August 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[RedBar]

WooHoo ... Now my AdSense day starts at midnight UK time I logged-in to a pleasant surprise of PVs plus earnings this morning, I feel better already:-)

[edited by: martinibuster at 8:45 pm (utc) on Aug 2, 2017]

[MayankParmar]

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System: The following 31 messages were spliced on to this thread from: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4861128.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 3:46 pm on Aug 2, 2017 (utc -5)

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Slow start! Hopefully, it will settle by end of the day.

[edited by: martinibuster at 8:43 pm (utc) on Aug 2, 2017]

[MayankParmar]

Today is bad but still far better than what it was on 1st July.

[capulkit]

A bad start. A normal downfall as usual. August going to be really bad!

[NickMNS]

This is a first! This month my balance was higher than my estimated earnings (negative clawback). Only by a few dollars, but still it's better than a kita. July was down from June and May, this is likely due to a stronger CAD($) and summer traffic but overall still okay.

[netmeg]

Good start. I've never had a negative clawback, but this one was pretty low.

[Ironside]

I haven't looked at all the statistics. However, I had 898 clicks in June and 1234 clicks in July. However, I only made £20 more in July than June. I'm not going to make any alterations in August, I'll see what the figures look like at the end of August. It might be a case that adding the slightly more ad units has obviously increase clicks, but has resulted in lesser earnings.

[frankleeceo]

My clawback is at 6%. I did some major site changes last month that perhaps generated a bit of unwanted clicks from visitors that were not used to the new layout. I expect it to normalize toward 4% the coming month.

My adsense income is lower but mainly due to me loading other networks as first tier, with adsense itself as the passback.

Working hard and pumping out more useful content appears to be the best strategy for me personally. I have been dropping all the loser sites that take time and effort without generating income, and I shift those time to try to land on more winners.

[child please]

My clawback in July was the biggest ever. :(

[vegasrick]

What concerns me is the invalid traffic deductions.

June was my highest deduction yet, where it was 3.1% of my overall take - although it was my highest revenue month in 2 years so I didn't really worry too much. But in July it rose even higher, to 3.5% - although my revenue was about 800-900 less.

[RedBar]

I had a +0.94% credit added however that may be just the balancing out of changing from Google time to UK time, nevertheless around the 0% mark is still good.

[vulcanian]

Crazy clawback here in July - 42% (invalid traffic); educational niche site; it's the first time in the years (1-5% usually)

there were no changes to the design or ad placement, and there was usual traffic, despite two spikes from Google News and reddit

after researching we have only two ideas:

(i) Adsense now considers too many PVs and clicks from Google News or other 'good source' as invalid;

(ii) in mid-July there was a change from Disqus commenting system; we have a basic account and Disqus just started showing own ads below comment threads; so may be that their ads are conflicting with those from Adsense?

What do you think guys about our case?

[Ironside]

I think it's very easy to point the blame at Google when things are not going people's way. I am half expecting to see some of you guys to appear on Jesse Ventura's conspiracy theory. Have you ever considered that maybe it's just what's happening with your website? Three years ago I was bringing in £600 a month. However, it's less than a third of that now. Having said that, each month this year has been slightly higher than the previous, or it's very close. So even though I'm not making the big bucks any more, it's constant with me.

[azlinda]

Google decided to strip almost 1/3 off my end of the month earnings, and they show the reduced amount for my starting balance. They also show the same figure as the ending balance. So what they did, in effect, was strip almost 1/3 off my earnings as they were shown at 11:59 PST. This is a first for me in all my years with AdSense.

[netmeg]

I run the Disqus ads too, and have for several years without any problems or conflicts with AdSense.

If Google is telling you "invalid traffic" then you should probably look at the source of your traffic. Sometimes if you get a sympathetic ear at support, you can at least get a little guidance on where to look - such as a particular geographic location, or at a certain page or section of your site. I'd be spending time with my raw log files.

[breeks]

Earnings & Observations thread is the same every month :)

Lowest of the low.

Rubbish start to the month.

Adsense is way down.

Recovering for me.

AdSense stats stopped updating.

So far not looking too bad.

Earning looks amazing today.

Miserable, but full of garbage.

Worst RPM day in at least 5 years.

Today looks okay.

Rocking weekend on Adsense!

Diabolically pathetic here.

My CPC dropped drastically

It looks like today might be a good day.

[CommandDork]

Let's see how many phrases we can legitimately use by month's end. Go!

Today looks ok (for me).

[Beam]

Got a solid earning from last month despite a #*$!ty start. But overall, it was 40% better than June :)

[Beam]

A good solid start for me compared to the beginning of July.

[MayankParmar]

Good start. 40% more than 1st July, 2017.

[jbayabas]

My clawback is 6%. That is huge. That's concerning.

[tehreemumar]

Hello all my earnings for july 2017 has deducted 10% as an invalid traffic for adsense content, will there my account safe ? any suggestions?

[MayankParmar]

Hi, tehreemumar! Welcome to Webmaster World.

IMO, 10% wouldn't create any problem and your account is safe.

[glitterball]

Tiny clawback for me (less than 0.5%) - though July earning were pitiful anyway.

[iwrkalot]

You know, I've never looked at how much was held back for invalid traffic. Is this what you are calling "claw back"?

[Ironside]

When people talk about clawback I assume you're talking about the difference between estimated earnings and finalised earnings?

Unless we actually know your estimated and finalised earnings then telling us your clawback percentage is really meaningless.

And you say 6% is huge? I find that hard to believe. My clawback was about 4% which turned out to be about £7 less than my estimated earnings. Certainly wasn't huge at all, slightly more than I'm used to, but certainly nothing to make me angry.

I suppose it depends on what you define as huge. 6% of £500 is £30 which means you would receive £470. I wouldn't particularly class that as huge, I prefer the £500 though :-)

[netmeg]

Unless we actually know your estimated and finalised earnings then telling us your clawback percentage is really meaningless.

Point taken, but if it changes significantly over time (either going up or going down) that tends to mean something. And for those of us with seasonal sites, time of year means something too. I'm pretty happy if I can keep it under 2%, whether it's a five figure month or a three figure month. That seems to me to be a reasonable figure. When it goes higher, then I start looking at what has changed.

[netmeg]

Yep. There are several kinds of clawbacks. Sometimes you'll check your account and see one set of figures, and then you check a little later in the day and see it's been adjusted down - that's invalid activity that was detected right away. Sometimes it gets detected within a day or two of its occurring, and then there are the finalized numbers at the end of the month. I've always thought that some clicks take longer to verify than others, and this pretty much proves it. I know it's true on the AdWords side.

[RedBar]

WooHoo ... Just had a $3.60 mobile click, that'll make up for the diabolical EPC yesterday.

[rspwfaq]

June and July were both very strong months for me, which was a nice change of pace for the year, mostly because of improved performance on mobile ads and working out the kinks with Wordpress. In fact, I switched to the new Native Ads last week for my mobile version and earnings shot WAY up everywhere they appeared, like double the usual amount. They're really carrying the load for the site right now. So kudos to Adsense on that one, even though the Matched Content thing was a complete bust for me and Ad Balance seems to be a non-starter.