New responsive design - low earnings from the first day

[Papabear1]

Hi everybody,

i just updated my website from a static to a responsive design and of course also all my Adsense Ads.
Its the first day today and my earnings went down for more than 60%

All plattforms, desktop, mobile and tablet have a lower CPC and a lower CTR. The Design itself didnt changed much.

So my question is, if anyboy had the same situation after updating to responsive webdesign and Adsense?

Thanks for your replies!

Kind Regards!

[roshaoar]

Just one thing though, traffic over the Christmas period is a bit weird. Comparing today and yesterday is perhaps not the best comparison. Are you able to factor in comparative stats from the same period last year?

[Papabear1]

Yes, the last two years, the earnings after christmas were stable. Not with the Responsive Design and the Ads.

Im just a bit unsure, if I should make a rollback to my old static theme or just wait a certain time... Maybe Adsense just have to be calibrated.

Did somebody, who changed to a responsive design recognized the same CTR and CPC Drop?

[Swanny007]

I think you should wait a few weeks at a minimum before rolling back. At worst tweak a few ads but this is the absolute worst time of year in my niche to start messing with ads and get measurable results.

[not2easy]

Google needs to read and evaluate the new css in order to determine what ad sizes can be shown. I would definitely plan to wait a bit just for them to digest the changes. The first ads I saw showing up after new RWD changes were not sized properly, some had the links beyond the size of the container. I still see that new changes need several page loads before they figure out where their limits are.

[netmeg]

I moved six sites to responsive a couple years ago. Slight dip for a couple of days, but within a week it was all back to normal.

[Multimastery]

I'd suggest to give it at least 2 to 4 weeks to make any final judgments.

[levo]

Depends on the implementation. If you have identical targetable channels on both old and new versions, it doesn't fluctuate much.

[MikeNoLastName]

Keep a close eye on it, but, assuming YOU'VE done everything right and tested it on multiple platforms, I would say from a lot of experience that this is normal. It also depends a lot on your overall traffic volume. G can take a while to acclimate to new ad options/sizes. From my experience about 100-200 add servings in each position, but may be as much as double that. If you have a high traffic page these can go by in less than a day, otherwise it may take longer. It appears to learn from past experience which ads do best on a particular page and in a particular location, so initially it tries a lot of random different ads in each position and compares and optimizes each for best CPM. Not all ads/advertisers are available in every ad format, so it has to start over when you try a new size. When newly adding responsive mode it is the same as switching to a new ad size for that position (for the sizes which weren't there before), so G must start out by trying mostly new ads and going all through the optimization process again.

[Papabear1]

Thanks for your reply.

my Site has a lot more of ad serving within one day. But nothing happens. CTR is a little bit up, but CPC stays down....

[Papabear1]

Hm...CPC stays down, anybody who has experienced the same after changing to Responsive Design? If yes, how long did it last?

[johnnie]

Are you using new ad units? perhaps your old units were placement targeted by advertisers?

[eek2121]

Remove December 21st through January 3rd from your results. Christmas does crazy stuff to traffic. My traffic was halved that entire period.

[Papabear1]

Yes, same channels, same ad code. Placement was not enabled ()=)

Traffic is not the problem. Traffic increases, but CPC is devided into half after update to responsive design =( I have no idea why...

[RedBar]

My responsive sites do well, are you still struggling?

[Papabear1]

RPM is a little bit up, but my CPC is still low...
But maybe reffering to the "January 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations" Thread its normal Januar 2015? Just dont know...

[spook2992]

I thought I read somewhere (maybe here) that after a serious redesign and putting new ad codes in, this is to be expected.

The reason being that Adsense takes a while to recalculate your "worth" or something along those lines.

Something to think about, try not to panic.

[RedBar]

Papabear1 to be honest my CPC has been all over the place this last week, from the USA alone I have had daily average CPC fluctuations of 53% to 133%, way out of my norm range especially the lower end.

[Papabear1]

@ spook2992

Thanks for your reply, I think too, that Adsense has to recheck/ calibrate my website. You are the first who estimates the same or heard something about that issue.

But its hard to get the RPM cut into half...

@ RedBar

Yes January is not too good this year. Last year it was a lot better.

[nellyville]

Dear Papabear1,

I have the exactly same problem. I changed my design to responsive and the cpc fall down 50-60%. Did you find a solution or did you get your old cpc back ?

An answer would be very helpful and i would appreciate that very much.

Regards

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld nellyville

I don't believe it is a responsive issue since my responsive sites are doing fine WHEN Google serves decent and related ads plus my regular sites' EPCs are also all over the place as well with the USA still being the biggest offender.

[mikes]

Hi Papabear1,
Same problem here. Site has been clicking along with consistent daily revenues. Yesterday afternoon we published a 100% new responsive version of the site. Same ad units (fixed size, not responsive), same content, but different (responsive) layout. Today's revenue is near zero.

Site is showing ads, and AdSense is reporting impressions (slightly higher than daily average, over 2000 impressions so far) but no clicks (normally we'd have 10 or 20 by now).

Panic level rising.

[Ebuzz]

I am just curious, did anyone roll back their responsive design? Or change the design (and lose more time and money)? Probably won't get a response here, but this is obviously a widespread problem.

Earnings dropping 40-80% overnight is NOT normal.

[jetteroheller]

I changed to a responsive design with CSS. Depending on screen width 5 different layouts.

Surprise, AdSense and Analytics show nearly no change in visitor behavior..

[Sillysoft]

Doesn't changing your layout potentially cause you to lose your positions in SERP, at least for a little bit until Google can spider your new pages? That is what happened to me. I updated to a responsive layout, kept the same synch ads, and first day or 2 I actually saw an increase of traffic and earnings, then for almost a week everything plummeted, then everything went back to normal. Though in hindsight I wish I did A/B testing then just moving to a responsive layout.

[Papabear1]

After changing to Responsive the earnings were down, but after about two weeks they were up again. This was in December, but now in May the same happened again and it looks like they will stay low... :(