September 2020 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[martinibuster]

Be sure to download your earning records! Google is going to delete them soon and moving forward will only show you data from the last three years.

Good luck!
;)
Roger

[gatormark]

Up 4.7% over September of last year. That's the first time in three years I'm ahead of the previous year's month. Please, please continue.

[MayankParmar]

Just had my CTR/earnings double for one day for same traffic... it's back to normal now. Looks like I'm being prepared for a clawback lol

[JorgeV]

Hello,

Indeed, Adsense seems to perform surprisingly well since the beginning of September.

[Mentat]

Yes, you can assume this by the volume of discussion on this thread :)

[Pixby8]

I'm always astounded to see reports of 20 to 30% clawback. Mine is always less than 1%. And I don't block any traffic.

For those of you who are experiencing such high clawback, it makes me wonder if, that when you start aggressively blocking what you suspect to be bot traffic, and other forms of unwanted traffic, that you're somehow throwing Google's detection systems for traffic out of whack.

This may end up being a bad idea, but if I were experiencing such high clawback, I would consider removing all of your blocks for a month and seeing what the difference is. If your blocks are at all helpful, you should see your clawback go up to what, past 50%?

I mean, if your traffic sources are that poor, you'd expect a huge rise even from the point you're at now, with no blocks, right?

But, you may just find that the opposite occurs. If you have more than one site, at least you could do split testing with your various blocking techniques and sectors to see what's truly affective.

[MayankParmar]

My clawback was 1% too before the pandemic. After the pandemic, clawback is increasing every month and it was 8% last month. Same ad placements.

[ronron]

Not all sites are the same. If you have an RSS feed that is syndicated all over the place for example, you're going to get hit with all kinds of automated traffic. The ones that render javascript and AdSense will be labeled by Google as invalid. Content discovery services are notorious for invalid traffic as well (taboola, outbrain, etc)

[deriklogov]

Anyone stat delay ?

[gatormark]

@Pixby8

I do not block any traffic either and my clawback is never below 5%. In fact, 5% is on the low end for me...typically 7-10%.

[MayankParmar]

Google AdSense New First-Party Cookies Setting [seroundtable.com...]

"Allowing first-party cookies from Google may increase your revenue".

First json and now first-party cookies, looks like they really want to increase our revenue ;)

[JorgeV]

Hello,

Google AdSense New First-Party Cookies Setting

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Web01]

Guys please what might cause sudden decrease in traffic since the start of September traffic okay start of this week traffic low what do u think may cause it guys ?

[puckparches]

My clawback was 1% too before the pandemic. After the pandemic, clawback is increasing every month and it was 8% last month. Same ad placements.

Same here, during May and June, was almost 15%, luckily last month drop to 7.5%. I hope this month keeps dropping.

[Casanova]

RPM losses in the region of 20% since 22 September. Who is the same?

[MayankParmar]

It's a bit down lately.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

As I said above, the month of September is surprisingly "high" (+50% earning over September 2019), without real increase in traffic.

Similar CTR, but higher CPC.

It looks like if a bug / penalty / glitch was fixed all of a sudden.

[Lisa01]

@JorgeV when did you first face the low cpc issue with adsense? How long did it last?

[JorgeV]

@JorgeV when did you first face the low cpc issue with adsense?

December 2018

How long did it last?

This month the CPC get back to what it used to be, before December 2018, ... I let you do the math :)

Now, I can't draw conclusion, I'll need to see if it lasts beyond September. Too many factors can affect CPC, and we ave living a very special period, so I think anything can happen, for any reason.

[Lisa01]

Something similar happened with me as well. Revenue just dropped suddenly. I can understand when it's a gradual decline and honestly, there isn't even much to complain in that case. But it was sudden. Happened in a matter of few days, which made it look unnatural. This Saturday, everything felt same as before. High CPC, high CTR, which again was rare, because income is usually down for me in weekends. It felt like google has lifted the penalty or whatever it was. And the very next day, things went back to the new normal.
I've always felt Adsense also penalizes websites and caps revenue but I can be wrong also.

[CommandDork]

Just a thought - consider the new quarter is upon us and Labor Day is behind us.

Lots of money wasn't spent in the Spring or Summer because of COVID. Now that markets are slowly opening up some - and school is back in session (our audience also changes because of this) - and the Christmas ad spend is set to ramp up, we might be in for a bountiful holiday season depending on your industry.

[MayankParmar]

I'm also hopeful that AdSense and others might do better than last year during the holidays, but what scares me more is the clawback, which has been increasing lately.

[samscot]

Yep Traffic is getting low.

[riccarbi]

I don't block any traffic either, and my usual clawback has always been in the 0.5-1.5 range for years. I have even experienced positive clawbacks, in the last months (!).
My two cents are that a high clawback can be due to:

- Ad units positioning. Maybe some units can be mistaken by the users for a link to another page or are too close to some navigation button or link.
- A high percentage of mobile users. In my case, mobile traffic always leads to much more invalid clicks than desktops'. Either visiting a website from a mobile device causes the user to click on ADs inadvertently (for example, when scrolling the page) and/or to a higher number of "casual" users, maybe very young, who click on the ADs just for fun and never buy anything.
- A high percentage of users from developing countries who, again, click on ADs but don't convert into sales.
- As others already said, a lot of traffic from low-quality sources, such as content aggregators, social media, and the like.
- A relatively slow website and/or with a high Cumulative Layout Shift, which causes the users to click on ADs by mistake during the page loading thinking they were clicking on a link or an image in the page content.

[Mentat]

September was a record for the last few years. It was a total surprise for me.

Now I’m waiting to see the final numbers.

[System]

The following 13 messages were cut out to new thread by martinibuster. New thread at: google_adsense/5011999.htm [webmasterworld.com]
12:23 am on Oct 3, 2020 (utc -5)