same click numbers, almost halved earnings

[teasers]

Guys, I think the situation is much more than being "some very bad days".

Is this a permanent policy change, that earnings declined that much? It's like, G was holding only the 35% before, but it's now holding 65%.

or... is that something that the tax being to be paid by G equally distributed over all of us :)

[quantum analyst]

the TOS says that you are not entitled to know how they calculate the numbers so one possibility could be that your clicks earned less another that Google waits to see how their earnings look and aadjusts their take accordingly

are we fools for acting like beggars before the AdSense altar taking whatever scraps they throw at us?

[fischermx]

Exact picture here!, exact picture here!

[teasers]

yes, there's something like that :)

otherwise, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE that all and all advertisers decreased their rates in one day. I have hundreds of them.

I began looking for some other contextual ad networks. Hope those rates rise up soon, or I will be gone.

[androidtech]

I still wonder why noone seems to have made the connection between the sharp earnings drop and the change in Google's affiliate URL policy. The marked increase in "down day" posts can be traced back to January 14th when the policy change was enacted.

Just a theory.

Thanks.

[valley]

androidtech, it was just in the last five days that we have noticed a significantly sharp reduction on ppc. Whatever the policies introduced, on the whole earnings seem to suffer every time.

To keep at the same level one has to keep on increasing impressions and clicks and possibly look at other avenues. I definitely would not like to see Adsense losing the high estime that has achieved within the publishers circles.

I understand that to keep advertisers happy,from time to time changes need to be implemented, therefore, allthough not pleased about it I trust Google knows best.

[europeforvisitors]

See the more recent posts on the "Very bad two days" thread. Two posters' comments that make sense involve Google's change of policy regarding direct-to-affiliate ads (in some sectors) and a "keyword hijacking" attack on certain popular keywords or keyphrases.

BTW, don't assume that all publishers are seeing a drop in CTR, CPM, or total earnings. That isn't the case.

[coosblues]

I know my earnings have dropped almost exactly in half since about the 28th of January. Page views and clicks have even increased slightly. I'm seriously thinking of looking elsewhere or just removing adsense from my site - there are too many other players out there. G's earnings are going way up - HMM - wonder where the money is coming from?

[garyr_h]

My earnings are about that of what they were in November. (December being a down month and then part of January being down and then back up at some points).

This is probably about 'average' of what it should be...

[gengar56]

There is no other service that comes close to AdSense.

[jetteroheller]

Such a discussion is absolut sensless as long as nobody states what theme has his web site.

I have many different web sites.

One web site for example about heat recovery from waste air hat their highest income at very cold winter days.

On a hot summer day maybe only 15% income compared to a cold winter day.

So this discussion is not like compairing apples and pears, because apples and pears are at last very similar fruits.

I could make such a disussion all alone with me alone.

The erarings are down
No the earnings are up

I could post as many oppinions as I have different web sites.

[androidtech]

However, one statistic measure you can take is the percentage of forum thread headlines that are related to "down days". As far as I can see there has been a significant increase in the number and average length of these threads since January of this year.

[ownerrim]

absolutely. there are several threads running at the moment on this very topic. this is not an isolated event by any means.

[europeforvisitors]

However, one statistic measure you can take is the percentage of forum thread headlines that are related to "down days". As far as I can see there has been a significant increase in the number and average length of these threads since January of this year.

On the other hand, we've seen hardly any "My account has been cancelled for invalid clicks" threads lately, so are we to assume that (a) click fraud has ceased, (b) Google is no longer terminating accounts for invalid clicks, or (c) publishers whose accounts have been closed no longer post in this forum?

Also, for every loser there may be a winner, but most forum posts are by Webmasters who are feeling pain. The Google News forum is proof of this: Every time there's a Google update, there are dozens of "My traffic has been decimated!" posts for every one that says "My traffic has gone up by X percent." We hardly ever hear from the Webmasters whose sites have jumped from obscurity into the top 10 on the SERPs.

It may well be that changes by Google or in the marketplace are hurting the revenues of many AdSense publishers. But even if that's true, it doesn't follow that Google is doing something sinister, or that the changes aren't necessary or inevitable. For example, last year's introduction of "smart pricing" hurt many publishers financially, but it was necessary to ensure the viability of the content network.

Change happens. Sometimes it works in your favor; sometimes it doesn't. (Example: AskJeeves used to be my biggest referrer, and then my AskJeeves referrals disappeared almost overnight. I have no idea what happened, but in the long run it hasn't mattered even though the loss of traffic was painful at the time.)

[itisgene]

If indeed Google reduced the publisher's share, I think publishers asked for it on this forum for long time by saying "I make TOO MUCH(?!) money from adsense!". or "Adsense gives more money than anyone out there!".

It is an invitation for the drop in your share. If you make tons of money, keep it as secret and do not brag about it to ANYONE! Just enjoy your extra money.

[ownerrim]

"it doesn't follow that Google is doing something sinister"

No disagreement there. Google sets the autopilot (algo) and the autopilot flies.

However, the adsense promgram is starting to become somewhat renowned among webmasters when it comes to these very sudden and, in some cases (depending on whose site we're talking about), fairly dramatic changes.

Uncertainty (that thing that ruins your breakfast or keeps you up past your bedtime) is part and parcel of trying to develop internet revenue streams, but adsense seems to be making a mantra of it.

When a true competitor takes the field (I'll quote ross perot), "you're going to hear this big sucking sound" of webmasters hustling to replace adsense (at least to try things out)

Of course....this would happen anyway. But many will be gleeful over the prospect of finding greener grass over the septic tank.

[david_uk]

I don't normally participate (or read) these threads, as I get good days, and bad days and usually just go with the flow an look at the figures over the longer term.

However, I have been getting half the eCPM that I usually do. I can't really see why, so I emailed adsense. I got a reply from the Google fortune cookie generator (an email with little relevance to specifics asked). I'm wondering if there was a grain of truth in the reply or not!

Basically they said that it could be down to one or many factors, but they did mention unproductive banners might bring down the bid price. This sort of makes sense as I've added a couple of extra's that are not very productive, and I am working on a new site that as yet I haven't publicised but it has banners on. So I'm getting some banner loads that are unproductive financially.

However, I'm not too sure if it's true or not, as my earnings weren't really affected for a while after adding the banners until the start of this month.

Also I had a good day yesterday! Iv'e removed the extra banners, but bottom line is I still don't have a clue and nor do they! If they do, they 'aint saying.

[sonny]

If it helps, all of my sites have been average to above-average with the occasional far-above-average days coming from supposed "click dumps" by Google.
So there can't be any any major across the board changes or I would surely notice as my sites are quite varied and nothing exceptional about them.

[ogletree]

I just had my highest EPC today.

[teasers]

OK, let me tell you what I have noticed:

1) Google changed their static banner policy and now rotates the units in a banner.
Note on this: That was maybe because some people wanted it to be that way and they wrote Google, thinking making it that way will increase Click-thru rates. Good..

2) Google changed their ad serving policy, so,
especially for pages those having only a 234x60 banner:
Think that normally there was always one ad "stuck" there because it was paying the highest bid, but now most, maybe all the advertisers rotate in this same slot.
What is the result?
Result is -I think- any or just a few increase in the CTR, but lowered earnings as:
*before, the advertiser who was paying "10" money was always having that slot
*but now advertisers paying "2" money are there, too.

What is the negative effect of this?
The negative effect is that -I believe- every web page has a click generating capacity, let's say 40 +/- 5clicks /day.

Normally you were making 10 money x 40 clicks a day, but now you make 3 money x 40 clicks a day

Calculate it....

It's 120 instead of 400 :)

It's that bad..

I will write what I have noticed with 160x600 skyscrapers after eating something :) Just don't miss it as what I have noticed is just doesn't really make any sense.

[ownerrim]

how ofen have you noticed this and on how many days? If this is true, some of us may feel like we've been hoodwinked.

[europeforvisitors]

It would be interesting to know what things the "victims" and "victors" have in common and don't have in common. E.g., types of sites, sector, number of ad units, etc. There are probably too many variables to draw an informed conclusion, though, and in any case, everything could change tomorrow.

[xonio]

I definitely experience an extreme downturn in CPC and agree with some posters who conclude this is due to low paying ads creeping into the ad rotation. In fact, I see a large number of "made for AdSense" sites (mostly so-called directory sites that basically offer nothing original or valuable) who I believe place their AdWords at $0.05-$0.10. This is disappointing because it will in time diminish the good name of AdSense as supplier of valuable ad links. People will learn to ignore AdSense ads completely. Too bad Google does not seem to weed out these online opportunists.

[trader]

"Google changing their static banner policy" is that really the cause of so many complaints about greatly reduced income and CPM?

P.S. My CPM/Income has been down from 1/3 to 1/2 since Jan 28 but contrarily my traffic, clicks and impressions are excellent overall.

[edited by: trader at 5:52 pm (utc) on Feb. 8, 2005]

[unreviewed]

Basically the word is already out. If you are an Adwords advertiser, turn off Adsense. Google created this market, (contextual advertising), and they are letting it decline. I don’t think Google has any choice, in that they created a model they just can’t control.

[teasers]

hello again..

OK, now the most important part..cause I think 234x60 is not an ad unit that is used as much as the others, but 160x600 skyscrapers that I will talk about now, is used by most of you, I believe.

Think that:
1) you have a page on your website with an article on it.
2) the page is 1024x1000, meaning the article goes down 1000 pixels of the page.
3) You have an AdSense ad on the LEFT of the page beginning from the TOP - an ad that is 160x600 skyscraper, having 5 units in it.
4) Assuming it is Dec04 or Jan05, you have all the units full, meaning you all have ads there (because Google crawled your page and you have 7 possible advertisers for that page)

:) Now, let's look how things changed after the new policy :)

You'll have only 3 slots filled out of 5, meaning all 7 will rotate in this top 3, and the last 2 will always be empty :)

That's what I saw on my website yesterday, don't know if it has been changed / or will change.
I even noticed that there's "only 1" ad displayed and all other 4 are empty when there are 2 possible ads to display.

SO WHY DID I CHOOSE TO HAVE A SKYSCRAPER ON MY PAGE? For God's sake?

If there are 2 God damn ads to display, then the system must serve these 2, but it must not rotate them:

advertisement A,
advertisement B,
advertisement A,
advertisement B,
.
.

and why not:
advertisement A+B
advertisement B+A
.
.
?
I have 4 more slots there... :))

What is SO BAD with this, is that:
just think that a visitor is reading your article. As he/she continues reading, and scrolls down the page, (if we return to the first example) he was seeing an AdSense ad until he was scrolling 600 pixels down.
Now, at the 350-400th pixel, he/she doesn't see anything.

That especially effects visitors not coming from:

USA
UK
Germany
France
Canada
and some other few countries,

as there are almost always about 7-8 or 10 ads to show to visitors from these countries, but if your niche is mostly from other countries, yes, it is mostly dependent on the keyword and the number of advertisers/ads but there will probably be much lower number of ads to serve to slots with 4 or 5 ads.

That means more "empty units" in 160x600 (or maybe on 728x90, too) slots.

[europeforvisitors]

I definitely experience an extreme downturn in CPC and agree with some posters who conclude this is due to low paying ads creeping into the ad rotation. In fact, I see a large number of "made for AdSense" sites (mostly so-called directory sites that basically offer nothing original or valuable) who I believe place their AdWords at $0.05-$0.10.

Interesting. That could be a byproduct of the Allegra update in Google Search, which reportedly is making organic search results less friendly to scraper sites.

Basically the word is already out. If you are an Adwords advertiser, turn off Adsense.'

The word is "already out" to whom? Certainly not to advertisers, to judge from Google's recent earnings statement:

[msnbc.msn.com...]

[doingthistoolong]

teasers,

I am not seeing any empty slots at all... just an order of magnitude less earnings per click.

Also the stupid, irrelevent ebay ads just started showing up, ie. for example "DISCOUNT DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE LEASING" I assume these are VERY low paying ads, are they not?

[ownerrim]

In another thread, someone has referenced changes to the channels format. Don't have a clue if this relates in any way to epc hits. However, this would be a change on top of allegra. As we've seen before, large/multiple changes sometimes seem to affect adsense figures.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[trader]

Same here Teasers, rarely (if at all) do I see empty slots for ads. I am certain that is not a factor in this mass decline in CPM.