February 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[Mentat]

January 2015 was not a great month for many.
February it's a short month.
On 2nd of February in US is the NFL Super Bowl and we all know that dreaded 14.02... :(

First day of February had a very low payment for me, the second seems to be worse.

Let's home Springtime is near...

[netmeg]

Apparently there have been some weirdities having to do with GWT and GA data over the past week; possibly having to do with an update.

[seroundtable.com...]

[AlexB77]

I have posted about this problem yesterday and also emailed Google about this, but have not received any response yet. I have 2 views created for one of my main sites and the second "unfiltered" view seems to be OK and shows all numbers for last Monday as should but my main view shows the drop for Monday down to only 40 sessions. Also GWT is in total mess, there was no updates since Saturday last week and only today there was minor partial update last Sundays data was added only, but most numbers are incorrect. As for AdSense, after somewhat positive week, Friday was a disaster and so far Saturday is not looking good either.

[RedBar]

Good grief, my US EPC has fallen to an all-time low of 28.8%, WTH is going on?

[breeks]

Best day of the month and year. My site(s) have nothing to do with Valentines Day but will take a good day when I get one.

[RedBar]

My lowest day EVER!

Page Views, Clicks, CTR all normal however EPC at 47.8%, obviously my RPM's been shot to hell, resulting in a 36.1% earning's day v February so far.

The USA contributed 21.5% of its average and was, obviously, its worst-ever day.

Whatever they've screwed-up they've done it royally this time. I sincerely hope that they got it sorted quickly otherwise I'll be joining avalon37 and removing AdSense.

And please, Google, no automated notices telling me my earnings were below those predicted, doh!

[ian_D]

@RedBar,
US traffic here (in the US) was way down yesterday with CPC <$1 (-35%) , CTR <1.5 (-60%)
A combination of it being Valentines day and a Saturday I guess.

Today CPC >$2 but CTR still <1.4 so probably another weak day while couples do their thing.

Stronger US dollar and cheap gas could be good for travel, bed n breakfast, family visits.... was much better when they were all snowed in.

[Mentat]

Real-Time bidding is back big time.
No more new campaigns to approve...

[Mentat]

Feb 16 Presidents' Day (Washington's Birthday)National holiday - so is this a long weekend ?

[ember]

so is this a long weekend

In the US, yes. Not a major holiday but can still slow things down.

[netmeg]

Banks and post offices are closed, but most people are still working.

[eek2121]

Ouch. Just got my lowest RPM ever with normal weekend traffic. Also, what's with all the suggestions on the right side of the adsense home page/dashboard telling me to optimize ads that were deleted long ago?

[netmeg]

I posted something about this. You never really "delete" ads, they just go inactive (because if they let you delete them, it'd probly mess up the reports or something) But they should let us archive them, and they should stop sending us suggestions about them. I've got hundreds and hundreds.

[RedBar]

3rd lowest PVs day of the year for me on Sunday, so far today earnings have already surpassed Sunday even though US clicks are extremely low at the moment.

[Mentat]

Monday was the best day of 2015.
Normal traffic and clicks, but great payment!

[RedBar]

Hmmm, ok, Monday was the best day of 2015 for me too however!

PVs way up and clicks nearly double average BUT continued poor US EPC, i.e. it was 44.4% of UK EPC and 57.1% of its own average which has taken a battering recently, meant that my highest day since last October, with half the clicks, was unfortunately not achieved.

[nascomedia]

Yesterday my CPC was down by 50%, now it's gone up by 50% with no changes whatsoever!

Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?

[RedBar]

Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?

That's nothing, a few days back I went down by about 75% and the following day up by 500%...it's utterly fubard for some of us and there's nothing we can do.

Oh...and where's the freakin' red bar today? Clicks have completely ground to a halt for me

[samwest]

While I don't rely on Adsense for revenue, I always used it to offset my adwords budget which was always a ratio of 2 to 1. So If I made $200 in adsense, I'd own $100 to adwords. In the last year or so, without any intervention from me, Google has managed to switch that ratio to 1 to 2. Now I owe Google every month for what amounts to no ROI thin air. Time to shut it down.

[ember]

So If I made $200 in adsense, I'd own $100 to adwords.

On the same site? If you are running arbitrage, they probably caught on and that's why the ratio has changed.

[AlexB77]

I agree with @ember and can confirm this too, as this exactly what has happened to two of my test sites, but it took them nearly 3 years with one of them and less than 2 months with another. So the conclusion is that G is paying attention to everything combined together and not only an individual parts of the system. According to the one of their AdSense specialist who has suggested to remove AdSense completely from the page that I was promoting via AdWords and keep it on all other pages as this can case a small penalty from G. So I did listen to him and done as suggested, but it took them almost 8 months before I actually started to see improvements.

[MrSavage]

Worst period ever.

[samwest]

They can keep their games. The golden days of the web are long dead. Every which way we move, we're penalized. BTW - it took them over a decade to "catch on" to me, but I don't understand why the penalty, I didn't have to buy adwords because I naturally ranked for tens of thousands of key phrases and didn't need any help from Adwords. I just thought it was the right thing to do by throwing them something. They sure learned to bite the hand that feeds them content and business. I'm now quitting BOTH programs.

Let's all switch to Bing!

[eek2121]

Samwest, they aren't playing games. You are and you got caught. I am doing alright with AdSense.

[Mentat]

The problem is there is no real alternative for Adsense ad there is no transparency.

Now you are fine, tomorrow you have a search penalty, and after 2 months you see that abruptly your CPM/CPC is halved!

Nowhere to ask, except that joke of "webmaster support forum".

[samwest]

Samwest, they aren't playing games. You are and you got caught. I am doing alright with AdSense.

You have GOT to be joking. "Got caught" doing what?
Google put Adwords and Adsense in place. Not me. I am simply a user and never heard of this ridiculous "arbitrage" theory until now. This is just how things played out naturally. I've discussed this with adwords account reps many times and never was this brought up as an issue. This boils down what THEY decided to pay me for placing ads and how bids have naturally been jacked up across specific niches. To accuse me of playing games is more ridiculous than Google's operations.
Typical G shill thinking, everyone is a criminal and needs to be penalized. If you're income is strictly from Ads, you're playing more games than I.

[marsradio]

Been in read-only mode for a long while on here. Thought I'd step up and say that this month and January are the worst of the worst for me. Been an Adsense publisher since 2004.
Also, I am getting the Red Bar today. Stats have been stuck for hours for me. Totally abysmal!

[Mike343]

Red Bar today!

[avalon37]

"Undefined is not a function" - thanks for the internal error message AdSense. One of these days we're going to see a message they really don't want us to see :)

[SEOPTI]

"Undefined is not a function"

hahaha this is a jquery of javascript error

[furshka]

Last few days, both AdSense CPC and CTR improved a bit. Media.Net is stuck at 1/4 AdSense RPM.