February 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

January was a mighty rollercoaster for many, surely February won't continue in the same vein?

[nubchai]

Red Bar already sheesh

[RedBar]

Hahaha ... I just noticed that too!

[RedBar]

Whooooops, here we go again, USA PVs inflated way beyond the reality, WTF is going on?

[jbayabas]

Every day I'm excited to work because I love what I do but when you don't make money it is useless.

[Ebuzz]

@ jbayabas

It's sad that it has come down to this, but for many people, my advice is - you have to do what you have to do. Get a job if Adsense has dwindled down to that point where it is useless. Take down all the sites that don't make you money, and just focus on the few that do. Concentrate on them. Explore all the options you have, like other ad networks or other monetization methods. See how you can improve the sites in any way, with Panda and Penguin in mind. There is no shame in getting a job. I went back to work several times in the past few years....

[magician]

Adsense is reporting almost 100 times PVs and impressions w.r.t real numbers. It has screwed up all my reporting metrics from RPM to CTR. I thought it's a one off incident but now it has continued for far too long. Everyday the problem is getting worse. Not sure why it's happening with just one site though. Only respite is that it's happening for everyone.

[koan]

Yeah it's happening to me also and I can only hope they'll be a clean up one day because it completely messes up my stats. Are they under attack? Or are we?

[RedBar]

Needless to say that my stats look silly as well with way over-inflated PVs from the USA and Canada.

Are they under attack?

At the moment it's only happening to me on one site and that site has approved "Matched Content".

Have they triggered something?

[nubchai]

Red Bar are you using Matched Content on that site? It would be interesting if that was related to the inflated PVs etc.

[RedBar]

Red Bar are you using Matched Content on that site?

That's the interesting thing, no I am not however the offer is there.

Here we go again, PVs have suddenly soared within the last hour only on that site and, again, they are showing from the USA.

[netmeg]

Two days ago I removed all ads except for the leaderboard (across the top) placement on all the sites. Now it's WAY too early to know if this is a trend, but... ever since I did that, the inflated pageviews have gone away and RPM has gone through the roof. Just sayin. Might be worth a test. But I won't call it a success unless or until it maintains for a few weeks to a month.

This is one suggestion you will probably never get from AdSense, ork ork

[EditorialGuy]

Netmeg: That's interesting. For what it's worth, our site is doing very well with AdSense, using just one ad unit per page. (On the few occasions when I've tried two ad units per page, the extra ad hasn't produced a significant increase in revenue.)

[netmeg]

it kind of stands to reason that if you limit it to one placement, all that will go there is the best paying ad available. But like I said, it's early yet.

[RedBar]

I wish that were true netmeg however I have several sites all of which have only one responsive ad per page and many of the click values are simply diabolical but, as we all well know ... YMMV!

[C0DeZeR0]

Today is more Bad ,, what shall we do for now around 2 months useless work with adsense .

[Ironside]

There are countless blogging posts that talk about using minimal AdSense units of the page. Like people have said, the theory is that if there is only one then that is the one people will go for. That said, if you have written an interesting article that somebody is going to read from top to bottom then it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever not to put at least one ad further down towards the end of the page, or directly at the end of the article.

[watesh]

Google AMP is now live, expect changes in mobile search ranking in the coming months. It works so much better than Instant Articles. I wonder how AMP works with adsense

[TheWebGuru]

There is something seriously wrong happening here!

I have spoken to YouTube via email, and after giving me the usual generic response, they directed me to Ad-sense support.

I have sent an Email to Ad-sense (Including a screenshot) though, have heard nothing from them so far.

We are heading towards the end of February (February is usually my best month) and my ad rpm has totally flat-lined!

We all know that January is the low Month of the year for the majority of publishers, though, this happening in February is a bit odd.
All we can do is wait it out to March, and hopefully this turns out to be just a glitch that lasted for this month only.

[nubchai]

Thanks Red Bar. I also got the offer for Matched Content for one of my sites but didn't see the value.

[koan]

TheWebGuru, that glitch has lasted a year for me. That said, it's Adsense, not Ad-sense. Sorry, it's bugging me.

[Bram_H]

It's correctly spelled Sadsense nowadays.

[MrSavage]

This might be good for a chuckle. Yesterday, this: 1,407.9% vs. the same day last week. No, this is not fabricated. It's actually quite comical and rather insightful. Anything that can experience that type of fluctuation is a bit F up in my books. Imagine if you owned a restaurant or business that had those bizarre fluctuations.

[RedBar]

It's correctly spelled Sadsense nowadays.

No! It's MadSense:-)

[Ironside]

Pretty good days earnings for me yesterday, certainly not complaining here. You guys should try the 300 x 600 unit embedded within the text in your articles, they seem to be outperforming all other ads on my site.

[RedBar]

Wow, inflated PVs going for it today especially on mobile and tablets.

[Whatagreatdayitis]

I need some advice. Will my Adsense earnings be penalized by Google if I split off a few hundred pages from my existing 3500-page website and create a new website? In order to avoid duplicate content I would probably wait a month or two before putting ads onto the new site and make sure the spun-off pages are completely removed from the old site. The important thing is to avoid duplicate content, right? Any advice here would be appreciated.

[netmeg]

The AdSense implications are probably minimal; if you want organic or SEO considerations, you should probably ask in the Google SEO forum.

[trebuchet]

@Whatagreatdayitis, I did much the same thing when I cleaved a large site into two smaller sites. Provided you avoid duplicate content then there should be no Adsense problems. SEO is another story. I fiddled around a lot with redirections but it still took my newer site 2-3 months to recover its organic traffic. Needless to say there was a downturn in traffic and earnings in that period.

CTR, EPC and RPM remain pitiful. I didn't think they could fall much further, yet they have. February RPM is 40% of the previous five months and only 70% of January, which was a poor month. Next step is to take a look at raw clicks vs. paid clicks. If I find the disparity has widened then I'm going to contact G with some questions. March is traditionally my best month but the current situation is ominous.

[MrSavage]

Adsense is tinkering on being dead to me. Been involved with this for 10 years+. I've been fortunate to be invited to Adsense in your city in the past. I think at this point, what's online, stays online, but it's otherwise it's just dead weight. The optimism is definitely going away very quickly. When I see what I've made in the past 30 days, it's just absolutely beyond comprehension.

I read a quote from a guy who was responding to an ad look for website help. The pay being offered was comical. So much so, that one of the respondents said something to the effect that they would rather shovel horse S for free, all day, rather than work for the guy at that pay being offered. It was quite a colorful way of expressing their feelings about being insulted about their value. I'm almost there. There is no question to me, but the win has to be clearly on the advertisers. They must be so safe, that the people like me who are currently experiencing abysmal earnings, are giving up website real estate to display the ads that would make shoving horse S all day for free a viable alternative. I know it's not everyone facing a sad state of affairs, but by no means is this something that I would bank on even if I was continuing to rake it in.

[RedBar]

Good morning red bar, fancy seeing you being displayed, did I miss you yesterday?