March 2018 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[vegasrick]

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System: The following 37 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4885208.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 10:26 am on Mar 2, 2018 (utc -5)

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Is anyone else seeing a delay? I'm literally seeing zero clicks, zero CPC, zero CTR etc.

[MayankParmar]

Just a heads up. If your traffic from India is down today, nothing is wrong, the country is today celebrating Holi so this weekend will be slow :D

[andymorris]

stats stuck again today ?

[Maximum44]

I was just wondering about the CMS. Seems like a lot of you guys / gals use Wordpress. I built my own from scratch, but then I am a full time php programmer.

[Ironside]

I use Joomla! for my websites. Do you think the massive drop in earnings is related to the software I am using?

[Maximum44]

I don't know yet. Still asking around. Just trying to find a common denominator as many of you guys seem to have issues when we are not having any and vice versa. Thank you for letting me know.

[NeapTide]

I am using WordPress and there is no better alternative. Not everybody is an expert programmer and you don't need to learn programming to run websites. WordPress just serve the purpose well. And who said WordPress is slow? It is not slow. The themes or plugins that you use are causing slow down. All my WordPress sites when tested with Google pagespeed insights gives 90+ score for homepages and 75+ score for pages (both mobile and desktop). One site that still gives 90+ got 14 active plugins and it is hosted on shared hosting. Gets 5000 pageviews daily and has almost 1300 pages.

[Maximum44]

I am sure it is great. But it does start to look like an common denominator. I remember the days people used Frontpage :D

[Grapetimes]

I’m seeing a lower CTR today no change in my ads, anyone know why that may be?

[nubchai]

I had the lowest clawback ever last month ~ pennies. Cautiously optimistic about March.

[NeapTide]

I am sure it is great. But it does start to look like an common denominator. I remember the days people used Frontpage :D

Edited

[edited by: NeapTide at 5:38 pm (utc) on Mar 2, 2018]

[Peter_S]

I think Maximum44 meant Frontpage, the WYSIWYG HTML editor from Microsoft, not the front page of a site :)

[kegnum]

@NeapTide same here, without adsense my sites load in less than 0.5 seconds.

@Maximum44 I understand but it doesn't seem to make sense that we would all get hit overnight. If you are not having issues and many others are, it may just be a coincidence since most are using WordPress... My guess is that the reason you are seeing most of the people with RPM drops using WordPress is simply because most people are using WordPress.

In my niche we all use WP.. one competitor was complaining back in Feb that he was hit hard and lost 1/2 his rpm... for me it happened in Sept. The other competitor i am in contact with was hit, like most others in DEC/Jan.

All of this random unbalance seems to have start in or around April back when Google was having issues with ads on inappropriate videos. I have a feeling they got hit hard by advertisers leaving or the fear of the loss and they have been messing around ever since causing all sorts of chaos.

I also feel like we see Google as this infallible Godlike entity but it isn't the case... look at all the 1099 forms that went to decade old addresses. Look at all the people who's accounts were accidentally locked and had to "re-verify" with a pin. I remember a competitor telling me a few months ago his account was set back to day one...meaning it was as if he had just opened up his account that day. These are all very funny glitches that scream incompetence.

All of thees very chaotic problems seem to have happened fairly recently. I have worked with google for over 10 years and never saw any issues like this.. then all of a sudden it's happening constantly.

In 10 years the only issue i saw with them was when the dashboard stats were delayed by a few hours. My rpm would rise and fall a few percent but never for long and never so drastically.

"3 ads per page"
"as many ads as you want"
"now there are 100 rules about placing ads and we control all ads on chrome not just adsense"

All these changes scream desperation.

[NeapTide]

^^^ Add policy violation warnings due to 'auto ads'. Google made 'auto ads' which completely takes over how ads will display on your site and then Google issuing policy violation warnings to publishers for their own broken auto-ads feature. Now we got the proof here that this is happening and publishers are the only one who are blamed.

[MayankParmar]

Check this out, (survey images) [searchengineland.com...] WordPress is good, but it could be better. For example, in-built tool for AdSense ad, Caching etc :D

AdSense Ads in AMP pages does not slow down the site as much as they do in normal pages.

Blocking third party ads may be a solution?

[edited by: MayankParmar at 5:48 pm (utc) on Mar 2, 2018]

[NeapTide]

Please Google do not buy WordPress someday and destroy it. :|
It is doing fine without your invasion. And by the way AMP sucks.

[Maximum44]

I'm just glad i am not on WP. Seems there is a new hack to it every other day.

[riccarbi]

WP has nothing wrong. Of course, if you stuff it with messy templates, badly written plugins, and a gazillion of unoptimized images it'll become as slow as a drunk snail, but that's your fault not WP's. And, yes, IMHO you have to be a programmer (or at least to hire one) if you want to run a professional WP-based website.
About the reasons of this ADsense RPM drop, I guess we all have to stop making assumptions based on suppositions and not on facts. We simply don't know (al least most of us, AFAIK) what's happening with it, only Google (arguably) knows it. My idea, for what it's worth, is that it has nothing to do with technical reasons.

[MayankParmar]

Plus you should be on a good host such as Cloudways and Kinsta.

If this: [adrevenueindex.ezoic.com...] is correct, then nothing will improve this month.

[Maximum44]

There is plenty of wrong with WP. Just look at the version history :D

[Ironside]

If all this is down to some of us using CMS then I really don't know why. Like I said before, I'm using Joomla! and I always make sure I've got the latest version running. I am in a niche so my keywords rank me very highly and I don't have a shortage of visitors to be honest. So I don't know why what you are using for your website software should affect your earnings with AdSense. My AdSense units show perfectly okay like any other website that is not using CMS software.

I can almost certainly put my the climb down to the number of clicks I'm getting and CPC. When I was getting fairly good money I was probably getting twice as many clicks and the CPC was probably twice or three times higher than what it is now.

[NeapTide]

There is plenty of wrong with WP. Just look at the version history :D

There is plenty of wrong with Windows 10 because Microsoft keep shoving updates on daily basis and nag me.
While WordPress updates come once in a while and not on daily basis.

[kegnum]

Look regardless of how good or bad WP or other CMSs are.. im fairly sure it has nothing to do with adsense and why we are all losing so much money. This is 100% on Google's end and there is nothing we can do.

[MayankParmar]

There is plenty of wrong with Windows 10 because Microsoft keep shoving updates on daily basis and nag me.

I'm not sure what daily updates you are talking about, there are two feature updates every year and security updates on second Tuesday of each month, plus Windows defender updates.

I'm concerned more about WordPress plugins security than the core :D

This is 100% on Google's end and there is nothing we can do.

Yes, because Google dominates the web. Waiting for that one day when Amazon will announce their own contextual ad services.

AdX is performing better than ever, but the coverage is 80% for one ad, and 60-70% with two ads units, so Adx alone cannot replace AdSense, and Sovrn or PubGalaxy slow down the site! Media.net is just pathetic, the sales/support team who confirmed that he will get blank ads issued checked, today emailed me after and asked if there's any problem I'm facing - he was clueless, multi personality disorder probably!

[Ironside]

Google have got their fingers in all sorts of pies around the world. I know they make a lot of money but they are also spending an awful lot of money. Is it not conceivable to suggest that maybe they are trying to save money?

[magician]

My Feb earnings got the biggest clawback in last 7 years - massive 14%. My usual clawback ranges from 0.5 - 3%. No change in traffic profile - most traffic is google organic from US. Anyone else in the same boat?

[MayankParmar]

Is it okay to have 336x280 ad unit on mobile between content? It seems to be my highest earner in December, but I removed it as Google representative said 300x250 would perform better.

[Ironside]

336 x 280 fit perfectly on the larger iPhones and Samsung's I would presume. Because people are going for larger phones nowadays I don't think it's necessary to stick to responsive ads, you can use the fixed size ones.

[breeks]

February was up 30% over January even thought Feb was a short month. Unfortunately, January was down 50% compared to December.

[an2000]

Hi Everyone.
I runs a luxury website and something is very wrong with Google Ads. Before christmas I was getting advertising from Harrod, Net a porter, luxury brands. But so far this year it has completely change and I'm not getting any of that. Instead i keep seeing some prizeworld advert that keep flashing. And also some low rent advert that relates to nothing to do with my website.
I read somewhere that it might be a good idea to block those categories in Google Adsense, which I done. Now I wake up this morinng and no adverts are runing.
I also switched to Auto-ads recently. does that mean or affect anything?

I'm so confuse on what going on as my earning has tanked and i was needing the earinng to keep the website runnnig. In January i got just £85! Compared to when I was getting £850 from Google.
What is going on?

[NeapTide]

The era of free internet is ending. That's what going on.