> Are you a Google plant?

My hunch HuskyPup is that English is not their mother tongue. Posts come off as just so much exaggerated fluff.

Lately, I question if English is a prerequisite for Google employment.

"Lately, I question if English is a prerequisite for Google employment. "

We deal with the Department of Homeland Security. We were questioning why the department we dealt with had people working with heavy foreign accents. Makes you wonder...

Reporting: just to make you feel better, I reached the single digit area... it makes me laugh sometimes, yes I took this seriously but lucky me, my sites were born because I love what I do and wanted to share (but yes, still hurts to see how things are going)

No I am not a google plant I joined this forum because there are so many intelligent posters and the feed back from posters is very valued IMO.

This thread is the most intelligent thread i've ever encountered on google search.

Below average yesterday, and today started well, then "froze". Waiting/hoping for things to catch up.

CTR pretty low for my traffic, but unbelievable EPCs. More than three times last year's. What's up with that?!?

CTR is slowly edging up a bit - went from 0.8 to 0.9%.
CPC same story, slightly better
Traffic has stabilized

Got a few unbelievable double digit clicks - never seen it like that.

A few old sites I abandoned a few years ago, suddenly came to life with better SERPS. Put adsense on it again, causing a revenue trickle

You guys have really been a big inspiration to my current earnings. I have taken all what you say onboard and my earnings are cruising to a new current high. I can't believe how good it is being a valued publisher by the adsense mathematical team. Thank you adsense!

Paul_t is hilarious.

+1

Yesterday wasn't bad at all, and today's going pretty well.

Just wake me up when it's all over.

Today is shockingly bad. I'm adjusted to being down as much as 50%, but today is just smelly bad. I'm almost bad to thinking checking stats at the end of the night will be my only check in. Yesterday also moved at a snails pace. Incredibly different than what it was for years updates and click value. I'm numb to disappointment on this just to be clear. If I make enough for a cheeseburger a day, I guess I'll put about that much effort into my sites or simply look at other options.

I read here in another thread something along the lines "maybe Google wants 100% instead of 32%" (if anybody knows the thread, please let me know.)

+1

Something has to be going on behind the scenes. I literally had to make sure the code was still on the site.

Okay I feel guilty posting bad reports but this is just straight up honest. I hope being "negative" but honest is acceptable. It's not about slinging mud. It's just the reality of my stats.

Things may change in the next hour but I doubt it. I will say on a site that has gotten more traffic than it has in about 5 months there is NOOOOO WAAAAAY it can register 2 clicks in total from 2 ad units. No way. This is speaking volumes to me. This is saying that unlike before (six months ago?) the ads showing on my site really aren't interesting to the people visiting. If this continues forget it. I won't wait for those big clicks to come back. I moved from a .net to .com and have since seen tiny click pays unlike before. Okay, but I'll take the clicks even if they are less money per click. Regardless of that, the ads should still get clicked. They haven't today and they should. I know that Adsense for me needs relevant ads. When they appear, I make good money. Show crap and you get what I got. It appears to me that really the issue is that ads no longer base themselves on what my content is. It's the pages the vistor last visted or whatever. The game before was letting Google know clearly what your page was about so those relevant ads showed up. This is the crux of my situation and today really clearly shows it. Forget about what I'm getting paid per click. How about nobody gives a damn about the ads on my space. Yes, my space. I'm about to go for those big chinook. You don't catch a lot each day but when you do it's worth your while. This to me has been the worst example in the past six months or so. Complete crap ads are showing and the lack of clicks CLEARLY, did I say cleary, shows that point. When I say crap ads, let's me clarify to me that means non relevant ads. In other words about as useful as a greyed out box graphic in their place. If this doesn't change, this interest based ads, I'm moving on. Sure in some instances this can work, but what I'm seeing tells me the darts are hitting the floor. Not the wall. Not the dart board. Not the bulls eye. They are hitting the ground.

Aside from this I had a great day! Beautiful sun and the smell of summer coming. Terrific!

@MrSavage
+1 "darts hitting the floor"

Unfortunately, coupled with the dramatic cut in Google traffic and the gumbo mix of irrelevant ads, I don't see things improving much any time soon. Beats me what Google is up to. I do know that trying to make sense of irrational behavior can be an exercise in futility. At this point, I'm pretty burnt out.

Something has to be going on behind the scenes. I literally had to make sure the code was still on the site.

Ditto, I've done that several times in the past couple of months and also triple checked it's the right publisher ID.

Yesterday has just finished in Google time and it's a new record low for the past few years. I'm *really* hoping to get one of those Adsense satisfaction survey invites soon...

Well it's ended up a horrific day yesterday. I have one update coming likely post midnight, but that's not going to move the dial much unless there is a major glitch which I haven't seen.

Further to my previous point, I have some real clarity or an epiphany of sorts. I can look high and low, but I know what's going on. The ads showing on my sites now are not what they once were. Forget about all the theories. People click my ads when I show ads relevant to my content. Period. End of story. I've heard mentioned that Adwords has changed also. I don't know that end of it but perhaps there is a learning curve that needs to take place before ads get placed where they should be getting placed. Until then I'm really just going to move forward on acceptance of a 50% reduction. Don't confuse what I'm saying with drops in traffic. Regardless of traffic, if the ads are relevant (the key word) then people click.

I once went to the barber shop and instead of getting a hair cut I got acupuncture. Ooops, wrong door I must have went into. Oh but the sign says barber shop. I went to the pizza restaurant and all I got was this sushi. Where did I go wrong?

Nuff said for now.

On topic. Hoping for big things tomorrow.

Ah darn, last point. If these clicks get delayed and I see yesterdays clicks showing up today, I think there is a problem. Isn't that fraudulent reporting? If I earned the money on Day 1 yet might be seeing that money on Day 3 and think that I earned in on Day 3, that's not lawful is it? I've heard people suggesting that the previous days clicks are getting made up for later on. Seriously? I can't believe that it's actually true. If that's the case think about what you're suggesting or willing to accept as being truth vs fiction.

Sunday was a wipe out...again.

My second lowest-ever click volume day, my second lowest-ever CTR day, therefore you don't have a lot of nous to realise it was also one of my lowest-ever earnings' day, only the 112.5% EPC saved what was left of yet another disaster.

I also use Statcounter as a quick reference before delving into logs and yesterday showed a MASSIVE discrepancy for Google AdSense Exit Links and Exit Links Activity.

I'm not sure just how accurate this statistic is however what I can say is that Statcounter is reporting 300% more exit links than AdSense.

Is anyone else seeing similar?

What would this mean? That so many clicks are being discarded as fraudulent/irrelevant?

If so no wonder my earnings have crashed and burned.

I suppose I'll be dead and buried before this company is brought to account and its practices thoroughly investigated.

> What would this mean?
> That so many clicks are being discarded as fraudulent/irrelevant?

Either that or the ads are so off target that nobody clicks. Hard to believe either way.

I just replaced my top AdSense block with another advertiser. It'll be interesting to see how it does. If it also performs poorly, then that may suggest one of the factors could be the traffic Google is sending post Panda/Penguin. Lots of variables at play. If however, it does well, than that could mean there's something seriously messed up with AdSense and my site. It's amazing how much it's crashed. I too would like to know why.

It's amazing how much it's crashed. I too would like to know why.

-Supply and demand. More publishers than advertisers these days, so good ads are stretched thin.

-More foreign visitors. Visitors in India clicking ads is worth a whole lot less than visitors from USA. Check and see where the majority of your traffic is coming from.

-Topic. Some topics are so over-saturated now that those ads aren't worth as much anymore.

-Ad blindness. Ads have been around for a long time now, people are finally starting to catch on.

-Shareholders. Now that Google has them to please, they need to make or beat their projections each quarter. When it's so easy to scrape a little more off the top, why wouldn't they?

Either that or the ads are so off target that nobody clicks. Hard to believe either way.

I think the Adsense team has lost control of the machine due to endless tweaks causing instability and oscillations.

Tweaks can't be stopped due to genuine errors in the machine with solutions taking days, weeks to get distributed and settle.

The tiny ole Adsense boat from 2003 has now become a tanker in stormy weather.

The captain has left the bridge months ago.

@StoutFiles

Interestingly, apart from one or two days, my EPC has held up compared to last year and the last few days I have had several days of well above average EPCs from the UK and USA, India's been about its average.

What seems to fluctuate wildy from day to day, but at the same time on an ever-decreasing trend, is the CTR. A few years ago I could predict within 10-15% my daily earnings as early as 6 hours into the day, these days it's either a good or a bad surprise at 8-9 am.

Yesterday's click volume for me was 5% of 5-6 years ago and I know I'm not the only one in the sinking AdSense galleon!

Statcounter exit link reporting is *not correct* when it comes to AdSense. I don't know how or why, but I know it's not right. The reason I know it's not right is that it has consistently reported clicks on AdSense when I or my developer partner were the only ones on the site, like right after it's been launched, or even while it was in development just before I open the doors. I know I am not clicking on ads (and no clicks show up in AdSense) but Statcounter shows outbound AdSense clicks. So you can't go by that.

For what it's worth, I've been testing other ad networks, affiliate ads and whatnot all summer - and my AdSense is going spectacularly, I just don't want to take anything for granted or miss an opportunity - and none of the others are even doing near as well as AdSense. As poorly targeted as AdSense ads may seem, the other networks have worse ones. Even Bing's publisher program has completely lousy ads - and they have so few that sometimes the same belly fat ad runs twice in a four-ad ad unit. I'm supposedly in the Chitika premium "gold" platform, and the ads I see there look like the same Google 3rd party ad networks I have already blocked for non-performance. Their premium ads paid eighteen cents for the same time period that AdSense earned just under a hundred bucks.

The hard truth is, if AdSense is not doing well for you now, it's not going to just magically come back. Sitting and waiting for that to happen is just a fool's game. You can make changes by putting up a new site, changing the focus of your site, bringing in more traffic, looking to an affiliate model where you can do more actual selling yourself. But just waiting for the big clicks to come back - ain't gonna happen.

One of the reasons I think I'm doing well is my higher traffic sites fit in with personalized and interest based ads. Ads that were actually targeted to my content would fail miserably. Only a very small group of people would be interested in those. But I accidentally created sites that appealed to a certain group of people, and when online marketing shifted off contextual-to-content, it worked for me. I can't take credit for it, it was totally unintentional.

So going forward, I'm going to try an experiment. The next site I put forward, I'm going to think first about who the people are that I want to bring in, and THEN I'm going to figure out what kind of unique and compelling content I can serve them. Instead of choosing my niche and then finding my audience, I'm going to try choosing my audience and then figuring out my niche. Be interesting to see if it works. (Although it's a ways off; I'm hella-busy right now)

I think the Adsense team has lost control of the machine due to endless tweaks causing instability and oscillations.

The tweaks are overriding some other tweaks and so it goes, Adsense earnings are now anything but stable.

Yesterday was as bad as expected for a Sunday, but today is just wrong. Impressions are up to a point that I had to check my logs to make sure it was "real", yet 1 click since this morning...click dump cominmg I hope, because it just doesn't add up.

@netmeg, I appreciate the insights into your experience on this.

I hope some of these comments don't get deleted. Pruning can go to far where it's counter productive to helping people who need help.

I'm using one particular site as a basis for understanding what's going on. The impressions are accurate. Two clicks total on 2 ad units on that site is so far from acceptable it's not funny. So far today although it's early amounts to a total that I used to get in one click.

The money making model that I've used for 4 or 5 years may be over at this point. I'm not hopeful. I think the one major consideration is that affiliate links may be the better option soon. I say this simply because if the only way I can make those good money clicks on Adsense is if people really make a transaction on the other end, then an affiliate link is going to pay out much more at the end of the day. In other words, if for me to make money on clicks it has to be a super converting click, then why wouldn't I take those valuable visitors and send them to an affiliate site instead? That's where I'm at right now. I'm going to see how today goes and the next few. Why waste premium converting visitors on a mediocre earnings platform? At some point that's where this hits a cross roads. Google can push for better converting or only force advertisers to pay for converting clicks, but at that point those people are so valuable that I wouldn't be bothering with the Adsense ppc model. That's the lowest payout possible. A direct affiate payout in my situation is much more worthwhile. In the past one was easier money than the other. That's changing in what I'm doing however.

What worked in 2009 doesn't work in 2012. Things change.