@wa desert rat -- touche -- this weekend sucked on my end which goes against your pattern but today is rocking. Having said that, I'm wondering if G is dumping some clicks into my account from the weekend or if this is really all from today.

CPC was dismal for the last two days but is well up today so maybe it's just more dollars in the auction which seems to be helping CTR too (better ad choices for viewers). So, patterns, conclusions? Yeah, right. Random change is the new norm. Oh, and throw in the fact that text ad formats are changing once again, who knows what factor is in play at any given moment? My new attitude is that "I'm just along for the ride." ;)

I'm running double what I did last year, and last year kicked serious ass, so ... no complaints here.

BTW, I'm not complaining about earnings either. Way better than last year even if down a bit from April or so. Major site changes since then are still percolating around in the index so who knows what tomorrow brings but I'm highly optimistic it's gonna get even better as summer get's into full gear. Just keep working the program is my tip for the day.

Adsense? Ah, yes, I remember that one well .... - Once upon a time, long time ago, there was a . . . . . . . . . . .

Reporting seems a little stuck. Or maybe they just can't keep up.

Reporting's been "batchy" today it seems. Payments are happening so that's probably what's behind it.

Not sure who "we" are or that "we" actually agree on anything around here.

It means the majority of adsense publishers.
All across the net people have complained about lower earnings this past year. It's not accidental either according to Google employees.

Yea we hear that a lot. There's no evidence the "majority" of AdSense publishers are experiencing lower earnings. There is lots of evidence that the majority of AdSense publishers who complain about their earnings might be experiencing lower numbers. That's about it.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. There's at least a couple million publishers, last I heard. Most unheard from.

And the Google employee (note the singular) story is apocryphal too.

At least I've been able to log into Adsense the last few days without hitting "reload" or "Try Classic" 20 times, they've apparently screwed up and fixed that for all browsers.

June 20, 21 were all but dead earnings days. Today at 7:45am and already it's the highest earnings day all month. Sure AdSense, whatever you say.

Traffic is good, but CTRs are at an alltime low (CPC isn't much better). I can never get my head round why it can be ok one day and then poor the next, but making a living through Adsense with sporadic revenue just doesn't cut it anymore. If it continues as it has done will defo have to move on to full affiliate/renting ad space. Sucks.

A brand new milestone. 3 clicks on an ad with a CPC of $0.00. I've seen some measly CPCs but this one takes the cake!

WDR

I just saw a really lousy weekend, followed by 2 days of wayyyy above average search traffic, CTR and CPC... Call me paranoid but it looked as if the numbers were being manipulated.
Unless they've delayed some reporting for the last couple weeks and just played catch up Monday and Tuesday, I have a hard time believing those numbers.

Today, traffic and CPC are more normal but CTC is way below average and I see google is playing with the layout of their 336x280 ads.
I'm seeing 4 tiny ads either side by side in the ad block, or 4 tiny ads stacked vertically, no accordian on hover. I can barely read the ad text on desktop or laptop.
I'm tempted to just remove the ad code until they come to their senses. These experiments just looks rediculous and obviously are not working.
It never ends huh?

I just saw a really lousy weekend, followed by 2 days of wayyyy above average search traffic, CTR and CPC... Call me paranoid but it looked as if the numbers were being manipulated.

I saw something like this too. Dead weekend followed by an unusually good Monday. Seemed stuck over the weekend which leads me to think Monday morning featured a click dump. I don't think think it's so much manipulation as it is catching up. You can't be sure when any clicks actually happen with Adsense. Reporting seems designed to keep you from knowing things like that (delays - purposeful or otherwise, make it a guessing game at best).

All across the net people have complained about lower earnings this past year.

More publishers are reporting a decline in revenue because Google partner revenue is down.

Google's financial statements show a decline in partner revenue share from $3.522 billion in the fourth quarter of last year to $3.397 billion in the first quarter of this year.

I'll be curious to see what their numbers look like for the second quarter of this year.

For the record, my company manages 20+ sites. Some of them are way up and others are way down this month versus a year ago. They have been acting that way since February.

More publishers are reporting a decline in revenue because Google partner revenue is down.

Maybe but until this group of publishers reveal what's happening to their traffic numbers, said reporting is nothing but hot air. Again, you can't compare partner share from one period to another without identifying the size of the pie the partners are eating from. If it's a bigger pie now, the partner share could have actually increased in volume even though its a smaller percentage of the pie.

Added: My suggestion to everyone is to stop focusing on the publisher community's relationship to the Google pie and instead focus on your own relationship with the Google pie. I doubt very seriously that your increasing or declining revenue has anything to do directly with the overall partner revenue share and rather has to do with your site, your traffic and your implementation of the Adsense program (with a little text ad formatting experimentation on Google's part thrown in for good measure).

No maybe. It's from Google's own financial statements. Those are hard, absolute numbers.

Yes but:

It's from Google's own financial statements. Those are hard, absolute numbers.

takes a pretty big (and unaccounted for) leap to:

More publishers are reporting a decline in revenue because Google partner revenue is down.

You don't know why Google partner revenue is down - maybe they purged out a mess of fraudulent advertisers and publishers. When they kick someone out, they don't just hand the money they would have made to someone else. (!)

Correlation. Causation. Correlation. Causation.

Netmeg, I'm simply addressing the claim from many publishers that their AdSense revenue has been down recently versus others who say that it is not down, that we are simply complaining, not working hard enough, etc.

Regardless of why it is down, the fact remains that it has declined recently versus the end of last year. Some of us are not imagining things.

And as I said in my original post, I'm looking forward to seeing the number from the current quarter.

@scottb -- you stated an effect related to a specific cause e.g.

More publishers are reporting a decline in revenue because Google partner revenue is down.

That's a effect pretending to be supported by a reason. I could just as easily say earnings are down because the sun is shining today. Neither statement supports the conclusion without a lot of dot connecting.

You can say that partner share has decreased and you can say that some partners are experiencing a decrease in earnings but that provides no information that supports a direct connection between the two. Any connection based on the above information is purely circumstantial in nature.

[en.wikipedia.org ]

See the Hasty Generalization fallacy listing from the link above along with other fallacies that may be involved in this oft-cited argument and ask yourself if the information presented really does support the conclusion.

BTW, you're not the only one who's presented this exact same argument so don't take this post personally please. Input is welcome here but it's hard to look at things presented as cause an effect when the connection isn't really there in the presentation.

BTW: the fallacy listed above is commonly referred to as "Leaping to a Conclusion" and when citing others using the same argument as a source of authority, you're adding another fallacy commonly know as an "Illicit Appeal to Authority." Just because someone else said it, doesn't make it true.

[edited by: webcentric at 7:12 pm (utc) on Jun 26, 2014]

Google's 4th quarter 2013 revenue share was $3.522 billion. Its first quarter 2014 share was $3.397 billion. Is that a decline?

Yup. And as netmeg stated. That could be the result of culling bad publishers, higher expenses on Google's side (such as R&D) or any other number of factors. It's not a reason for any particular publisher's earnings being up or down. The conclusion is a Leap of Faith.

Oh, and you're comparing the holiday season to the great lull that comes after it. Apples to oranges in my book.

It is a misdirection to turn this debate into why the revenue share is down. It has only been about the fact that it declined in the first quarter.

I've never said the first quarter decline was the sole reason why an individual publisher's revenue was down. But logically it is one of many factors that can contribute to declining revenue.

Publishers as a group can't increase their revenue when Google's revenue share declines. Your comments are focused on a tree while I am looking at the forest.

Let's try an example. Google shares $10 with 10 publishers who each get $1. The next quarter Google shares $9 with those 10 publishers. But for reasons unclear one publisher gets $1.90 while the other 9 get 90 cents each.

The publisher with $1.90 leaps to a conclusion and operates under the fallacy that everything with Google is great. The others say they are seeing a decline.

How is it logically possible for 1) all 10 publishers to share a total of $10 that doesn't exist and 2) have the decline in Google's revenue not be among the factors that reduce revenue for the 9?

More publishers are reporting a decline in revenue because Google partner revenue is down.

There's more than one logical fallacy involved in the above statement even if both facts as stated (standing on their own) are true. Enough said on that front.

Google's financial statements show a decline in partner revenue share from $3.522 billion in the fourth quarter of last year to $3.397 billion in the first quarter of this year.

This seems as natural as falling off a log. Advertising budgets get drained during the holiday season, there's naturally more money in play during that period.

I'll be curious to see what their numbers look like for the second quarter of this year. ]

I'm always curious but that doesn't mean the results will mean a thing. The Greek word for economy originally referred to the economy of the household and that's the only economy that concerns me.

Trees are dying in the forest but I see no signs that the forest is in immanent danger based on these numbers. It all looks pretty natural given that no organism, state or company on this planet seems capable of expanding forever.

Here's how I'd rewrite your opening post on this subject.

1. More publishers seem to be reporting a decline
2. Google partner revenue is down from the first quarter of this year compared with the last quarter of last year.

I wonder if there's a connection between the health of those trees and the health of that forest?

How is it logically possible for 1) all 10 publishers to share a total of $10 that doesn't exist and 2) have the decline in Google's revenue not be among the factors that reduce revenue for the 9?

You're looking at it like a fixed-size pie where everyone gets a portion. But the size of the pie is also dependent on the efforts of the publishers. The factors could just as easily be about publishers not properly adjusting to the changes in text ad formatting that's been driving people nuts for many months now and there have people on this board who did nothing in response to it for quite some time except complain about falling revenues. So, is Google paying up less and less or are publishers not using the system as effectively as they once did? Still the numbers you cite are seasonal norms in my estimation.

Added: Publishers are not shareholders (for the most part anyway), we are earners (or at least we want to be).

Thank you for suggesting how I should write my own posts.

You didn't answer my questions. :)

Really, really rough CPC today. CPC's just been rough the past week. Sheesh.