July 22nd, I had a fantastic day - way higher than all the dismal figures this July has shown. I wanted to post it here and ask if anyone else was experiencing the same, but didn't for fear of the dreaded "post about a good day and get killed the next day" jinx. I got killed the next day anyway. The roller coaster continues.

But to answer your question HP... my EPC seems to be holding +/-15%. The rest is a roller coaster..

July 22nd, I had a fantastic day

Strange, so did I, it was my second best day of the month only beaten by a couple of cents.

Adding Tuesday and Wednesday's earnings together guess what I get? Exactly, and I mean precisely to the cent, my daily average for July...Weds Page Impressions were -0.03% from average, clicks were +4.0% yet earnings -19.09%.

Methinks I've gotten back on the AdSense rollercoaster with you again.

I've been dead for about four days. Fortunately, there are other fish to fry.

It's a zero sum game for us as publishers.

Some groups loose, some groups win. And anothers group stuck in the middle laying flat.

It has been a funny couple of weeks for me. Historically I could predict a days earnings within a couple of dollars, but over the last week or two they've been all over the place from day to day, including one day with my lowest earnings for a couple of years.

Last week there was an unexpected high earning day, but this week nothing exceptional on the high side, but two days with earnings between 25% and 50% of normal. Both days it's the number of clicks that are low, and they haven't been added back on so the whole week ends low.

Other logs look consistant Martin. Could be something funny with just my site, but I'd prefer some wider conspiracy theory. Not sure exactly what it is yet. But with a few threads appearing with the same rough topic I'm hopeful it's a glitch that will be sorted.

I've already exceeded my earnings for last July by a good bit. In fact, it's been a good month generally, except for a few days around the 4th. The last week has been a little bit down, but still pretty good....

Most likely some sectors will take a hit since the "holiday month" (August) is getting closer day by day, and advertizers are disabling/devaluating their campaigns...

For what it's worth, I just compared my site's average EPC for July 1-19 and July 20-24, and EPC figures for the two periods were almost identical. (July 2008 EPC is also running way ahead of last year's for the same period, which seems like a miracle in this year's economy.)

My EPC today was completely "normal" until about UK time 21.00 however it is now 00.50 and the EPC has reduced dramatically!

The reduction is definitely from AdLinks therefore I'm going to go have a look and see what may be causing it.

OH!

Since when was there only one page of AdLinks with a "View ads about:" as an option?

Was this last Saturday's maintenance?

Not impressed and if this huge reduction in AdLinks EPC continues...bye bye.

Since when was there only one page of AdLinks with a "View ads about:" as an option?

Previously that was a sign that AdSense couldn't get enough information about the page to show relevant ads for it (or figured there were no relevant ads for it) I haven't seen it anywhere for a long long time though, so maybe there's a different reason.

Previously that was a sign that AdSense couldn't get enough information

I've always had loads of relevant extra AdLinks pages, it looks to me as though they're trying a further filtering for the visitor by offering 5 extra pages geared towards their presumption of the visitor's search.

Unfortunately it would appear to be delivering general trade widget related results and mostly totally irrelevant and obviously much lower paying.

Interesting! I'm seeing that too--on my site, the suggested alternative keywords look OK. I wonder how long this has been going on? My CTR is down a bit.

[added]On the other hand, it looks a bit like one of those MFA directory sites. if you can't beat 'em, join 'em?

I've been dead for about four days.

were the doctors late?

Fortunately, there are other fish to fry.

If you mean online, then lucky you. I'm not as well diversified as I'd like to be.

If you mean offline, then yeah, I'm lucky I have other eggs to boil and chickens to grill. For me working at home full time means NEVER depending on Adsense alone.

Tue 22/7 very weak, all metrics down, among the top 10 weakest total revenues this year, and the worst EPC (!) this year.

Wed 23/7 slightly below average in terms of total revenue, but all other metrics pretty much on average. Despite having less clicks than Tuesday.

Weird.

it looks a bit like one of those MFA directory sites.

Absolutely!

I'm going to monitor my AdLinks earnings today and as soon as the EPC starts to drop remove them and put them back up again tomorrow.

Leaderboard EPC is fine at the moment and all othr metrics running completely normal which ought to mean on a weekday I am earning above average but no, Thursday was 12.5% down and all entirely due to my AdLinks much lower EPC.

Sneaky G, very sneaky!

were the doctors late?

Yep and in this heat, you don't just want to lie around like that.

If you mean online, then lucky you. I'm not as well diversified as I'd like to be.

Well I'm trying. If anything, I'm *too* diversified at the moment. It's hard to know what to work on next.

I'm going to monitor my AdLinks earnings today and as soon as the EPC starts to drop remove them and put them back up again tomorrow.

Color me a dumb business person, but I don't understand such reactivity given what we know about reporting. Worse, it's like a retailer saying: "Ah, darn, my sales up to 9am are really slow, so I'm going to remove my products from the shelves, (or just close and try again tomorrow).

What am I missing here?

What am I missing here?

I imagine he's going to replace them with another networks ads.

What am I missing here?

I imagine he's going to replace them with another networks ads.

Absolutely, I have my own ads programme I devised after last October's glitch. Not only that but if they want to click on Google ads then they'll have to click on the higher-paying leaderboard.

Cheap, and quite a few irrelevant, AdLinks do not equate to good widget promotion for me.

YMMV!

[quote]I imagine he's going to replace them with another networks ads.[/quoe]

...making decisions based on what? You might as well wake up every morning and throw dice to determine what you are going to do.

Dead seriously, why would you rely on DATA you know is wrong, incomplete, out of sync and so on to do anything?

I've never understood why people who have been using adsense for a while think there's a point to worrying about one data point, one hour, one day's worth of information.

I understand we probably all did that kind of checking and such every hour when we were noobies, but I just don't understand the point. Does it give an illusory sense of control?

Does it give an illusory sense of control?

Illusory?

I decide which adverts go on MY sites when Google can no longer deliver an acceptable rate of return.

I base my decisions on firm income facts, there's nothing illusory about a huge reduction in EPC delivered on a specific channel.

Thanks to Google I know which channel is not earning sufficiently therefore I can adjust accordingly.

YMMV!

coachm, I think that Google's stats, though flawed, do give us something to go on.

I don't have anything like the volume of traffic that HP must have, but if my site starts off poorly in a given day, the usual pattern is that it doesn't pick up. If this particular channel on HP's site has as much or more traffic as my site, I tend to think that it's reasonable to draw the conclusion after several hours of poor performance that it's not going to pick up later.

My experience is that every once in a while I get click dumps out of the blue. These clicks could be from the previous day, week, month, or who knows what time frame. Daily stats are almost meaningless.

Looking at part of the day is as useful as trying to divide by zero.

...making decisions based on what? You might as well wake up every morning and throw dice to determine what you are going to do.

Based on the fact his adsense earnings are really below par. My stats rarely appear delayed, they're just regularly crap. Google are working hard to satisfy the needs of their advertisers, at the publishers costs. Perhaps Husky and a few others, taking this route, will eventually help Google realise that we matter too.

I will be looking for alternate revenue streams too. Google is becoming more and more unreliable. I also believe, though only theories, that a lot of what Google are doing, is unethical in a bid to get more advertisers on board.

realmaverick, exactly. Just because a click dump happens every once in a while doesn't mean that someone with decent traffic can't draw accurate conclusions from a few hour's worth of traffic. So they might be right only 9 times in 10. Isn't that good enough for what HP plans to do?

I think the mindset here has swung so far against the idea that you can analyze your stats on the basis of a small sample that we've swung too far. Surely a rough indication of direction that will pan out as accurate most of the time is a potential basis for action?

Yesterday (friday) was my worst day in terms of CTR and eCPM in 6 months (about christmas time, one of my usual worst time of the year). If I look at least year, end of july to end of august was also a weak time. The drop these past days is, however, very abrupt.

We all know stats are delayed sometimes however there are specific facts we can all easily analyse. Since the start of this thread I decided to leave my AdLinks running so that I had another full daysworth of data.

Remember this is solely for me:

1. My average EPC and daily earnings for all of July until Friday 18th July were almost identical to June, the actual daily earnings were +1.53%, clicks -1.94%, CTR the same, eCPM +2.58%.

2. Since maintenance Saturday 19th July until Friday 25th July daily earnings -10.18%, clicks -1.18%, , CTR -8.03%, eCPM -15.97%.

3. On only one day, Tuesday 22nd July, have I earned above the daily average prior to 19th July.

Poo poo my stats if you like, I know what I see and I know precisely when this trend, and it is a trend, started.

If you have not been affected, fine, if your earnings are not in the thousands per month and it does not concern you, fine, however I have posted many times about Google glitches such as last October's etc, and if you do not want to accept my metric comparisons, fine.

2008 Q2 Earnings Conference Call was on July 17th, maintenance 19th July...coincidental?

Yesterday I recorded the same amount of clicks that I had on a day in 2005. The difference is that yesterday I only earned about 40% for those clicks. That's my EPC drop, and it's significant. Having to more than double my click count just to get back to 2005 levels is the AdSense reality I'm looking at.