Feeling better already

But can you afford it? Back to writing content! ;)

January has been a weak month so far and today is just atrocious. Been in a funk since Thanksgivings.

At this rate, covering a beer tab may be about all I can expect from my AdSense earnings. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!

I don't know if this related to this situation or not but the timeline fits it perfectly and if anyone else checks into theirs and finds anything, it'll be good. After this plummet of earnings the last few days, I started to dig into things more in Webmaster Tools. I noticed a bunch of links coming into my main domain from a domain that I have owned for many years. It is just one of a long list of variation named domains that 301 redirect to my main domain. Never a problem before. It now appears that Google has been replacing my main site with the parked one. All the cache dates are the exact same date as the sudden drop in Adsense numbers. Now down to about 50% from the earliest cache date of the parked domain.

Using the site command over a few hours now, the 301 parked domain is increasing the number of results with each check. The 301 parked domain is growing and possibly eating my main domain that has been in Google for over 10 years.

But this makes no sense because it has a htaccess 301 the same as others and has been for years. The same code for analytics and adsense would still show the same. The preferred domain is set as well. It appears that something shifted just a few days ago and the standard rules are not being followed or applied here. Could the encroaching domain be hurting my revenue because it doesn't have the same track record as my trusted domain?

This seems to be involving a multitude of things here but Adsense seems to be what is being impacted and made me find it.

Not in my case. I have more pages than ever in Google's index, traffic is within the norm, but clicks are down 2/3 of where they once were. Not sure the reason for the drop. Until it improves, I don't see earnings rebounding any time soon.

Maybe the maintenance today will fix things!

@ember: You, incurable, optimistic webmaster! :)

Want my opinion? Everything will be back to normal, or at least we will see some improvement in middle feb.

In my opinion we should just follow the Okkam's razor theory. We should look for a very simple exaplanation as things are getting confused here. It is just that advertisers are not investing a lot of money...

Europe here: the past two days things were "almost" back to normal today everything is low again.

I'm just gonna sit back and relax. I was also hoping that the maintenance may fix it :))

The only thing I do when my ecpm get's horribly low is place a none channel ad unit as suggested in another thread here. That's the only thing that helped so far. Could be a coincidence though.

I'm down from dollars to pennies a day since last Wednesday. It looks like google has a initiated a large advertising campaign for Google Adwords. I am seeing these ads frequently on my site and all over the web. We are in a deep protracted recession, I would not be surprised if adverstisng dollars have slowed considerably since the Holiday ended. Google is trying to drum up more business with adwords . I think we are simply in a business downturn cycle. I agree with frank72, should bounce back as we head towards spring.

The only thing I do when my ecpm get's horribly low is place a none channel ad unit as suggested in another thread here.

Might I ask you to develop this statement for the sake of everybody?

This Jan is probably the worst month for me ever. Earning is around 25%-30% of my monthly average in 2010.

Bad beginning.

Yeah, January is looking disastrous. Either G. is dying or they are stealing our money. :)

We are seeing same ads as before but earning has dropped 30 - 40 % than before.
So it means for me:

they are stealing our money

They aren't stealing our money. Google owes no one anything. None of us have to put Adsense on our sites. We do it because it is easy and pays pretty well. It lets many of us make money from sites that otherwise would not make much. I, for one, while not happy with this recent turn of events, am still grateful for Adsense. And I do think things will improve soon.

They aren't stealing our money. Google owes no one anything. None of us have to put Adsense on our sites.

You've gotta be joking. You can't be serious. Please tell me you were joking. I said it jokingly but your statement lacks rationality. It makes absolutely no sense. Do you work for free? Yes, Google owes people everything if people put adsense code on their sites and they earned it legitimately. Unless they have some terms that specifies, I won't pay you even if you earn money legitimately which probably is illegal. Google owes you if they are not paying you as advertised. Doesn't have anything to do with "None of us have to put Adsense on our sites." The work done has to be paid. I'm grateful of Adsense but not that grateful to work for free and let them run all over me.

[edited by: cien at 2:44 am (utc) on Jan 16, 2011]

Another day in the low. :-(

@cien, I'm not saying Google doesn't owe you if you have put Adsense on your sites and legitimately generated clicks. But Google determines what percentage of advertiser revenue is paid to you. I can't remember, but it's something like 86% or 68%. We are lucky to get that. It could be 20% or 30%.

Of course, if it were, not nearly as many publishers would use it. If we were under contract to receive a certain amount and then were not paid it, that could be viewed as stealing. But I don't know if the percentage we are paid is stipulated in the Terms we agree to, and even if it is, Google reserves the right to change the Terms.

@Ember, it is 68%. And yes, given the work involved from the Google end, we are lucky to be paid such a good percentage of revenue. I have known networks that pay 50% - 60% and manipulate the earnings as well (sucks!). I know it is easy to curate negative comments, and I have done it in the past. But, if we see it from the Google's point of view, they have CHANGED lives of thousands if not millions of folks. Fantastic job in making Adsense a success and a mainstream income! (I am feeling good today).

The month of January isn't going that great -- yes, I do complain, but this is because everyone hates inconsistencies in revenue, right? (that is why Google Adsense program is considered "insecure").

Anyway, I have to admit this program has changed my life -- although I am just a student and coming from a third world country, every PENNY counts. :) Also, on a side note, I think Google have heard our ranting and the maintenance mode has been set on 15th Jan. So, there are hopes of generating good revenue again in a couple of days. The internet has grown leaps and bounds because of the quality content, which in turn is put together by us the webmasters. Why? To profit from revenue programs like Adsense. God… this is making me emotional!

I assure you guys, things should pick up. Keep updating your website, as all of you already know, lots of quality traffic brings in good revenue. Wishing luck to y’all! :)

Love you, Adsense!

Um, as the author who started this thread, I've been reading along as other publishers post; the thing that I'm getting to is that inconsistencies in revenue has to be directly related to advertiser participation in the adsense network. It could be possible that advertisers are migrating to the hundreds of other similar programs; that google's dollars are more competitive than they used to be which to me say lower payouts to publishers as google themselves try to retain earnings and position their adsense brand for increased market share.

While I have not researched the subject, the theory would seem possible; that the adsense program is loosing market share to other competitors and causing google to decrease the amount they payout to publishers for displaying the ads, to cover losses. I'll do some more research and make some phone calls, but it would seem like a logical business move which, yes does suck for all of us, but it could at least explain some of what we're seeing.

On my end, my daily average has rebounded, we're down about 6% from year prior, so compared to what I'm reading here, I can no longer complain.

It may be helpful to indicate what country the majority of your users are coming from to help us all determine if this is a geo-targeted type of change on google's end.

To the end of indicating where visitors are coming from, our suite of sites are directed at US based users with over 80% of our traffic initiating in the US.

Adsense could be losing market share, but not overnight. Many publishers are complaining of sudden drops in earnings, as if a switch went off at the beginning of December or January. Losing market share would be a more gradual event.

I'm not to sure how I did yesterday since the old AdSense interface is completely broken for me and I can't try the new one either!

Saying that yesterday morning was continuing dragging the bottom of the barrel however after the maintenance my EPC suddenly went back to a normal Saturday although my CTR was down slightly.

I can't say any more until the interface has been repaired.

Today the worst ever:-(((
If Adsense keep showing cheap ads , it is no longer better than Adbrite, Bidvertiser and co.

to ember:

Google owes no one anything. None of us have to put Adsense on our sites.

G needs publisher, publisher help G more than themselves, this is the reason why G get biger and biger, but too many publisher complain about beeing not paid well!

Worst month ever.

Worst month ever.

So far, yes, I'm now -23.12% less than 2010 with, quite amazingly, only 1 click difference!

Has anyone in this post brought this to the attention of Google? Anyone have any ideas if they're aware?

Anyone have any ideas if they're aware?

Do they even care? Nooo, you'll never get a response other than a canned one...squeeze both cheeks, stick your head between your knees and hang on:-)

Okay, well here is something we should all try to listen in on, it might be a clue and maybe something other than speculation.

[businesswire.com ] Some more information about their F10 Q4 earnings preview [themarketfinancial.com ]

Unfortunately, it seems that Google has grown audience and their share prices have risen accordingly, however, we have to understand their financial picture to understand why we could be seeing reduced earnings in the first month of F11.

[sic]"The recession is already being felt by thousands of internet web site publishers that rely heavily on google adsense earnings that are witnessing drops in earnings rates of more than 50% in recent weeks as Google passes on the falling revenues directly to publishers in an attempt to bolster its bottom line."

Taken from [marketoracle.co.uk ]

If history repeats itself, the article above from 2008 might apply to what we're seeing in 2011. The time periods, fiscally, correspond. Looking back at my data from 2008 it would seem that we actualized an earnings reduction, only for it to rebound in the second and third quarter as Google hypothetically made up for some type of loss.

Not to throw out numbers here, but we've historically done well with Adsense, triple digits well. It makes me wonder if we're going to see news about some financial difficulties at Google. If I were running Google, this is one of the most logical places that I would target for expense reductions, simply reduce the publisher share of revenue and retain a larger portion of the revenue for the company.

It sucks, I know, but we have to try to wade through factual information which could allow us to create a theory on what we're collectively seeing, then maybe we can adjust our budgets based on previous trends and move on.

If I were running Google, this is one of the most logical places that I would target for expense reductions, simply reduce the publisher share of revenue and retain a larger portion of the revenue for the company.

Lucky for us you ain't running G. The rev. share is and was 68% unless you have an individual contract stating otherwise.

If the revenue share had changed from 68% to something less, we would have been informed. My account is still saying it is 68%.

Google likes these big growth figures and so do I but as a small publisher I never seemingly get the chance to get in on this action...for my B&M businesses I do, with AdSense there's never a chance.

Nevertheless read what you like into my metrics for October 1st thru December 31st:

2006 : 100% My best-ever year
2007 : -31.15%
2008 : -16.64%
2009 : -10.83%
2010 : -8.67%

Looked at in another way:

2007 : 100%
2008 : +21.09%
2009 : +24.5%
2010 : +32.68%

We can sit and compare figures as much as we like however I feel there are two significant factors with what's happening.

1. Google may be taking a bigger slice from publishers to bolster their bottom line to pay for #2 below, bear in mind their revenue is an estimation at $6.04 billion whereas 2009's revenue was $4.95 billion, approx. +22.02%.

2. Are they taking this extra slice and putting it into the massive amount of advertising we are seeing everywhere, and I mean everywhere? Are they, without telling or asking us, investing heavily in promoting AdSense for our own "benefit"?

If they are and if they can prove this, fine, however such an action surely must be overseen and approved by someone or explained somewhere?

I realise that fund managers etc do not have to do this yet when so many complaints are being made it would make good business sense to keep their "partners" informed.

Does the above make sense?