Click through rate halved

[comparestore]

My click through rates have been consistant since I started displaying AdSense however yesterday the rate suddenly halved. The impressions have stayed almost the same so I'm assuming there must be either a problem with the ads or the reporting is delayed.
Has anyone else seen this?

[ahsanshami]

It could be that your ads are suffering the same plight as many other AdSense users.

If you are, then the lack of targeted ads could explain the reduced CTR, since your visitors would be seeing the same set of ads across a whole bunch of your site pages.

Read more here... [webmasterworld.com ]

[comparestore]

Unlikely as the click through rates are back up to normal again today. I guess I'll have to email Google and see if they are aware of a tracking problem.

[John_Shaw]

It is not unusual for my CTR to go up and down by more than a factor of 2. I will go a few days with higher than average CTRs, then suddenly the CTR will fall to about 1/3 of that from the previous few days. It will be low, and then jump up.

The best that I can tell is that an advertiser, with an ad that is well targeted and draws many clicks, stops the ads (runs out of his monthly limit, gets told he is over budget, or some such reason). I watch the ads that appear; when certain advertisers stop running my CTR drops. When they start again, the CTR goes back up. If one such advertiser starts running ads the same day another stops, there is no change. But if serveral advertisers start or stop on the same day, the change is very noticable.

The same applies to earnings per click.

I just concentrate on keeping up content and traffic, and monitor an average over the last two weeks. Don't worry about sudden changes.

[ap_Rhys]

The best that I can tell is that an advertiser, with an ad that is well targeted and draws many clicks, stops the ads (runs out of his monthly limit, gets told he is over budget, or some such reason).

Good point. CTR or value have fluctuated wildly for me in the last few days of every month. Adwords advertisers clear their budgets, call a halt, whatever. And days around the weekends are particularly variable. Also depends on the niche you are addressing.

[Mario]

This can also happen when the google crawler finds something that isn't family-friendly on your home page. What happens then is that you get PSAs on your home page and any other page that hasn't been crawled properly yet.

This happened to me during the week but thankfully my home page is crawled every other day and the page was family-friendly by the time the bot came round again.