Traffic spike has left me with double click ads and cpm down 80%

[marko200]

I had a spike where traffic went up almost 10 fold for one day, due to google recommending an article I wrote in chrome!

Made good money that day but 48 hours later I've now got the double click ads and revenue has tanked.

The ad padding was 20px, increased this to 30px. Is there anything else I can be doing or should be doing? It's annoying as google caused this spike. Unless the penalty get's lifted in the next day or two it will have lost me money. This happened on the 29th - could it be something due to the end of the month?

[Dimitri]

more traffic = more "chances" of accidental clicks

The thing is, with the double click ads, if people are not validating their "clicking/taping" , it means they didn't really want to visit the advertiser.

By the way, just be sure to review your page layout, ensure that the ad placement is not misleading (adding a label, like "sponsored link" for example), that the ad is not too big on a mobile screen (making it hard to scroll without accidentally taping the ads).

[marko200]

Wouldn't adding a label make things worse as more chance of causing a violation? If google want's a label it would be better for them to add it.

I think people are just lazy, with one click of an ad most don't care that much to click twice and it's unexpected inconsistent behaviour.

My income was over 64% cpm, so seems strange that the double click has caused it to fall so much

[skaterpunk]

Wouldn't adding a label make things worse as more chance of causing a violation?

The opposite is true. [support.google.com...]

If google want's a label it would be better for them to add it.

I would rather have control over styling of the label to flow with my site, instead of google, e.g. text justify, font size, font family, borders around the ad…or no borders.

[Dimitri]

+1

[marko200]

Great, i'll put that in. Is it likely to help get the double click thing lifted sooner?

I only want genuine clicks and if it helps prevent accidental ones then it would be good, at the moment it feels like i'm missing out on genuine clicks.

[Dimitri]

You can read about others' experience of double click ads :

The 'double click' penalty
[webmasterworld.com...]

Double Click Penalty Duration
[webmasterworld.com...]

Double Click Penalty Help
[webmasterworld.com...]

About the "quality" of traffic you are sending to advertisers, yes, it certainly has an impact. Even if clicks are not accidental, if "too many" people click on links, but produce no effect on the advertiser's side, then "may be" Adsense is trying to "test" the real "interest" of visitors in the ad. Just a guess.

[marko200]

Thanks, yes I read those before posting this. It's been 2 weeks and not lifted, hoping it will be lifted after 4 weeks.

The spike probably was lots of low quality traffic so did way more harm than good, but just hope it will be lifted soon. Revenue down for 80% just like that is huge

[Dimitri]

That's why I dread any spike :) I am please when things are constant and don't change :)

[marko200]

Agreed, I don't ever want another spike. It's been 4 weeks now and still revenue is a fraction. Could this be forever now?

Seems such a shame after years of consistent earnings