Low EPC on sites since Feb. 1

What do we all have in common?

[joebob]

This is getting riduculus. I went from an average EPC above $0.75 to $0.06 in the last week and it keeps going down.

Lets see what everyone else is doing and try and find a common ground. Maybe then we can do something about it.

I will go first.

My site is about making money in an online game. Most of the ads shown on my site are for making money on the internet. They are somewhat relevant but not totally, but thats ok since I have a decent CTR. It gets people to thinking if they can make money in a game why not in real life.

Anyway I have 3 ad groups on my pages scatered on my pages.
2 half banners and one full banner text only.
All of the spots are filled with ads(a total of 6 ads) it is very rare that I have a blank ad.

[doingthistoolong]

More on the "keyword hijacking"

[theregister.co.uk...]

[Allie_Mae]

I have also seen my EPC fall into the gutter recently. The message board (PHPBB) has been under attack by hackers recently so my traffic looks like it has gone thru the roof. In reality, however, the traffic is stable but the attacks are increasing. I wonder if that has something to do with my low EPC?

Any thoughts?

[doingthistoolong]

One thing I noticed today several times when loading my pages was that the google ads timed out (the page painted, the google ads were blank for about 1 minute and then an error connecting to google.) Never saw this before.

This is nuts, my EPC is down up to an order of magnitude from before Feb 1. I have a pretty simple site, so I have not used channels, but someone who does (in another post here said) in his/her channel reports he/she see different data (ie. the lost earnings)

This is more than pocket change we're talking about here, but for the big Google partners it must be 10s, 100's of Ks, and I would presume it is a hit for google as well.

I can only assume there is a real mess, caused by the keyword hacking problem, perhaps hitting some people not others because they are somehow tied to certain streams or servers. What else could it be?

[ownerrim]

I read the article referenced above. Not surprised that the attack came out of china. If it was up to me, I would cut china and india off from the rest of the www