Coverage dropped below 70%

[ruggiero]

Just as the title says coverage dropped below 70% by the end of December and it still hasn't gone up. I have 2 responsive ads and matched content with ads. I see blank spaces frequently and strangely matched content doesn't show sometimes either. I'm not talking about the ads inside of it but the entire thing. Isn't matched content supposed to show all the time?

Please help because my revenue has dropped by 50%-75%!

[Unshiny]

Well, now I am further confused, as I would swear that when I looked at this last night there was a drop in Adwords impressions. Looking today I see:

Adwords Impressions January: 1,054,271. CTR: .30%

Adwords Impressions December: 945,547 CTR: .22%

Maybe it really is just a drop in ad value? <sigh> I really don't know what to think or do. We're a mom and pop shop here... self-taught in all regards.

Just since January 24 we have put some backup ads to a third party (Media Net) and that took away about 90,000 impressions since then.

[NickMNS]

@Unshiny you may have looked at the earnings by Ad-Network and today your are looking at impressions by ad network.

But once again you have no issue with coverage. I assume that your total impressions has remained consistent month to month, so your AdWords impressions has actually increased.

Your issue would appear to be a drop in ad-value.

[Unshiny]

@Nick, thanks. Yes, maybe that's just all there is to it. But Criteo and DBLCLK are also completely gone this month... weird. maybe not.

[NickMNS]

Criteo and other 3rd party networks are picking up all the unfilled spots left open by the "brand-safety" policy. All for pennies on the dollar.

[azlinda]

Did anyone else get this email from Google?

Subject: We’ve seen your revenue's dropped - we’re here to help

Get ready to boost your earnings
It looks like your AdSense earnings have dropped recently, and you’re missing out on revenue.
But don’t worry: we can help. Share the main reason for the slowdown with us and we’ll be in touch with some help to get you back on track.

• I don’t have the time or money to invest in ads at the minute
• My site traffic has dropped
• I’ve seen a decline in my revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) or cost per click (CPC)
• I’ve started using an alternative platform
• I’m having technical issues
• I’ve received policy warnings
• I don’t like how ads look on my site
• Other
Select the reason and enjoy our tips.
See you online,
The Google AdSense Team

[Unshiny]

I did not get that email, @azlinda, but I certainly should have got it from them - My revenue has dropped 60% over Jan 2017 for NO reason. Dropped more than that from last month (but arguably January is lower than Dec. always, and so forth....) <sigh>

If you don't mind me asking - did any of those reasons apply to you? Did you think any of their "tips" were helpful?

I certainly have seen a decline in RPM and CPC.

Thanks.

[azlinda]

If you don't mind me asking - did any of those reasons apply to you? Did you think any of their "tips" were helpful?

The only one that really applied to me was a decline in RPM and CPC. The bullets were all clickable links. I did not find anything that was helpful. The only reason they failed to address in this email is that ads are not showing.

Perhaps you will get this email from them. This is the first time I've ever gotten such an email from them. I didn't even get an email when on April 7, 2011 my revenue dropped 90%, and it never did recuperate.

[Unshiny]

Hey all...just reporting back that...even though my coverage never dropped that much...I *might* have figured out why our revenue fell. Go to your new google search console and look for excluded URLs. We probably had some canonical/nontechnical issues... fixed and....fingers crossed. Just thought it might help someone, I know we have all been going crazy,those of us who got smashed by...whatever we want to call this fiasco.

[renoirm]

I got a note from our Adsense rep. In 24 hours our ads should begin to start serving. I still saw 40% coverage yesterday. So fingers crrossed. This morning I am seeing ads but will have to do a deep dive in our site to make sure.

[danone]

hi guys all of sudden I receive email from my adsense specialist that they acknowledge this is a problem and they are close to resolving the issue he said. he will be back to me with solution in 1 week, once I got email from him again. I will let you know.

[renoirm]

Got same note on Monday from my Adsense Rep. Then today (Tuesday evening my time) got the note that in 24-hours my ad serving should be fixed. Yesterday looked at coverage towards evening and was 71%. Though over night in the 40s. So monitoring.

[X7RqH]

Same got email from rep that my urls that weren't serving as many ads are now ok. 24 hours laterr and RPM is back to November levels on day 1 of it being reinstated

[renoirm]

@X7RqH did you see your coverage go up or just the RPMs? Just trying to figure out what to monitor (RPMs is usually what look at) but I am hoping to see the coverage go back into the 90s.

[Unshiny]

@azlinda, @danone @renoirm and @C7RqH Many thanks to all of you for sharing. You can't imagine what a difference it makes to have some hope...even if my website issues are not identical to yours. I really appreciate it and will report back what happens to us.

Unshiny. :)

[renoirm]

@unshiny No worries dude. I literally was tearing my hair out working 24/7 during Xmas trying to figure out what the heck was going on. This reminds me I have to start going to pubcon again and giving back to the community. This thread especially @NickMNS helped us dissect, verify and then bitch to Google properly.

[jvmills]

Thanks for the positive news. Not currently seeing any improvement in the UK as yet...

[renoirm]

@jvmills note in adsense your rep. You can do it in the Send Feedback at lower part of left nav. Detail what you've done and give time and dates. We got a note back in 2-days to begin the conversation.

[jvmills]

@renoirm - yes I have emailed the adsense support - so hopefully will hear back. Was unsure if they were rolling out a general fix to this issue or addressing it case by case as publishers raise the issue. Many thanks!

[X7RqH]

@renoirm I could actually see the change on the site front end as I stopped getting spammy ads and got normal ads i see when i visit a high volume website.

Coverage went from ~75% to 95%, CTR and RPM ~ doubled

Those low quality ads definitely played a part as much as the low coverage.

[kelsheikh]

I don't see any kind of change whatsoever. What would the new new change be now anyways? Google sent out the same extremely broad email weeks ago to folks talking about a new Adwords bidding process and that all URLs wanting to display ads need to be crawled and indexed. I have monitored this since Dec 18th and don't see any other change since. My revenue has dropped 40% since. @renoirm / @X7RqH, are you referring to low quality ads from third party networks?

[X7RqH]

@kelsheikh I've made a few posts from page 7 of this thread onwards which explain what I noticed. The last post above was a reply to another user so without that context it might not make sense

Basically the short of it is - I noticed coverage and ad quality decrease from Dec. Last week my rep said your site will be back to normal after it was reviewed. Today and yesterday are 'back to normal' of Nov 17.

Please read rest of posts as i spent a bit of time writing them

[danone]

Hi guys as I promise to let you know that once I receive email yes I received an email now again from my adsense rep he said 'after review your affected pages regular ad serving in now affect to your affected URLs. No further action is required'. I checked my account and I confirm that my adsense inventory fully back where it was before 15th of December. it was lost 90% coverage of thousands of quality content, I don't know anyone that much affected but I hope that you will all see same result I wish whoever suffer on this update. @NickMNS have you seen any improvement on your end ?

[NickMNS]

Yes I have seen an improvement. The issue appears to have been resolved by the "review", but I haven't received an official response from support rep yet.

I think we owe @pubpolicycomms a big thank you, as I know that he was instrumental at elevating this issue within Adsense.
Thank you!.

And also thanks to everyone that contributed by sharing their experience and site behaviors.
Thank you!.

For those that haven't seen an improvement the advice to contact Adsense support is your best option.

[ember]

So do we know what it was? Why does having a site reviewed solve the problem? Sounds more like a glitch than a crawler/brand protection policy.

[azlinda]

Last week my rep said your site will be back to normal after it was reviewed.

Did you check to see if your site has been reviewed or are you just assuming it has been reviewed because you are back to normal? I'm asking because it's stating that my sites have not been reviewed yet.

[renoirm]

So day one after the "in 24 hours you should see ads serving as normal". Coverage is at 91% up from the 40% - 70% (usually on lower end). The quality of ads...meh. We getting PSA every so often and random health ads which don't convert into clicks for our niche. Link units give all sorts of random ads. Display better even in various countries.. Text ads still a bit weird. From my team and I looking at the ads on pages I think the machine learning algo is on and testing out which niche they should categorize us in. So kinda of like starting from scratch.

Our RPMs are 1/2 of historics but we are see clicks+ads. So right now it's a waiting game. I want to remove most of the other advertisers liek criteo, adroll but we cannot do any big change till we know revenue is stable.

[rokramne]

I got contacted by AdSense (I sent them an email while back about this issue) and they asked me about my content policy. I have users that create the content so probably they wan't to know more closely how things are.

My guess would be that they white list those who they see as good publishers like some here have already got their coverage up. I hope I will be soon white listed too!

[SEOPTI]

Where can you see if a site was reviewd or not?

[rokramne]

Yey, just got email that everything should be fine within 24 hours. And I can see already that there's no blanks.

[NickMNS]

My understanding of the situation is:

1- The "brand-safety" policy that took effect around the 18th of December is here to stay.
2- Websites that are begin impacted due to a side effect such as the traffic pattern I described can be reviewed by AdSense and then may be white-listed.

This is only my interpretation.

I expect that AdSense will likely make an some sort of announcement this affect in the coming days.

This is what I recommend you do, if you think that are impacted:
1- Objectively assess your website's situation, if you have crawl errors, if you use URL params or if any of the other items that were pointed out by AdSense you should address those issues first.
2- If that doesn't apply or hasn't helped, if you haven't already, contact AdSense Support.
3- The issue discussed in this thread relates to the "brand-safety" policy. Many people have posted here that they have been impacted by low earnings and spotty ad coverage but have not specifically been impacted by this update. So there is a chance that other issues are causing your problems.
4- If you have site where many visitors visit few pages, it is unlikely that this policy change is impacting you.

Good luck!