AdSense Earnings and Observations - December 2025

[gatormark]

I'm finishing up November, down 55% from last year in AdSense revenue.

[edited by: not2easy at 3:40 pm (utc) on Dec 1, 2025]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[azlinda]

@gatormark I think most of us are in the same sinking boat.

[allhearts]

Thanks for the info @azlinda,

The two Adsense ads that do well for me is the billboard above the fold, and the anchor ad at the bottom, everything between, just horrible.

I did have an info links account, but I no longer remember the login credentials, so just rejoined and will wait to see what happens.

After the horrible last few years, it is time to try and find something else to run along with Adsense's best performing ad placements to maximize revenue, and replace all others that do diddly squat.

[CommandDork]

My Adsense fiscal year is more or less over with the end of November and it looks like I'll end up 13% ahead of last year.

Pretty good for me considering the last five or so years, revenue had consistently declined. I really have a great summer to thank for the jump.

[dolcevita]

My AdSense RPM is very, very low, around $1.50 for the last 4 weeks, and this is the result of useless traffic, which has increased by an incredible 70% over the past 4 weeks, despite the Cloudflare blocks and rules that are supposed to prevent AI and bot traffic. It’s as if Cloudflare has completely failed and is letting everything through.

Has anyone else noticed or experienced a huge increase in useless traffic over the past 4–5 weeks while using Cloudflare?

[seokees]

Yes Dolce. But I dont do Adsense anymore, but lead conversions are gone. Same issue I think, useless traffic.

[dolcevita]

If Cloudflare did its job properly, it would have a positive effect on AdSense revenue as well.
RPM, CTR, and CPC would increase. As it is, unfortunately, we are left at the mercy of wild AI and bot traffic that freely passes through the CF wall.

By the way, I’ve heard that on forums and discussion groups where the owners of these wild bots are present, methods for bypassing CF protection are being widely shared, so all Cloudflare users are always one step behind in protecting themselves from them

[allhearts]

@dolcevita,

same here, getting a lot of bad traffic now for about 2 weeks, and it's really affecting coverage, Page RPM and Impression RPM which results in -$.

I am going to take another look at my CF settings and play around with it.

I have still not heard from "info links" regarding approval for my publisher application, but right now would be a good time to test them on some ad placements that earn very little from Adsense.

[CommandDork]

Yep, same here. Bot traffic from Singapore and China skewing all Analytics numbers as well as driving Adsense earnings down on the sites affected.

It's been going on for weeks, since about November 8th. Tried every possible measure in Cloudflare and even some block actions at the origin server through the available firewall.

[jmccormac]

Dire results from Adsense. Considering a paywall at this stage.

Regards...jmcc

[allhearts]

Would love to get some opinions on whether trying:

Vignette Ads or Paywall?

Taking into consideration: The less annoying to website visitors?

Thanks

[Ninagreece]

6 days now great rpm again ...

[CommandDork]

@allhearts

Vignette Ads.

While both are intrusive, Paywall is a scary popup that forces you to read and then take action.

I'm lazy and searching for a close or skip button is waaaay easier. I only run paywall on a couple of websites these days. Use to run it network-wide.

[allhearts]

@CommandDork

Thank you, makes a lot of sense, I was leaning towards vignette, and you just confirmed it.

[Skips]

Sorting through old paperwork, I just came across my old Adsense earnings from 2010-2011... Back then I wasn't even actively working on the site - it sort of lived a life of its own with in between 500-1000 daily views. I somehow was receiving 150 - 400 eur monthly revenue from that... not bad pocket change for something that just cost 10 bucks to host and required no work.

These days.... I have been actively working on the same project for the past 3 years, increasing engagement and my daily visits to 3-5K - not that much by modern standards, I know, but still x5 of what it used to be ....and I was getting about 30 eur per month on average until I dropped out of Adsense a bit over a year ago - just couldn't take the humiliation. I'm mostly venting now as I think Adsense is never coming back and the time spent to earnings ratio achievable through Adsense these days is simply not worth it.

[jmccormac]

Was planning on adding about 1,400 new pages with the top web hosting providers for each TLD and the local hosting markets by country and their most popular TLDs along with the top web hosting providers stats. With the way that Adsense is performing, it is questionable if I'll even put it on these pages. Every month, there is a few million new webpages added (basically all new domain names and their hosting history) or updated. Don't even know if it is worth adding them tothe sitemaps. I think that the limit on sitemaps is 50K pages.

Regards...jmcc

[Atheeb]

Been with Adsense for over 10 years and it cannot get any depressing than this.

[jmccormac]

Shaping up to be the worst month ever on Adsense. Not sure yet if it is to do with Google and its updates.

Regards...jmcc

[azlinda]

Surprisingly, December has started out fairly well for me. It's neck and neck with Infolinks right now. There is no rhyme or reason.

[Ninagreece]

1-10 of december great RPM
now back to normal again

[RSoCer]

@dolcevita Hi, I'm experiencing the same problem. May I ask if you have RAF (Restricted Access Features) on your AdSense account?

[allhearts]

Things getting worse here as the month goes on.

[londrum]

I think I've given up for Christmas... wake me up in the New Year.
RPM has been dropping all month to the lowest I've ever seen it on Adsense, and I've been doing this for a decade.
I've still sitting on a Mediavine invite and might finally get around to trying them if things haven't picked up by January

[gatormark]

Yeah, reliable Adsense income is done. I get a little bit of money trickling in because one of my websites is a community with thousands of active members. However, my other websites, at the most, get a few dollars a day.

[dolcevita]

@RSoCer
As far as I know, my AdSense account has no RAF (Restricted Access Features) restrictions, and I do not see any warnings or notifications in my AdSense dashboard.

About three days ago, I enabled “Challenge all traffic” on Cloudflare, excluding only verified bots. So far, I haven’t noticed any significant changes.

Currently, my RPM is between €1.00–1.50, and CPC is around €0.05–0.07, which is unusually low compared to my past performance. Just a few months ago, my RPM was typically around €4–5, and on better days it reached €7.00–10.00

I’m not sure what is causing this decline, but I’ve already applied the most restrictive Cloudflare measures, effectively challenging all traffic. At the moment, there are no visible improvements.

[surfgatinho]

After a fairly good year my earnings have taken a nosedive the last couple of months. Went from being positive YoY in October to just under in November and now looking at a 25-30% so far this month.

All this is down to RPM tanking. Page views are fairly consistent (excluding anomalies)

Looking into it I have to think this is something to do with the huge spike in China traffic we all saw. This seems to have royally screwed up a bunch of metrics.
I've been comparing analytics charts with adsense charts and there does seem to be a fair match with those spikes and when things went wonky.

Coverage seems to have dropped too. Maybe Adsense served so many ads to bots over this period that it exhausted their inventory. Although that seems slightly unlikely as they would be geo-targeted.

Anyway, that's my current musings...

[dolcevita]

Page RPM yesterday was $0.95. Today so far it's the same as yesterday.
What is going on?

If it continues like this, I think I’ll have to look for another job, because with this RPM I can’t cover my living expenses. And don’t forget, I challenge all traffic to perform better!

[ember]

Arrgh. What is it with all this sudden Chinese traffic? No wonder my stats are so off.

[TheEnigma]

On my server I always check traffic source and if it's vpn, hosting, from China or other countries of disrepute I don't show any ads.

[allhearts]

Worst month of all time, by far.

Over the last two years, it’s been an uphill battle as a publisher. With every setback, you (at least I) think it can’t possibly get any worse. Yet the big and almighty G keeps proving otherwise, surprising many of us time and time again. At this point, I have little faith left. If there’s one certainty, it’s that there’s no return to the fair and profitable days publishers once knew. The monopoly continues to rewrite the rules to protect and grow its own margins, and there appears to be no regulator willing to question or challenge what’s happening.