Looking at countries, any clicks outside the states are less than a dime a click. Total junk.

That's pretty much always been the case for me. Except for Canada.

Absurd.

Updation please Google, where are you hiding today's clicks?

EPCs are still a little light, but I'm definitely seeing less bot activity and clawbacks.

@netmeg, I also noticed the same behaviour since early hours today and actually yesterday, after the cut-off I have had about £3.75 added back to my earnings for yesterday.

I have just received an email from AdSense team about changing add positioning for better CTR, any thoughts about this at all? Should I trust them or should I just trust my guts more?

anyone notice the rates for the 336x280 are horrible compared to the rest of the sizes?

CPC getting low... don't know what is happening and future of people depended on adsense

I am trying out a certified partner to see if this has any change.

If it was easy everyone would be doing it :)

My clicks haven't changed in almost 4 hours, what's up G?

I have just received an email from AdSense team about changing add positioning for better CTR, any thoughts about this at all? Should I trust them or should I just trust my guts more?

When Google sends me a suggestion like that, I always take it into consideration, and if possible, test it. Sure, they have sent me suggestions that are ridiculous. But they have also sent me suggestions that started making significantly more revenue *within the hour*. So I never just blow them off. Test it, and test it for at least a week or two. You might be surprised.

@netmeg, Thanks, will give it a try on several pages with most traffic and will report back here to see if this will have any positive or negative effect.

I have managed to block them all, but some of these bots are still appearing, but now with different IP, so I have to keep blocking them for now.

How did you do this and how did you know who is bot? Maybe you could post a bot block list here so we can all use it?

Creating your own bot list is really easy with a bit of php.

Just create a form with 3 input fields named: contact, email, comment. Add a submit button and place it all in a hidden div. Only spam bots and scrapers are going to see the form. If you're worried about other visitors accidentally seeing the forms, add a note above it in the hidden div: "Complete these fields only if you no longer want access to this site".

When the form is fired, write the IP to a new line in a data file.
From there you can format the collected IP's into an htaccess block list or whatever else you like.

Get the IP:

function GetIP()
{
 if (getenv("HTTP_CLIENT_IP") && strcasecmp(getenv("HTTP_CLIENT_IP"), "unknown"))
   $ip = getenv("HTTP_CLIENT_IP");
  else if (getenv("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR") && strcasecmp(getenv("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"), "unknown"))
   $ip = getenv("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR");
  else if (getenv("REMOTE_ADDR") && strcasecmp(getenv("REMOTE_ADDR"), "unknown"))
   $ip = getenv("REMOTE_ADDR");
  else if (isset($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) && $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] && strcasecmp($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'], "unknown"))
   $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
  else
   $ip = "unknown";
 return($ip);
}

$p = 0;

if(isset($_POST['email']) && ($_POST['email']) !==''){
 $p++;
}

if(isset($_POST['contact']) && ($_POST['contact']) !==''){
 $p++;
}

if(isset($_POST['comment']) && ($_POST['comment']) !==''){
 $p++;
}

if($p !==0){

 $fp = fopen($datFile, 'a');
 fwrite($fp, $ip."\n");
 fclose($fp);
}

You can even use the form to just redirect them off your page. Put it at the top and it's the first thing they'll try to access.

Are any of these bots which keep reappearing showing up from Qwest IP ranges or Ireland by any chance?

It's a long long thread, but this is where we discussed bot issues last year.

[webmasterworld.com...]

Yesterday one of my sites saw the highest traffic ever from Google serps. Unfortunately, earnings are slowly going south. For the 1st time, I'm considering to try other ad networks; probably Media.net network.

I have never looked into bots. Is bot blocking really a worth while endevour?

Is bot blocking really a worth while endevour?

Depends on your content.
On my sites, I have a lot of forms that the spam bots like to play with, wasting server resources. So I have to detect and block them.

It also reduces my monthly adsense clawbacks to about $.50 to $2.50 per $1000 earnings. Not sure if that affects my overall rpm or whatever (it appears to) but it can't hurt.

Blocking any unwanted bots is a must for any website, but I agree with netmeg as it is a subject of the whole new thread or the tread that does already exist. Just to touch-base, the bots can be identified in the different ways and also bocked in various ways, all depends how you prefer to go about it. I am looking at my Analytics referral and direct traffic and also traffic from any unrelated keywords. Most of the traffic results in 100% bounce rate, but some can be little lower then that, rest of this traffic will remain on one page for over 10-15 minutes. So the next step is to go to your logs and compare the patterns.

Also form spamming is fairly easy to stop with adding hidden empty field that your visitor naturally will not see, but any bot will, the rest is just simple validation process and logging.

This is all about bots in this thread, so lets just keep it on the subject from now.

Nope, it's entitled January 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations, not how to block bots from whatever they're doing.

Thursday's earnings were dire at 36.9% of Wednesday's with some of my lowest metrics ever. Actual clicks were down 14% however my EPCs were some of the worst I've seen.

I'm guessing that whatever has been going on is still continuing.

I just passed last January's numbers, so I'm ok with it.

I'm at about 75% of the performance I was seeing in early January, so there's improvement.

Hmm... today (Friday) seems like Adsense used the handbrake.
Low payment again!

Raise your (virtual) hand if you are seeing a pretty consistent earnings pattern like this.

Sunday: very good
Monday: bad
Tuesday: very good
Wednesday: bad
Thursday: very good
Friday: bad
Saturday: very good

It's like clock-work for me now; every other day. Very rare exceptions to this good day/bad day trend.

I'm seeing a pretty consistent earnings pattern like this.

Sunday: bad
Monday: bad
Tuesday: bad
Wednesday: bad
Thursday: bad
Friday: bad
Saturday: bad

But, of course, I'm getting less than 50% of the page views that I did in December. Today is the worst day I have ever seen.

As I understand it, valid clicks that are not currently counted are put 'on hold' and will be added before the payment is due, correct?

And is there a place to see how many clicks have been considered invalid?

if you are seeing a pretty consistent earnings pattern

Nope, last 10 days from 13th Jan have been:

Bad - very low EPC
Good
Average
Bad - very low EPC
Good
Good
Average
Average
Good
Bad - very low EPC

Those bad days with low EPCs would have been average days but for the clicks coinciding directly with poor USA click values, in some cases almost half the US click average.

And is there a place to see how many clicks have been considered invalid?

No.

thanks for the bot blocking tips and script!

Today is the first time in January that a high paying Adsense click was not yet taken away ($2.5) by Google. The day is still not over so who knows if it will disappear, just like they all did in 2015. If not counting this click the earnings are still low.