Severe Adsense revenue drop?

[Isa_Al]

Hello, Adsense is getting worse and worse for me so far in November, it's really bad, 0.05$ per 1,000 visitors. What's happening?

all the clicks are being removed and the CTR dropped from around 3.5% to 0.3%. I used to make a good amount of money form my 50k daily visitors, now I can't even cover the hosting costs with such revenue.

Anyone else suffering from this issue? it's mainly since the Algorithm update last August, and it's getting worse and November, especially today, it's terrible.

[CommandDork]

Depends on your industry but it could be the end-of-summer season and all of the advertising that goes with it. Maybe you'll see an uptick for the XMAS rush in a few weeks.

I've noticed a trend over the years for myself: once October/Halloween ends, traffic/earnings trend downward. XMAS may or may not add a little bump for year-end but its a year-to-year thing nowadays (the glory days of 2012 are long gone for me however). At the end of the day advertisers just don't pay what they use to for my particular audience.

I was fortunate to see some traffic return from the August 2018 update but it hasn't made a huge impact in earnings (yet). Maybe XMAS will be different.

[Isa_Al]

@CommandDork my sites are football/soccer sites ( I usually get more traffic during the transfer windows) but I have websites for years and my earnings range between 0.75$-1.25$ per 1k visitors on average.

But since August's major update, the earnings and clicks started to decrease and now in November, I am barely earning 0.05$/1k visitors.

I really hope it's just seasonal, but it's weird as I use Adsense since 2010 and never really had such severe drop in earnings.

[NickMNS]

What are your stats telling you? Have you checked your coverage? Are there any difference in RPM/CTR between device types? Have you seen a change in traffic from different Geo locations?

all the clicks are being removed and the CTR dropped from around 3.5% to 0.3%.

3.5% CTR tends to be on the high end of the range. Do you use link ad units? Do you typically see a high clawback at the end of the month? Is it possible that your are subjected to a "double click" penalty?

[Isa_Al]

@NickMNS Yes, the RPM/CTR dropped a lot as mentioned before.

I am using In article ads and responsive header ads where most of my traffic is mobile traffic. At the end of last month, Google removed only −€0.27 for Invalid traffic which is nothing, but the main deductions are made by live time for example after a few minutes of making1$ earning, the earnings drop to 0.5$.

Not sure what do you mean double click penalty?

[CommandDork]

The Double-Click penalty topic has been popping up here and there this year - here's one recent entry to get you caught up on...

[webmasterworld.com...]

[WhoKnows111]

I had great earnings until end of October and November experienced hard drop

Finance, very well paid niche - I see sometimes $0.00 clicks from US

Adsense -23% YOY, pageviews +73% YOY

Time on page, bounce, everything is green.

Maybe they are working on another 60% quarter growth?

[MrSavage]

I couldn't put into perspective how bad my earnings are right now. It's beyond comprehension. Downright embarrassing frankly. Certainly I've not put work into sites but the demise is nothing short of shocking. I mean, if you work at Adsense, how fun would that be when looking at the numbers? As a system, I'm sure the thing is just in the "who gives a S at this point" phase. I know some people are sustaining, and that's the way it has to be, but those who ran a model that were one person operations that thought organic traffic was sustainable are likely in the same boat. Ad blockers galore I'm sure as well. Afterall, who is not getting annoyed with pop ups, auto play videos, ads appearing as you read etc? I am that's for sure. Blame those big sites for the ad blockers at this point. Can't enjoy the web without.

[HowYesNo]

You have been smartpriced i.e. you are sending low quality traffic to the advertisers, that's why Google penalizes you. I experienced this 2010 with my biggest sports site, then many times after that on my different sites; my whole sites are ruined by smartpricing and never recovered. Try to experiment with ads, positions, colors, just 1 ad per page... if you don't get any good results from this, buy a new domain and start over. It's painfull proccess but you can't beat smartpricing.

[Isa_Al]

@HowYesNo I can start over again with a new domain, as most of the traffic isn't by search engines but by referrals and social media, but won't I suffer from the same issue again even with the new domain if the source of my traffic is the same?

[netmeg]

If your content is the same, and the source of your traffic is the same, yea probably. Some sites unfortunately are just a bad mix with AdSense.

[Isa_Al]

@netmeg Sorry for the delay, just somehow I missed the notification.

I am using Adsense for almost 9 years, since 2010, and I was always making a good profit with the same content and same source of traffic, mostly social media, without any issues.

The weird thing was the day Google launched the new algorithm, on the first of August 2018. After that, everything went wild and the earnings severely dropped.

[Isa_Al]

BTW just to mention one thing. After tracking the profit by country recently, I figured out that the major drop is from the 3rd tier countries, where the clicks are being removed or considered invalid for some reason. While the first tier traffic ( US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc...) they didn't get affected that much.

But the 3rd tier countries make a huge portion of my traffic, that's why I am feeling the profit drop. But not sure why Google is considering some clicks or traffic from these countries invalid/low quality.

[Th3g33k]

@Isa_Al i can confirm the cpc drop for 3 tier countries since most of my traffic is from india.I just hope it recovers soon

[Isa_Al]

@Th3g33k same here. The issue is mainly that they are removing the clicks or considering them invalid, even they are real genuine traffic.

I am starting to look for Adsense alternatives TBH, because the revenue is so low like that.

[Sissi]

After 12 years with Adsense, I have learned that pricing is about each Adsense account profitability which is measured by (Action= buy)/number of clicks.
You can have a huge number of clicks but if the user is not buying anything, remuneration will be accordingly low.
Quality of traffic is also correlated to the profile of the user/clicker including his location, a user IP from the City of London will pay more than one from Lagos.
The revenues of Google are mainly generated through Adsense, this means that some publishers are earning much more than in the past and they would not complain; or have we ever seen a forum with Adsense publishers complaining?
Times are over where cash is generated through putting ads around articles.
Find your niche and Adsense will reward you.