AdSense Earnings and Observations - August 2026

[evil_0]

down 30% compared with april from 25 may.. same traffic lower rpm. (Europe)

[edited by: not2easy at 11:01 am (utc) on Aug 1, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[allhearts]

Good luck this month everyone.

[Shane85]

Ever since July 31st, my RPM has dropped by a solid 50%, especially in European countries and parts of Asia

[surfgatinho]

Did RPM max out in March for everyone? Towards the end of March my impression RPM was almost double what it is now. I don't see this trend last year.

[evil_0]

Yes same for us, March was the highest rpm

[gatormark]

I’ve been working nonstop on my main website for the past six weeks, and it’s paying off. I’ve pulled well ahead of one of my biggest competitors. My traffic is now above where it was this time last year, and my revenue is slightly ahead as well.

The biggest challenge continues to be bots. Whenever bot traffic overwhelms the site, even with Cloudflare protecting it, my AdSense revenue drops significantly. As soon as traffic returns to normal, my AdSense earnings rebound.

Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do beyond what I’m already doing. These bot attacks have become a major problem across the web, and even Cloudflare has been struggling to keep up with the increasingly sophisticated traffic.

[makintocheplus]

My RPM in July was $9-10... (France traffic)
In August it declined to $3...
Google pls fix...

[surfgatinho]

So, I went heavily into Adsense reports and actually identified a very sharp drop in RPM and figured out it was due to changing a particular ad format.

I changed it back to the way it was via an experiment. RPM has gone up noticeably, and this I assume is on only 50% serving. It's a common sense revenue vs UX decision really.

Now, here's the weird bit. The experiment reporting so far is telling my the variation is well down on the original. Either there is some massive coincidence here, or Adsense Experiment reporting is just plain wrong.

[allhearts]

@surfgatinho,

Would be able to share which ad format you changed it to that lowered your RPM, and which you went back to?

[allhearts]

@gatormark,

Not sure what you are using on cloudflare to help with ai bot traffic.

I had a very good cloudflare security WAF rule for ai bots already before, but I made some tweaks to it, and this new version is giving me an even better RPM.

Screenshot: [ibb.co ]

I also added a Blocked countries rule right under the one in the screenshot above, as that one has to be 1st, and on Security > Bots, I changed: Block AI Bots to: "Block on all pages", and disabled Bot Fight Mode (it always causes issues with good bots for my sites).

ibb.co Screenshot 2026 08 08 132728 hosted at ImgBB Image Screenshot 2026 08 08 132728 hosted on ImgBB

[surfgatinho]

@allhearts
I turned off dynamic anchor ads. Now I've turned them back on. Has made a big difference as far as I can tell. Best day in 2 months since I did, but Adsense says otherwise?!

[allhearts]

@surfgatinho,

Interesting, thanks for letting me know. I have that unchecked but might just give it a go.

[gatormark]

@allhearts

I was using the basic Cloudflare plan when I originally posted that, but I’ve since upgraded. Here’s what I’m doing now, and so far, it’s working fairly well.

[postimg.cc]

postimg.cc cloudflare -” Postimages

[allhearts]

Cool, those look solid. I am using the free version of cloudflare so I am limited.

[makintocheplus]

This is the only WAF rule I have since I detected lot of BOT traffic ($0 RPM) from these countries : Saudi Arabia, Germany, Singapore, China

[ibb.co]

Thank you for inspiring me @gatormark and @allhearts

ibb.co Cloudflare WAF rule free hosted at ImgBB Image Cloudflare WAF rule free hosted on ImgBB

[makintocheplus]

I was able to fix RPM... it was the Bot from France (not Saudi Arabia), I gave ChatGPT the Firewall Events export (json) after I challenged all France traffic, and it found the pattern coming from a Data Center with 30 different IPs... I blocked the ASN and tadaaa the RPM is back to $12 !

[gatormark]

This is strange. I’ve passed all of my competitors in both traffic and visibility. My search engine rankings are strong, and my legitimate traffic continues to increase. Yet, my AdSense revenue is dropping like a rock.

[gatormark]

If there is anyone out there still using Google Adsense, have you experienced a dramatic drop in Adsense revenue since their August 17 bidding update?

[TheEnigma]

Yeah, I'd say 15-20% drop the last 3-4 days.

[EngrKhan]

Anyone else seeing a huge earnings/RPM drop since August 17, which got even worse around August 24?

My pageviews are actually increasing, but the sudden drop in revenue is still continuing. Is anyone else experiencing the same pattern?

[System]

The September 2026 thread is open here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 3:34 pm (utc) on Sep 3, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]