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 :)

[nubchai]

I'm simplifying but is one possible issue that our websites need to be successfully crawled by Google bots? I haven't received any messages of failed crawls.

[riccarbi]

Despite a very good traffic for January, for the first time in years, I'm seeing my best-paying slot (a sidebar skyscraper which has always paid amazingly well) completely, totally, utterly...empty, a depressing, desolate, huge white space....

Time to try affiliate, I guess...

[nubchai]

Also, I have the following lines in my robots.txt file:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:
#Begin Attracta SEO Tools Sitemap. Do not remove
sitemap: [cdn.attracta.com...] [Link to my sitemap]
#End Attracta SEO Tools Sitemap. Do not remove

Is this enough yo let the Adsense bot crawl my site?

Thanks.

[NickMNS]

@nubchai you do not need to explicitly give mediapartners-google bot permission to crawl. If you display AdSense ads the bot will crawl your site (unless its is prevented). The issue is not that, it is that the bot only crawls pages after they have been requested. This should not pose any problem for most sites as they have few pages that are visited frequently. The issue occurs for sites with many pages that individually are visited infrequently. According to the "brand-safety" policy AdSense will only serve an ad if the the page has been previously crawled so sites that have a large number of un-crawled pages will end up with a lot of blank ads. Furthermore, it would seem that un-crawled includes pages that have URL with many parameter variations, so in theory sites that use something like a session ID parameters could be fully exposed as almost every page request would be unique. Now I have my doubts as to whether this is in fact the case, but it isn't my situation so I have no way of testing it.

[nubchai]

@NickMNS thank you that helps a lot. I don't think that's a problem for me then,

[Cralamarre]

I think it makes perfect sense that AdSense should only be displaying ads on pages that advertisers would want their ads appearing on. If AdSense can't verify a page's content, ads should not be appearing. This is the same problem they had with YouTube, and many advertisers backed out of YouTube because of it.

AdSense caters to advertisers, not publishers. And really, that's how it should be.

[kelsheikh]

will only serve an ad if the the page has been previously crawled so sites that have a large number of un-crawled pages will end up with a lot of blank ads.

I wonder if those with a lot of pages and dynamic content will eventually regain coverage over time. If some old page that gets even one visitor a month gets hit, the adsense bot comes and indexes, then knows what ads to serve on that page going forward for every other visitor. The adsense bot only needs to visit a page once right? Am I correct to think this way?

[riccarbi]

I think it makes perfect sense that AdSense should only be displaying ads on pages that advertisers would want their ads appearing on.

The problem is not AdSense not sending ads on not-yet-crawled pages, I can live with it. It's that AdSense is sending low-quality, third-party ads which pay peanuts compared to good ol' AdWords' ones; and nobody has still understood why this is happening and why it is involving so many publishers. Is it a problem of website/page quality? Is it some kind of technical tweaking? Is it a change of policy and/or strategy on G's side? There are not enough active advertisers right now? Is it a bug? Who knows....
Something unusual is happening for sure; I hope it won't last long.

[Cralamarre]

I don't think it's a bug. I think AdSense simply doesn't have any good advertisers right now, and the recent policy change is an obvious sign that they're having trouble with advertisers. If that's the case, then hopefully the new policy will bring the advertisers back, just as it did with YouTube.

I'm in the same boat as everyone else. My earnings are down. But a) it's January, and b) it's happening to everyone. Unless you're seeing a problem with coverage on your site, I wouldn't waste time trying to "fix" this issue since it's doubtful that there's anything for us to fix, as the problem lies with AdSense, not the code on your site.

[NickMNS]

This just in: I received a copy of the email from Adsense support.

The problem is not AdSense not sending ads on not-yet-crawled pages, I can live with it. It's that AdSense is sending low-quality, third-party ads which pay peanuts compared to good ol' AdWords' ones;

So the stats definitely support what your are saying. It would appear that AdSense is not "not filling" the spots, instead AdWords is not bidding for the spot in the auction. So the result is "A" no ad if there isn't any 3rd party demand or worse "B" filling the spot with low priced, low quality ads from 3rd party networks. So as a result, you get garbage.

Now, there are a few things that I am really not sure about. What impact is Ad-Balancer having on this, it is supposed to suppress ads that are low paying so now if more of your inventory is pushed into the low paying category or even no-paying category. This means that it is blocking less crap and then even the AdWords ads will be showing low quality ads.

I'm really thinking of blocking third party ads and seeing the impact. My prediction is that it will decrease the coverage rate, but at least the filled inventory will be AdWords ads. If I then push up the Ad-balance I can offset some of the loss in coverage in hoping that low paying AdWords is better than 3rd Party ads.

[thecas]

Ember my current work will end at june and my salary is less than 1000€.
My idea of round the salary is only tale some money more. 100 euro per month for me is enough. I know how much provlem adsense could give to the poor webmaster but, 100 euro is really a reachable goal?

[NickMNS]

@thecas

100 euro is really a reachable goal?

Reachable, Yes. But not without a lot of work, disproportionately so. Go work serving tables or making coffees and you will be able to earn 100 Euro or more with far less effort.

[Cralamarre]

I just checked my site's coverage and noticed that one page has coverage of only 44%, while the rest are fine. I loaded the page up in my browser, and sure enough, no ads. Even the Matched Content section at the bottom is not appearing. Tried three different browsers, tried clearing the page cache, but no luck. The page has been around for years and is one of the most visited pages on my site, yet the ads are not appearing.

Coverage on the page was at 96% for all previous days this month. Today, it's at 44%. So there does seem to be some sort of bug.

[edited by: Cralamarre at 7:09 pm (utc) on Jan 9, 2018]

[ember]

recent policy change

What policy change?

[Cralamarre]

The policy change of AdSense now limiting ads on pages that have not been crawled. It took effect on Dec. 15th.

[ember]

Where has Google posted that? I didn't see an official notice about it anywhere. I think it's speculation at this point.

[MayankParmar]

That's the problem. Google AdSense is taking several minutes or hours to crawl my pages.

[Cralamarre]

@ember, NickMNS posted that he received the notice from AdSense today.

[NickMNS]

Yes I did!

I sent them back a series of questions that will hopefully clarify things a bit. I'm waiting for the answers.

[ivok]

After stopping Ad Balancer several days ago, coverage is normal across all Custom channels - 96-98%. Are you still experiencing low coverage ( no Ad Balancer )?

[ember]

NickMNS, what notice did you get?

[riccarbi]

Abnormally low coverage on my side. Never enabled Ad Balancer.

[MayankParmar]

@Ivok Yes, it's lower than what it used to be with 100% Ad Balancer.

[NickMNS]

@ember the exact form letter response that others received.

As part of Google’s efforts to increase brand safety for advertisers, AdWords and DoubleClick Bid Manager have adopted more restrictive bidding on ad requests coming from URLs that are uncrawled. This is necessary to avoid the risk of ads running on sensitive content.

[ember]

thecas, is that 10K per day or month? If it is per month, and the average RPM is $2, then you are going to need 60,000 pvs per month to reach 100 euros per month. That is 6 pvs per person, which is on the high side (I think the average is 2 to 3 pages). So you need a really engrossing, page-turning site or twice as many people. Both are a lot of work.

[Maleda]

I can confirm that I received the same email as Nick this afternoon after sending support an email several days ago.

[ember]

Mystery solved.

[ivok]

And the solution is...?

[Cralamarre]

"I can confirm that I received the same email as Nick this afternoon after sending support an email several days ago."

Curious, does the email specifically state that your site is sending ad requests from URLs that have not been crawled, or does it just say that the new policy may be what's causing your problem? It seems like you received the email from AdSense only after contacting them to report the issue.

[ember]

How long does it take the Adsense bot to crawl a new page after the page has been put online?