August 2020 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[martinibuster]

Here we go again again!

[nubchai]

Are we having fun yet ? :)

[ronron]

After months of really high clawback percentages (~20-30%), it's finally back to the norm (~<5%). What I did to reduce it was block all suspicious IP's (datacenters, proxies, etc) and only allow residential and work ISP's.

[CommandDork]

I got a manageable 10% clawback this month, but I'm trialing "Sponsored Links" above the ad blocks for August to see if that helps even more.

July was my best month in a long time - easily the best of the year.

[JorgeV]

Hello

What I did to reduce it was block all suspicious IP's (datacenters, proxies, etc)

Good. This is what I keep recommending since years, but very few seem to mind.

[Khensu]

Hi Everybody,

I have been following all this the last few months but still can't put my finger on the cause.

Starting running analytics but no clues there.

I buy my traffic for my main site from bing/yahoo, the silo is too overrun to get organic.

US, CA, AU & IN

6/2014 - 3/20 pretty much running at a standard 5% clawback.

July -30%
June -5%
May -30%
April -5%

The site is Microsoft Office related free content, that I create from scratch.

What would do this? Why would it go back to normal and then surge again?

I am thinking is a make their numbers game.

Speculation?

[robert976]

Ronron and JorgeV,

about 'What I did to reduce it was block all suspicious IP's (datacenters, proxies, etc) and only allow residential and work ISP's.'.

how did you that?

Thanks

[Matador86]

Start of the months looking good. If it continues like this it will be better than July (and July was acceptable).

[ronron]

@robert976 So what I did does involve some technical know-how. Regarding what JorgeV mentioned, I can see why a lot of people don't block suspicious IP's, and that is the technical challenge that is imposed.

Basically, it comes down to analyzing the IP's that connect to your site. You can use your log files, but what I did was log IP's to a text file that were connecting to my site. I then use a service (15 bucks a month) as an API to resolve the ASN+ISP from individual IP addresses. From there, I go through them, and manually block ISP's that are datacenters/proxies (eg. proxy ISP would be something like: xxVPN, and datacenter/VPS would be something like: softlayer).

A free way to resolve IP's to their ISP and ASN, is to just copy and paste IP's to a website that can do it for you. That's what I did at first, and it works the same way. So i would copy and paste IPs here: https://www.infobyip.com/ipbulklookup.php and then look for anything suspicious, then block the ASN. would do that regularly as part of my daily routine.

I use Cloudflare to block ASN IP blocks. In the firewall custom rules, you can set rules to block based on ASN IP blocks that try to connect to your site.

Others may have a different way to tackle this problem, but this is what I did and it worked for me.

[edited by: not2easy at 3:48 pm (utc) on Aug 4, 2020]
[edit reason] No links to tool sites - see Charter [/edit]

[NickMNS]

@Khensu

What would do this?

I buy my traffic for my main site from bing/yahoo,

What your post suggests is that you are engaging in what is referred to as "ad arbitrage". I wont go on my typical rant, but suffice it to say that this practice is frowned upon by AdSense and in extreme cases may be considered fraudulent activities, (I'm not saying that you are engaging in fraud). Note also, it is not against AdSense's terms of service. But, given that you are buying traffic, it is very likely that your website is under more scrutiny, and as such they are likely less stringent in terms of what clicks they consider invalid. As to the month to month variation, it is what it is.

The second issue is:

The site is Microsoft Office related free content,

The software downloads niche has come under more scrutiny lately by Google, here is thread from late 2018 about the banning of tech support ads. [webmasterworld.com...]
Now again, I'm not saying that this is exactly what you are doing, I don't know. But based on your description your niche may be close enough that it is under more scrutiny than others.

[worker]

Stats stuck for anyone? VERY low for me today, so far.

[CommandDork]

Ya low here for me too. Was wondering if the summer campaigns had ended already...

[SebMP]

July was good for me, August is starting good too, but on Aug 3th earning it's start falling by half, and now is down by 70%.
Page views, Impressions are nearly the same, but clicks are get down by 70% too.

[SebMP]

wow it's weird, from 800 to 1200 clicks per day, to just about 200 clicks per day!
any ideas?

PS: Traffics - ad impressions - page views - performance on Search results... all are the same or even better.

[NickMNS]

@SebMP

any ideas?

Double click penalty.
[webmasterworld.com...]

[SebMP]

@NickMNS

Interesting but I check and search for this "confirmedClickVisible" but I didn't find on any ad on pages that I checked it.
Please if this Double click penalty is happened to my website, what I should do? I experienced this for the first time.

And could the traffic from normal link sharing on Facebook do that (I have 69% traffics from organic search, 19% direct, 12% Facebook). cause getting more traffics from Facebook is the only thing i'm working on this past 2 or 3 months.

thanks

[Khensu]

@NickNMS

Thanks that was very helpful, the level of scrutiny says it all.

In June I was in my core office program keyword because of what happened in May.

In July I added the main Office keywords back in. Even thought the first is part of the second they won't let me have it anymore, about a third of the traffic.

Oh well, it is what it is. Back to the root keyword and just keep it as a small $$$ site, it has had its day. On to the new organic driven sites.

FYI I do 3D art.

[ChokenBako]

Stats delayed today?

[JorgeV]

Hello,

wow it's weird, from 800 to 1200 clicks per day, to just about 200 clicks per day!
any ideas?

@SebMP , What was your CTR?

[Matador86]

Had a top day last week, last time I had this amount was before the COVID-19 crisis.
Hope this will continue

[MayankParmar]

Yup. AdSense is getting back to pre-COVID levels.

[SebMP]

@JorgeV

I was around -1+, but now is between 0.20 to 0.50.

by the way this week is very unusual to me clicks go up and down very weirdly:
Sunday: 758
Monday: 285
Tuesday: 330
Wednesday: I expect to be around 300 too

In other hand I did use Jubna from Sunday and I have between 400 and 500 clicks with a 2 to 3 USD per day.
for money still Adsense better for me even in this situation of irregular Clicks..

More data:
Page views: 100k to 150k
Impressions: 200k to 300k
CPC: 0.009 to 0.013 EURO
Page RPM: 0.03 to 0.08 EURO

Traffic from google search is never better, is increasing constantly
Organic Search: 62.36%
Referral: 13.21%
Direct: 20.32%
Social 3.05%

Google SearchConsole: Last 7 days

Total clicks: 95K+
Total impressions: 590k+
Average CTR: 16% I was 12% before 3 month ago
Average position: 6.6

PS: I use no tricks, no payed traffic, no for everything...
I do only add content and share links on my Facebook's page with a 5000 followers (about 800 active)

Thanks in advance

[Web01]

@SebMp

With all this improvement what's the actual earnings for it please want to figure something out to mine maybe things is coming up here as well but last month July got 95% increase. Please let me know the earnings for that stats

[Whatagreatdayitis]

@NickMNS - Regarding arbitrage...I bought advertising from Google Adwords and then Googe Ads for years and never had a problem. In fact, I seem to remember when Google Adsense was kind of promoting the idea of using Google advertising as a method for promoting one's website and increasing traffic, thereby potentially increasing ad revenue. I think as long as you follow the rules, advertising your website with the hopes of increasing revenue is okay--as long as you are always working on your content.

[dollarsound]

Anybody else receiving this message in Adsense UI?

We've detected an issue on your IAB TC string on one or more of your sites or apps. These errors may affect your ability to serve ads to European users. A detailed report is available for you on the EU user consent page.

And then, in the help center, the reason for my error code is:

Tag or SDK isn’t receiving a TC string due to CMP status being stub, loading, or error.Ask your CMP to make sure that their APIs are properly implemented based on the IAB TCF tech spec.

I'm using Quancast 2.0 and the TC is correctly created. The funniest thing is that I disabled serving personalized ads long ago.

[dhananjay]

@dollarsound I just saw this error in my Adsense dashboard too. Yesterday's earnings were just atrocious, just about 20% of my regular daily earnings.

[SebMP]

@Web01
Normal times: earnings was between 5 and 13 Euro per Day
But now: is only 2 to 6 per day.

Before COVID19: monthly earnings was about 200 Euro
Now: is about 90 Euro

[SebMP]

@Web01
By the way the earnings is depends mainly on the location of the visitors of your website and the niche your website is about then the visitors count...

100 clicks from Egypt gives you 2 Euro
but same clicks from UAE will gives you 8 Euro or more
note: this is just an example.

[dollarsound]

@dollarsound I just saw this error in my Adsense dashboard too. Yesterday's earnings were just atrocious, just about 20% of my regular daily earnings.

What CMP are you using?
Does you site have AMP version?

[dhananjay]

@dollarsound I am not sure if I am even aware of CMP.

And no, I do not have an AMP version of my website.