The traffic numbers are the same; it's just the EPC that was cut by 25%.

A year of stat review shows Earnings Per Click (EPC) doesn't regularly drop at the end of the month (budget caps).

The curious thing is that the two sites haven't been changed in any significant way in the last week or month.

But two other new sites were launched. These have very low Click Through Rate (CTR). I decided to test less aggressively placed ads.

Which raises two questions:

1) Can low CTR get you smartpriced? (I'd heard high CTR can get you smartpriced.) Matt Cutts says CTR for advertisers is used to determine their ad placement.

2) Are there account dynamics factored into the Google Adsense Smartpricing Algorithm? (I'd hope engineers were smart enough to not throw the baby out with the bathwater in 2008.)

Has anyone figured out the logic of an algo that treats all sites the same for smartpricing/not? Is it a lack of resources or lack of programming skill?

[Disclaimer: Stats could be different today due to Google's continued reporting glitches which others noticed yesterday.]

p/g