Help me figure out, is legit traffic down or not?

[csdude55]

I'm comparing numbers in Adsense since 2012, and I see a lot less traffic than a few years ago but my money is actually about the same. So I'm hoping that you guys can advise on whether you've seen the same increase in RPM, so I can decide whether I need to change my marketing strategies, or if the lower numbers are a result of improved server security.

I understand that we can't discuss actual Google numbers, so instead I'll use percentages, with January 2017 representing 100%.

Jan 1-9, 2018
Pageviews: 650,865
Impression RPM: 100%

Jan 1-9, 2017
Pageviews: 738,369
Impression RPM: 76.8%

I used AdX from 2014-2016 (and part of 2017), so the next month I have is 2013:

Jan 1-9, 2013
Pageviews: 1,246,819
Impression RPM: 51.2%

Jan 1-9, 2012
Pageviews: 1,237,501
Impression RPM: 43.9%

Jan 1-9, 2011
Pageviews: 1,315,832
Impression RPM: 41.5%

So you see, even though my pageviews so far this year are almost 1/2 of what they were in 2012, my revenue is only down by about 8%. And as compared to 2011, my revenue is UP by 54%!

Can you guys suggest whether you've seen a similar increase in Impression RPM over this period of time? If not, then maybe this is just a reflection of my improved server security? I'm hoping that it's the latter, but it's hard to bank on that.

[csdude55]

I should also mention that from 2011 until now, I've moved my servers to Softlayer, I implemented CSF firewall and began blocking most non-US IP addresses (to prevent scammers and hackers), and in my PHP code I started manually blocking users that were trying to plug in MySQL parameters in the query string (eg, trying to hack the MySQL database).

I have no clue when each of those started, though. But as an example, just yesterday I blocked 125 IPs that were trying to plug in MySQL parameters; had they not been blocked, I have no idea how many pages each one of those IPs would have tried to view. But as bots, I don't know if Adsense would have recognized them as a pageview, either.

[topr8]

if the bot doesn't call the js then it won't register as a page view, i doubt mysql injection attempts count as page views for adsense.

[csdude55]

I would think the same thing, but I included it here just in case. I really don't know if they were bots or live people.

Even with non-US IPs blocked, I still have a few scammers a day to create an account on the site and post either a classified or message board post. God knows how many were there before I set up the firewall and started blocking non-US. So I think these are real people, and they could have easily been trying the MySQL injections (thanks, I couldn't remember what that was called last night).

600,000 pageviews /month from fake users seems like a lot, but since the money hasn't really changed I'm tempted to believe that...