Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Over on the Google News thread [webmasterworld.com], there's talk that many legitimate publishers are taking a major hit this weekend.
Just wondering how many AdSense publishers are affected?
We've lost more than 3/4 of our traffic. PR 5, 7 year old domain with more than 750 articles. More 285 links in, on the DMOZ for years. Just broke the Alexa Top 100,000 last month, too.
Even a search for our unique domain name doesn't bring us up until Page Two results, where we used to be # 1.
Needless to say, we're losing 80% of our revenue overnight, the way things look yesterday and today.
It seems more than strange that legitimate sites like ours and many others are going down, while scraper sites and others are in place.
Obviously, if this is wide spread, Google will see a hit in their AdSense revenue...
In 8 years on the internet, I've never seen anything like this. Certainly not with an established domain like ours.
I don't know so much about the other updates (we always seem to hold steady, never moving up or down much), but it seems to me that a lot of legitimate, long term content sites (like ours) are getting hit quite badly this time around.
I wish I understood Google's logic here. It's not like our work wasn't relevant - the best AdSense CTR we could get was under 10%, so clearly 9 of 10 people felt it was content relevant enough to their needs to stay.
I thought maybe it had to do with the fact that we often run previously published articles, but many people with completely unique content are hit, too.
Well. Ironically, we're about a week away from starting a new series of sites, to diversify. Looks like we're a little slow on the uptake.
Funny. Last year, we were at a similar traffic level. It's like we lost a year's worth of work. Although unlike last year, at least we know what's *possible* to achieve.
Yesterday was a record day for us. The CTR stayed the same, but the pay per click was amazing.
Today is trending to be another record day.
I am in a mini panic as I can't believe the amount has jumped as much percentage wise. There has to be something wrong. lol
That being said, my site was hit hugely by the Bourbon update. I lost most of my Google traffic mid-December. Since then, they had only been accounting for about 4% of my visitors. I survived on regular visitors, Yahoo and other various places.
Since the first day people mentioned an update, I checked my 3 most sought after keywords/2 word phrase. Site is #1 for all 3. Still are, in google, aol, and netscape. I think and hope the update is complete and permanent(at least til the next big update). I don't see any scraper sites on top of the results with my site, just major chain stores/organizations, etc.
Traffic from Google is WAY UP. Adsense income is WAY UP.
My biggest beef is the AdSense payout. 10 days ago I had ONE page that was netting me 3 figures daily. The pay per click slowly dropped until all profitablility vanished. I'm now getting the LOWEST ppc from AdSense that I've ever gotten - on all pages. So, I've once again moved AdSense ads from prominent real estate on my website until and unless things change back.
Now I'm #14 in Yahoo and #1 in Google?!?!?
The amount I'm getting per click has gone up. Google's paying more for clicks from sites that arrive using Google instead of Yahoo? Maybe they think their results are more accurate.
What's with the "coincidental" swap in rankings?
Still haven't figured out how to edit on this board, or copy/paste people's comments so they show up in a box.
Also eCPM seems to be slightly higher than normal. On another, smaller site I cannot see changes.
I like bourbon
Like many others here I do the internet publising thing for fun rather than money, although the adsense income is nice. I've always gone for informative unique content stuff - if the information wasn't there on the internet I'd put it up there. I don't compete in the widget market - all you guys seem to be going for that so I'd have no chance.
People moaned about other updates - Florida, Allegra etc. I've benefited from all of these updates. For the last year my adsense has risen in a steady and predictable way.
It's been weird since late April. Down for a couple of weeks, then up for a couple of weeks, then from the weekend rock bottom. Across 7 unrelated (and unlinked)sites. Although traffic hasn't dropped.....
C'est la vie. I have some plans for some unimagineably cool content this week. I just wish Yahoo would get their act together so we could SSI their ads in when Google go bad.
PS - Spacey: You are hellacool. I really enjoy your posts. There is an "owner edit" button to the left of the post under the user profile information. As for quoting - that's for the clever folk here. Now how do you do a smilie?
Bourbon was a funny update.
I think I figured that part out, thanks to a member in another thread. Still don't see edit button.... or the smilies....
Like others, previous google "updates" haven't effected my long established sites much, but this one seems to have definitely taken a negative effect.
Luckily, I still have advertisers that are happy to advertise directly on my site because of my targed niche.
We're down dramatically in traffic - hell, we can't be found, even for our *branded sitename* with an 8 year history, we're Page Two at best, where we used to be usually # 1 position.
I would give my left arm to know why some content sites are way up in traffic today, and/or are unhit, and why sites like ours and Europeforvisitors.com, are so far down.
As for revenue being up - if a lot of content sites like ours got knocked out, AdSense pay-outs should be up for other sites in the network, shouldn't they?
I guess my question is what we're doing "wrong" to Google's eye in our content publishing. It definitely feels like we've been penalized for some reason. We're building new sites anyway; it would be nice to know what they've got a hate on for right now.
Similiar algos are used to determine a site's serp position/determine the dollar amount your impressions are worth.
I'm still at a loss as to why I'm getting more traffic from G but my AdSense EPC is in the toilet. The worst it has EVER been today.
I'm still at a loss as to why I'm getting more traffic from G but my AdSense EPC is in the toilet. The worst it has EVER been today.
It is baffling, because I'm seeing the opposite.
In the channel hardest hit by the 4/5 traffic loss, the revenue has fallen accordingly, to about 1/4 of normal. Actually the eCPM in that channel hasn't changed at all.
However eCPM is up in our other, small sites and old content areas.
The end result is that overall revenue loss will be about 60%? Stinking awful, and it will put us at a monthly deficit, but it's not insurmountable. In fact, given the traffic loss I expected it to be worse.
Of course, the week isn't done yet... not even the day. :-)
Currently seeing 2.43:1 visits from G as opposed to Y. Other SE's are much further down the list and hardly worth worrying over.
Adsense is holding steady, although at a much lower rate than the previous six months. I think the time has come to put more of my efforts into my "lesser" sites to try to bring them up to the level of my main site. Different subjects and the few clicks I've seen from them over the course of time leads me to believe they may have a gold mine or two hidden inside them.
So, of course, this would make other sites drop...
Of course, I'm expecting the other shoe to drop in the next few days.
:)
They may fix this at some point but where's the guarantee that they won't just dump everything again and kick your A$$ at any time, for any reason.
Google Sucks! Screw them.
