are growing... 1Q14 partner network revenue has increased 4% from 1Q13.

From Google's 1Q14 earnings report:

Network Revenues - Our partner sites generated revenues of $3.40 billion, or 22% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2014. This represents a 4% increase over first quarter of 2013 network revenues of $3.26 billion.

[scottb]

Google partner share by year:

2005 - 44%
2006 - 39%
2007 - 35%
2008 - 31%
2009 - 30%
2010 - 30%
2011 - 27%
2012 - 27%
2013 - 24%
2014 - 22%

[Ironside]

Thankfully, my earnings are just pocket money for me, I don't rely on them to pay the bills. However, I have sort of got used to the extra money each month so it's a little bit disheartening when you're £150 down on the previous month. I know I shouldn't do it, but I do spend the money in my head before I got it, it's rather disappointing when that nice new watch has to stay in the shop :-)

[eek2121]

There aren't any tiers in Google Adsense and Google isn't stealing your money. What is really happening that most people pay no attention to is:

1) The shift from desktop to mobile devices, if your site isn't mobile friendly you'll lose TONS of revenue from this.

2) Your traffic drops. If your traffic drops by even 5% you'll see a reduction in earnings. If you have less than 20,000 unique visitors a month the drop could cause quite a large drop in earnings. I read someone's post earlier complain about their earnings dropping substantially, then later on they admitted that their traffic had dropped by 50%.

3) If your site has a lot of international traffic you'll have lower earnings (100 US visitors can generate more revenue than 10,000 from other countries depending on the niche)

4) Seasons/weather/shopping patterns can affect who is visiting your site and when.

5) If your site generates a lot of invalid activity you will find yourself smart priced. Google doesn't tell you when this happens.

[MrSavage]

With my bleak internal feelings about future Adsense earnings, I can only share what I've done.

I have completely allowed myself to set fire and smash ideas or websites that I've held onto. As mentioned by others, this game changes FAST. I haven't been moving as fast. Website or subjects that I'm passionate about largely have no chance in hell of succeeded in any way shape or form. Writing about something that will hardly get read is a WASTE OF MY TIME.

Ultimately and reluctantly I've let go of a great many ideas as of late. I may grumble here, but I'm moving forward on other things (yes, still related to making money online) that still keep this exciting to me. I had a great number of piece of crap ideas that have been hanging around that are now out of my life. I'm better for it. Afterall a website or a domain is not a big investment. I need to have more of a disposible mentality with this game. I've lost traffic and income in such a quick overnight manner than clearly this game is for the most part disposable, fragile and very much false. Relying on Google to provide is the biggest mistake that I ever made. It's not a person afterall, it's a corporation that serves one purpose. That's it, that's all. Can't hate on it.

With the drastic losses, a lot of people would have walked away from this venture all together.

ps. I love Adsense. I mean no disrespect to the people who work for Adsense. They are likely honest people who have a sincere goal of helping us succeed in the program. I'm sure all the improvements lately (no, not the beta testing on text ads that is making the internet ugly) are done with the best of intentions.

[Ironside]

There aren't any tiers in Google Adsense and Google isn't stealing your money. What is really happening that most people pay no attention to is:

1) The shift from desktop to mobile devices, if your site isn't mobile friendly you'll lose TONS of revenue from this.

.

Agreed, this makes perfect sense and I have certainly seen this happening on my website. in many cases,

According to analytics, I had 1468 visitors using mobile devices,1252 using desktop, and 400 using tablets. Now I'm in the UK, but my website is a.com, nearly all my traffic comes from states. I would advise anyone who hasn't got a mobile friendly website to act immediately because the figures don't lie.

Now I don't own a mobile/cell phone, never have done. Having said that, I have done my utmost to make my website mobile accessible. I have a TapaTalk application so that people can use my forum from their mobile phone. I just a little bit concerned that some of these applications may discriminate against Google AdSense, not sure, but it is a worry

[wa desert rat]

I've tried to connect the dots here between the clearly declining partner network (e.g.: us) and the clearly increasing revenue for Google's own pages for months now. With at least three links to Google financials showing low growth qtr-over-qtr (or even negative growth qtr-over-qtr) for the partner networks since 2012 while advertising revenue from their own sites just keeps going on up.

I am not the only person in the world to notice this: [zdnet.com...]

Some Adwords advertisers may be able to choose where their ads go but Google chooses where most of the people who are likely to click on those ads go.

I'm only amazed that so few people in here - Adsense "partners" for years - don't bother looking at (much less analyzing) Google's own reports to their shareholdes and their SEC filings. That handwriting has been on the wall for some time, now.

It's not a partnership if one "partner" controls the game while the other "partners" spread chicken entrails around in an attempt to divine an answer.

WDR

[Ironside]

I saw some mention of 5K a month earnings somewhere on here before. Without giving away the website or any personal details, what sort of website would this be, and how many visitors a day would they be receiving?

[MrSavage]

I think there may be some credence to the idea that the declines in publishers earnings is related to increased mobile traffic that we are failing to deal with. That may be an oversimplification, but for now I'll work under that premise. Perhaps it's even part in parcel to Google not having the ad units or system in place for us to use. It may be cause for some hope that upward movement in revenue is possible.

As I've said, I'm moving forward and whatever I launch now will be responsive in design. I can report back if this is some magical strategic direction which turns around my faltering and brings me to that magical place of Adsense riches.

[ember]

It's not a partnership if one "partner" controls the game while the other "partners" spread chicken entrails around in an attempt to divine an answer.

It has never been a partnership. Google has always been in charge. It is a way for small publishers to monetize. In exchange for convenience, we give up a lot of control. It is what it is, and you either accept it or you don't.

[Ironside]

It's always been a bit of a worry regarding mobile devices. a website will never display the same as it will on large computer monitor where everything is exactly where it should be. I think that people probably click on Google AdSense without really knowing what they are when they are using mobile devices because they often appear first. Unless the mobile device is quite big, you've just got to put up with a bit of a messed up page.

[eek2121]

MrSavage, that's part of what i'm talking about. Making money with Adsense has never been as straightforward as slapping ads on your site and doing what you want. If you truly want to be successful at it, you need to be wary of your audience and be able to adapt to their needs. In this day and age one can't be a serious webmaster and not understand concepts such as responsive design, demographics, etc.

Ironside, my website renders beautifully on mobile and offers 100% of the functionality of the desktop version. It's all a matter of good design and the willingness to either dive deep into the technical details or find someone who can do the tech stuff for you.

[Ironside]

I use Joomla! for my websites which obviously makes it easier, I don't need to start from scratch, I just choose a suitable template and then simply put in my content. As far as I am aware the templates I am using are mobile friendly, they certainly state this on the website I got them from.

Unfortunately I don't own any type of mobile phone so I can't test my websites. I have to rely on online websites such as the one I have linked to. Could you tell me if this represents what website should look like

I cannot see how any website would display as it would do on a PC monitor if you are looking at your mobile phone in profile view, surely everything would be far too small to read.

[mobiletest.me...]

[jbayabas]

Eek2121, you have some good theories but this still does not explain the sudden drop of revenue in March. I can accept a gradual decline but a sharp drop of 40% is hard to understand. My hunch tells me Google has secretly reduced our revenue share from 60% to 50% or even lower than that. They can do that right? Because we are powerless to Godsense. :(

[ember]

Google has secretly reduced our revenue share from 60% to 50% or even lower than that.

My account still says that our share for content is 68% (51% for search). Has that changed in your account?

[Ironside]

The fact that the same thing has happened to all of us cannot possibly mean that the problem lays within one individual website, i.e. bad design that doesn't render on a mobile properly. I've been using the same template for quite a few months now and I've had absolutely no problems, I was earning up to £700 around Christmas time, I'll be lucky if I make £450 this month

[netmeg]

It hasn't happened to all of us.

[Ironside]

I am still on track for making a fair bit of money, after all it's only a hobbyist website so any money I make is a bonus. I'm not going to worry about this month any more, I'll just wait and see what happens next month, if it starts happening for the next few months then we will obviously have to look at the bit closer to the see if there is anything that can be improved to make things better.

[jbayabas]

Looks like Netmeg is the only one not affected. Lucky for you. Curious.. Do you have many sites? Are all of them doing well? Not one is affected? Are you a big publisher?

[eek2121]

jbayabas: It can be easy to put on the tinfoil hat and claim Google was committing fraud, but lets face it, they weren't. Google is a US company which means they abide by US law. Claiming they are giving the publisher 68% of revenue and then only giving 50% is a violation of many different laws in the US.

Also, not all of us were affected. My website had record growth in March and April, I am actually slow this month, but that is due to summer being seasonally slow for me (school is out. people aren't studying.)

An example of a couple of things that happened in march that can directly affect your earnings:

1) Coming out of a brutal winter, many people (including myself) got off the computer and went outside.

2) Malaysian Flight 370 disappears. The world was watching.

3) Russia invades Crimea. Many related events to that. The world was watching again.

Also, it's worth keeping an eye on international holidays. I'm not sure if i'm allowed to post URLs, if not moderator please remove, but this site has a lot of the international holidays listed for every country:

[timeanddate.com...]

[ember]

It hasn't happened to all of us.

Ditto.

[netmeg]

Looks like Netmeg is the only one not affected.

As I mentioned before - people who are doing fine don't tend to come here and bitch. People who aren't, do. Your sample is skewed.

Me, I'm up every year since I started. I'm not the only one by a long shot.

(All the rest of your questions are (once again) none of your damn business.)

[RedBar]

Perhaps it's even part in parcel to Google not having the ad units or system in place for us to use.

I'm confused by this!

I am gradually changing many, many sites over to responsive html5 and, on the sites I am retaining AdSense, I use two units the 320 x 50 at the top and 250 x 250 at the bottom.

Both render perfectly on desktop, tablet and phones and all have a better ctr than my many original sites. I've been doing mobile/responsive for years now and it is not, honestly, that difficult to do, if you've read this far and understand me, you can do it!

However the BIGGEST problem, from what I have seen is the LANDING page in my widget sector, my 46 year trade opinion is the majority are utter crap!

[RedBar]

Google is a US company which means they abide by US law.

That has to be the funniest thing I've read in a long, long, long time...do you really believe that Mr Naivety?

[hannamyluv]

Could you tell me if this represents what website should look like

Little known tool in Firefox is the Responsive Design Tool (Tools>Web Developer>Responsive Design Tool) It allows for you to change your FF Browser to different standard screen sizes, across mobile, tablet, desktop and laptop.