April 2020 AdSense Earnings and Observations

Here We Go Again Again!

[Pistoche]

---

System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4986142.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 2:40 am on Apr 1, 2020 (utc -5)

---

Things are all over the place for me. Since March 25ish, my Google Analytics sessions and page views/impressions don't match my other analytics tool (analytics tool is showing twice as many sessions as Google Analytics). The two analytics tools used to be fairly consistent before then. As others mentioned, CPC has halved since January, but my page views have quadrupled according to one analytics tool (and doubled according to Google Analytics). All in all I'm doing fairly well but something seriously weird is going on.

[Cralamarre]

AdSense had been improving for me over the past couple of weeks, but the momentum seems to have died. Earnings this week have been very low. Which is unfortunate because my website's traffic has largely recovered from the initial pandemic drop. So traffic is back but earnings are not.

[Mentat]

I'm reaching the flat broke target line.

I have in mine that REM song - It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

[Runfun]

The violations I mentioned at the previous page are all about text at some pages. Every time I read the content and nothing wrong with it, submit a request to check it and the violation is gone within days but it's still annoying.

The low earnings are also a benefit when advertising. I'm advertising more than before for less money each click. With a community lots of visitors come back so it's an investment for the future.

A future with being less dependant on Adsense. I guess Google isn't performing well these days: [cnbc.com...]

[gatormark]

Post-COVID-19 numbers are getting slightly better, but the realtime clawbacks are the worst they've been in 14 years of Adsense. So far today, about $50 in clawbacks...that I've noticed. Then I'll get hit with another 7% at the end of the month. $1000 in clawbacks seems like a lot.

[Saver]

Ouch dude, yea I've had a few $50+ shave days so far this month. Usually we only see anywhere from $5 to $10 removed from us at the end of the month. This is why this really all pisses me off, as my site has always been pretty amazing when it comes to non invalid clicks.

My reach out to Google; was to put more ads on my site and try Anchor ads. I simply can't reply back to that without losing my marbles on them so I am just going to leave it and face the struggle is real ;)

[seomotionz]

Post-COVID-19 numbers are getting slightly better, but the realtime clawbacks are the worst they've been in 14 years of Adsense. So far today, about $50 in clawbacks...that I've noticed. Then I'll get hit with another 7% at the end of the month. $1000 in clawbacks seems like a lot.

@gatormark Its the post virus effect or not (because many countries are still in the mess), I don't know. But today eCPM's are comparatively better than the previous days of this week and even the past of couple of weeks.

In my opinion, if you get traffic from US then probably you will see a rise in the rates.

[adrianTNT]

In last ~5-6 months I make around 5-10% of what I normally do. And I am working few times more than before.
For me, this started even before the CoronaVirus.

Maybe many new publishers getting approved means less earnings for the rest.

And clickfraud and clawbacks seems to affect AdSense globally.

At this point, their html code just slows down the site and is not worth it.

[worker]

I'm seeing the lowest 'Impression RPM' that I've ever seen. This leads to VERY low revenue so far today. Normally, it would be double what it is showing, if not more. Anyone else seeing very low revenue today or other stats indicating the stats are may be stuck or lagging?

[Saver]

So I ran a test...

I removed all responsive ads off my site and only put fixed sized ads, and well duders and dudettes, my RPM is back to where it was for the ad units I fixed in size.

If anyone else tries this, please share your results!

[deriklogov]

@Saver so is it up or down ?

[adrianTNT]

So I ran a test... I removed all responsive ads off my site and only put fixed sized ads, and well duders and dudettes, my RPM is back to where it was for the ad units I fixed in size.

This might be related to a certain reputation or RPM that your fix ad had, and maybe in time it will level up. I am not 100% sure but I think I did this too at some point.

[primax]

@Saver Funny, I had the same thing the other way around. I changed my fixed size ads last week to responsive ads and... well it climbed again (still not as high as before but its getting better). The funny thing is I have 90% desktop user.

However the last three days were kinda good. Hope this continues

Cheers

[Saver]

all the ads literally froze for like 8 hours and rpm's dumped into $2 range and made little to nothing during the 8 hour span, seems like a lot of invalid clicks lately, probably related to PPE products and emails that trick users to open them such as pdf stuff

im lost dunno what to do now, Adsense replies are absolutely pathetic and simply just anger me more during this whole situation heh

[Cyril TechWebsites]

My Adsense numbers are just dead. My first website in 2012 was about UFOs, ghosts etc. It was a fun for me those times. Then I started my tech websites in IT niche. My RPM for "ufos, ghosts, etc." website those days was around 0.5USD. My IT websites used to get up to 1.8USD-2.0USD RPM till now. Right now these days my RPM on IT websites dropped to 0,56USD today. So right now my earnings are the same as when I was creating fun content about funny stories on alien abductions, chupacabras and other fun things.

I do understand that the economic dropped drastically, but the last thing I'm afraid is the clawback at the end of the month. My experience tells that this would be in "Google's style" to make a clawback at the range of -50% this month. I'm pretty sure they will try to collect as much money as they can, they are in the same situation as all of the bussinesses around the world.

[Web01]

I still don't get why is sport website getting the lowest RPM and CPC so far as for last year my CPC is around 0.10$ and RPM falls sometimes 1$ or 0.98$ but this year things has been worst to CPC 0.05 sometimes 0.02 and RPM 0.40$ what's going on I really don't understand this again before the Coronavirus issue still the same what can I do or it will come up all by itself again ?

[BoredMeteor]

Absolutely catastrophic over here. Things just really fell off around the 18th. I was hoping I'd eventually find the floor, but nope. Let's see how low this can go, I guess.

[gatormark]

If you think Adsense is bad these days, Exponential has dropped 83% from last month to this month. Adsense seems to be recovering a bit to pre-coronavirus numbers for me.

[gatormark]

There must be some heavy click-bombing going on. Recently, my numbers have been out of whack. I know I'm not earning what shows in the estimated Adsense earnings, and Google removes the money, but some of the numbers are crazy. I just had $50 removed, justifiably, from my estimated earnings.

[Mentat]

For me, today, is the new lowest revenue this year.

[ember]

People suddenly stopped clicking on ads a couple of days ago. Drop of about 80%. Analytics is showing 4x as many clicks as Adsense, so my assumption is that Google is not crediting me with clicks to protect advertisers. So, yes, a lot of bot traffic. I think I'll take the ads off for a couple of days. Maybe the bot will go elsewhere.

[gatormark]

@ember, why would you take ads off your sites, even if they are only earning $1? Let Google worry about the bots.

[adrianTNT]

@gatormark If we are not paid and it just slows down the site and annoy users, why keep the ads ?
Google should do a better job against bots instead of just stop paying us for all clicks.

[ember]

@gatormark, because I do not want to lose the account. Bottom line is that I am responsible for keeping bad actors off the site. If I can't find the bot and block it - which so far has not worked - then I need to do something else. Maybe Google wouldn't close the account, but why take the chance? And I'd like to get paid for legitimate clicks, which right now I am not.

[BoredMeteor]

My Analytics "clicks" have been out of whack for some time, as well. I can't really detect any bot activity, either. Maybe I'm wrong, but it just seems like it's straight up incorrect these days. End-of-the-month clawbacks have been normal, too, and nothing unusual in Adsense proper..

I mentioned a while back that I tallied clicks through Statcounter and things seemed much more in line over there (just checked again and they're about right today, too).

So I don't know what's going on, but I've also been experiencing a click disparity with Analytics and only Analytics.

Edit: Not discounting the possibility of bots, mind you, but...well, it's a mess, as usual.

[ember]

Seems that Adsense is not crediting almost 80% of clicks. Statcounter shows about the expected number of clicks. Analytics shows clicks off the chart.

Analytics has been showing more clicks than Adsense for a couple of months but the number increased to the 4x number yesterday and today. The bot is only bombing high traffic pages so those are the pages where I’m removing ads. We’ll see what happens.

[edited by: ember at 1:12 am (utc) on Apr 29, 2020]

[NickMNS]

My Analytics "clicks" have been out of whack for some time, as well. I can't really detect any bot activity, either.

Outta whack or not, you will not be able to detect bots with GA. To find the bots you need to analyse your raw server logs.

[BoredMeteor]

I am aware. I obviously scoured my server logs, as well. I can't get a handle on it.

[adrianTNT]

For me Statcounter shown clicks that didn't happen, so I stopped checking it.
It shown my IP as exiting the site trough a google ad many times in a row, and I am sure I didn't click the ads.
Statcounter just assumes a user clicked an ad to exit the page or something.

I checked just now, pasted my IP in the Statcounter ip lookup, it shows my IP activity and 11 instances of Google ads urls labeled as "(exit link)", I hope they are just tracking incorrectly and it is not something fishy going on, like automatic clicks.

[ember]

@adrianTNT, Statcounter counts me as exiting through Adsense often, too, so I don't 100% trust their numbers. But at the end of the day, they usually line up with Adsense numbers.

[Broaster]

I was depressed logging into my adsense today, I saw my CPC is 0.01 cents I got 313 clicks and only earned $2.18 cents wow wtf happened today. Is google not counting clicks is someone click bombing me so I get invalids?, its mostly organic traffic too yesterday I had 485 clicks and earned $53.54. so I figured Id earn something similar today with similar traffic over 15k visits.