January 2018 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[ivok]

Happy New Year !
I wish you have high CTR, CPC and RPM throughout the year!

Let's start the discussion about the January earnings :)

[kelsheikh]

In all the years with AdSense today is the first time I have ever noticed errors. Cannot find "localhost:8080".

Yea Im seeing errors as well. I'm guessing we all have to make sure nothing gets requested from a development environment now.

[Maximum44]

I looked at the coverage for jan - april last year, it was horrific until late march. Got down to below 60% at times. Anyone remember if anything was going on then?

[Cyril TechWebsites]

It looks like we all started facing with crawl errors (me too) in reports, so it's an overall issue. And it seems like when Adsense team told that the issue with blank ads is happening due to crawl errors - it seems to be a half-true (I'm pretty sure they just made some changes to the algo and now we are all need to wait until the bot re-crawl every website or something in this way). I used to understand Google spoke person's statements in the "vice versa" way and most times we need to do the things in the opposite way they are recommend us to do. The fact that a lot of us don't have any problems with crawling, but still seeing blank ads - only confirms this.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@NickMNS +
....
The more ads shown, the more revenue.
....

Thanks for answer, Nicky, but I can't agree with that. Because of such huge amount of publishers, now you don't need to pay $2.5/click to show your ad on 1 website - because of such publishers boom you can now show the same ad on 5 different websites and pay only $0,5/click to each of these publishers (and even get more traffic staying with the same budget). That's my opinion and I don't pretend it to be true.

[Ironside]

What's everybody's favorite size ad and best position? In the last few days, it's very difficult for me to pinpoint which ones are working best for me because everything is basically fallen to pieces.

[MayankParmar]

@Ironside 320x250 on mobile above fold. And 336x280 anywhere between the contents.

[anzsub30]

@Cralamarre where adsense crawl report can be accessed?

[CommandDork]

@anzsub30, it's under Settings > Status > Crawler Errors.

Funny enough, mine's not showing any errors today.

[anzsub30]

@CommandDork thanks! I can see the report and it shows "No Data" for me

[Cralamarre]

I have 5 more crawler errors in the report today. Four of them are typos in the URL, and one is actually for a jpeg image on one of the pages. Why would AdSense try to crawl an image?

If I'm going to see new errors every time someone makes a typo, it's going to be a very long list. But at least it will be completely useless,

[sdksjdksjd]

According to this error report ad-crawler acts same way as search-crawler. It follows links on web.
I have errors, showing broken URLs. Such URLs appear on spammers resources, when they scrub content by poor written scripts.
Why ad-crawler is following such URLs?
I have nothing against such practice (showing such URLs as a possible(!) errors). The problem is, that every time you ask support about something they point such errors as something you need to check. So, it takes one more message and more time accordingly to focus them on the real problem.

On the other hand it's possible they made ad-crawler proactive. From now on it crawls pages following URLs in search index, not waiting request to crawl on page visit.
However at moment I don't see any changes for good. Total of contextual ads is three times lower comparing to November. Total of Personalized ads is about the same.

[Cralamarre]

@sdksjdksjd, that's an interesting point, that maybe the AdSense crawler is now crawling URLs it finds in the search index rather than waiting for someone to load the page. That would explain the sudden rash of broken links in the error report.

My AdSense earnings seem to have returned to normal, or at least pretty close to normal, this week. Last week was a disaster, but this week has been better. Pretty soon I'll be able to afford fries and a drink with my McDonalds hamburger.

[Cralamarre]

Actually, AdSense is doing very well today so far. Anyone else seeing an improvement?

[nubchai]

Help. Do you include this line in robots.txt:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow: /

Or do you delete it to allow crawling?


From Google online support:
If you’ve modified your site’s robots.txt file to disallow the AdSense crawler from indexing your pages, then we are not able serve Google ads on these pages.

To update your robots.txt file to grant our crawler access to your pages, remove the following two lines of text from your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow: /

This change will allow our crawler to index the content of your site and provide you with Google ads. Please note that any changes you make to your robots.txt file may not be reflected in our index until our crawlers attempt to visit your site again.

[Cralamarre]

Mine doesn't have the "/" after Disallow, it's just blank.

[rokramne]

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Allow: /


I've got just some other domains in crawler error page. Like some proxy pages and adclarity.com

[Ironside]

I changed my layout around and it's difficult to say whether it's going to improve or not. The last few days have been horrendous. Today my page RPM is actually pounds 89 and my CPC is at 24p which is the highest it's been for the last few days. Biggest earning ads for me so far today is my 300 x 600 which I have embedded in the text on some of my articles. I think I'll just leave everything like this for the next month and see what's happening.

[azlinda]

No improvement here. CPC is in the pits, RPM is abominable, CTR is atrocious. I made less with AdSense yesterday than I made with them the very first day I put them on the site a very long time ago.

[nubchai]

@ Rokramne I guess what's confusing me is the Google infor says to remove those two lines altogether.

To update your robots.txt file to grant our crawler access to your pages, remove the following two lines of text from your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow: /

[RedBar]

CPC is in the pits

Same issue here since 11th January, running at about 50% compared to first 10 days.

[Ironside]

I had hoped media.net would be my saviour, however yesterday was absolutely terrible. I think I may just over one dollar from media.net. And I've got a nice little unit just above the main heading on each page as well as at the footer, two of the best places for advertising. I'm really thinking that it's all over for me when it comes to making money from this website. I need to create my angling site which I keep meaning to do. Since fishing is the most popular hobby in the UK I should have a good audience.

[MayankParmar]

Welcome back @RedBar!

CPC is in the pits here too! It was recovering but again the earnings dropped.

And why does even AdSense ads on AMP pages exists? It has -60% earnings than the normal page.

[papux]

Guys, i don't want to be the one that brings bad news in here but i spoke to "a friend" and "he" said to me that a more important change in GA algorithm is coming in March, so buckle up! Hope is not true.

[Cralamarre]

@papux With respect, unless you can offer more information than that, you're not contributing anything. You're just causing panic.

[MayankParmar]

@Cralamarre I agree, this is worse than Hawaii missile alert :P

[ember]

Papux, please do not spread rumors. Unless you can tell us who your friend is and what the update is, then please no more about some mysterious event in March.

[Cralamarre]

I know what's going to happen in March. My birthday is in March, and for a gift, Google is going to give me back all the traffic they took away last year for no reason! Yay!

[NickMNS]

There is a massive update scheduled for February when Google Chrome begins to block ads on sites that do not conform to IAS/BAS. But that is hardly a secret.

[Cralamarre]

@NickMNS Is that going to affect AdSense ads? I'm assuming no. In fact, I'd say Google is probably going to use it to block everyone else's ads except its own AdSense ads.

I just checked my Ad Experience Report in the Search Console and there's nothing listed, so I guess I'm good.

[edited by: Cralamarre at 7:28 pm (utc) on Jan 19, 2018]

[ember]

Adsense ads will probably not be blocked unless they violate the 30% density rule.