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The more I do, the less it works

Sounds familiar to you? it's so obvious they could leave me a note

         

explorador

9:44 pm on Sep 16, 2015 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Hi there webmasters, let's talk specifics (yes I know, not those specifics). I have a network of sites, all white hat, CMS built by me, fast, all original content, all original pictures (lots of it, I'm also a photographer). For years my work has been well positioned, if not by text + pictures, then at least by one of those. Ok, let's talk about some clues, specific stuff.

  • Not all the sites have/had Adsense
  • The traffic of the websites WITH adsense is about 5,000 unique daily on low season
  • That's about 150,000 monthly unique visitors
  • Little bounce, many readers stay quite a while online

Responsive #1. A while ago analyzed things and thanks to a forum member saw lots of opportunities for improvement, first responsive adaptation launched and earnings showed only a bit, small increase but steady. Visitors on smartphones were seeing the right ads. Earnings drop. About a year ago earnings went down a bit. Deeper look pointed at needing more updates and full responsive on all sites.

More updates and earnings up. While traffic was steady, posting articles showed increase on earnings the same day and then diluting over the week, it was steady. Solid behavior for a few months (like 6 months) **Then, the earnings didn't show any change despite updates. Earnings frozen, then went down a bit.

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The previous is the FIRST change I saw and I can remember: when I did something affecting positively the earnings, then went down. It's not as earnings going back to previous numbers, they went down a bit from there, let's say I was earning US$ 10 per day, the effects of change increased that to US$ 12, then after a period of about 24 hours to 72 hours, earnings went DOWN to a solid US$ 7 per day
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As learned, did nothing, just waited for things to settle down, this is such a confusing ecosystem with many variables we have to give it time.

Responsive #2. Launch a full responsive fast update, sites load fast, right ads-size on the sites, full change on sites but managed to keep the urls, redirects, traffic juice, etc. Everything looked ok. There was an earnings increase, it didn't last**Then there comes the ghost again: earnings dropped not to where they were, they went down a bit more. Let's continue with the example, I was let's say on US$ 7 per day, it went up to US$ 9, then after 24 hours to 72 hours went down to US$ 5 per day. As learned, did nothing, just waited for things to settle down avoiding several changes at once so I could see some effects of A over B etc.

Extra website. Added an extra website to the network using adsense. This is a solid traffic website, the same deal: original articles, pictures, organic traffic, etc. Right after placing the ads the income went up, this time a bit more. Here comes the ghost again: earnings went up and then down. Continuing with the past example let's say I was on US$5 per day, it went up to US$6-7, then after 24 hours to 48 this time, it went right down to US$3 per day. SOLID.

Did I paint the picture well enough? Every change causing any increase on earnings is effective only for about 24-48 hours, then earnings go down but not where they were, it gets worse. Sounds too silly to be true? hear this.

Extra changes: blocking ads and networks.After checking the so many weird ads and non wanted stuff, I go blocking some ads and networks. When it seems the house is clean, earnings go up a bit, just a bit. And here comes the ghost again: continuing with the example I Was on US$3 per day, it goes up to US$4-5 per day, then back to US$3 and down to US$2.5, the "punishment" seems lower this time but it's there.

Extra changes: Networks OFF, blocking all networks.Tired of blocking silly ads and unknown weird named networks I go bersek and blocked ALL THE NETWORKS leaving only Google Adsense on. Earnings go up. The ghost comes again, after 24hours the earnings go back to where they were. The last stage had US$2.5 per day, goes to US$3-5 and then back to US$2.5 and stays there

Extra changes: Networks ON, allowing networks. This time I do the opposite: SAME RESULT. Earnings go up a bit and then back to where they were in exactly 24 hours. I decided to play with this, I go on blocking all networks one day, the next I allow all networks, then switch them off, then on, and play like this day after day. Well, magic, earnings go from US$2.5 to US$4 per day, seems solid. The ghost again, it goes down to US$2.5 per day. After just ONE WEEK, no matter what I do: on or off all the networks or blocking the ads... the earnings won't change.

After 15 days to 1 month earnings are even lower, it went down a bit from the (remember hypothetical) US$2.5 to US$ 2.00. Traffic has been up, in fact it goes up year after year, pure organic traffic. The page views on adsense (adding the total traffic) went up, adding an extra site increased this even more, still... while the traffic goes up the earnings go down. I understand this and have no problem dealing with it, but the evident effect of 24 to 72 hours sending the earnings not only back, but even down a bit from where they were seems fishy and silly to me. My sites are stronger, better traffic, more exposure and interaction than ever, the panorama of going direct ads looks better... while on the other side Adsense is working less for me.

This is not a complain, I won't loose my sleep on this, it's just solid to me, the behavior doesn't look good, it seems like constant penalization. Want to speculate? sounds familiar?

martinibuster

3:10 am on Oct 5, 2015 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



SnowLeppard, you have a solid posting record on WebmasterWorld and I want to thank you for your quality posts and for sharing a link to that book. It looks like a good one! ;)

The author, Joe Pulizzi [joepulizzi.com] has a lot of accomplishments. His last book was named one of the five must read business books by Fortune Magazine. [fortune.com]

Thanks again for sharing!

explorador

3:21 pm on Oct 5, 2015 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Thanks SnowLeppard, read a bit about it, sounds good and useful, specially from the perspective of writing/writers (I'm also on that field).

explorador

6:44 pm on Oct 7, 2015 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Thanks SnowLeppard, just read some about it and sounds good, posted about it but I don't see the post, something went wrong. I'm still convinced (and seeing) the benefits of good content, it's worth the time and effort,.

roycerus

4:11 pm on Oct 9, 2015 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



@Iamlost - are you saying that your "Active View Measurable" is at 100%? What about other members?

Yeah a lot of new measures, smart pricing are probably eating into what we would make usually. Hopefully the end result is better ROI for advertisers. Cause without that it'll be difficult for income to grow.

Futunet

7:22 am on Oct 15, 2015 (gmt 0)



Where it hasn't, I strongly suspect it's because of mobile.


This. I've been blowing this horn for a couple years now. The whole shift to mobile has made some people small fortunes, but if you're making your revenue from AdSense the "mobile revolution" has been a disaster.

Mobile click through rates were already miserable to begin with. And now there are new rules that penalize full screen mobile ads. On top of that Adblocking is rising fast in mobile. And we get penalized if we don't have mobile sites. (As if the penalty of even having a mobile site wasn't bad enough)

The mobile web is completely anemic from an Adsense perspective. And when you consider that over half of all web traffic is mobile today, the problem becomes clear. The shift from desktop to mobile is basically a shift from high-revenue generating traffic to low-revenue generating traffic. Not much of a "revolution" for webmasters.

iamlost

8:26 pm on Oct 24, 2015 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



@roycerus: my "Active View Measurable" is 99%+ (usually 100%) as Google actually is quite good at serving their ads. :) And that is all that number really means, that Google served it.

As I mentioned I don't pay much attention to AdSense (if it breaks 10% up/down threshold I take a look) but "Active View Viewable" is telling if served ads were visible to a visitor; given my ad block page positioning and visitor history I accept up to 20% not seen on a page. It breaks that and I investigate. Otherwise set and forget.



Are there Google ceiling thresholds?
Who knows; besides Google.

Are you and others describing factual repeatable behaviours?
I'll accept your word as true until shown otherwise.

Could you be misconstruing some unexpectedly created artifact of unknown Google actions (similar to the historical Sandbox effect) as a direct specified behaviour?
Absolutely.

This is always the most likely explanation with Google edge cases, given the increasing complexity of and interactions between Google algorithms. Especially when many others do not see the same results from similar actions. For whatever reason Google is in love with bucket sorts and often they seem to be playing some strange n-partial bucket shell game as depending on which data centres reply the data-ball shifts, even disappears.

I subscribe to (as I've seen it time and time again) the theory that Google resets a page/site depending on perceived changes; that it gets an initial boost as if it were new and in need of sufficient 'valid' traffic to be classified, then drops depending on said classification, available traffic, and ad inventory. And possibly the URL's past history.

Most of my pages have been pretty well complete (info sites) for years. What you are describing is not new, I'm sure I read similar threads here years back and I've certainly experienced similar Google behaviour for many years. I do know that within a day to a week changed pages see an upswing of 5-50% from previous, then a drop, then within a month settling out at ~90% to ~125% with an average of ~110% of prior. Typically, over extended time, i.e. a year or two, they tend up (probably based on what competitors do 'wrong' as I rarely make content changes).
Note: the last big change was going responsive with server assist two to three years ago. Otherwise changes are minimal being content updates required by new information.

The big question, if I'm correct, is what is different about your sites compared to others that brings the decided drop (after boost) without recovery nor growth over time? Of course that isn't going to be addressed here; however, it may be something that you can investigate and mitigate.

That we all learn from others' misery is a sad fact of webdev life. The flights of ecstasy are generally held close, the agony shouted from the rooftops.

None of which dulls the pain or calms the frustration. Knowing that you are not alone may make the cause less personal but doesn't alter the suffering. Good luck, best wishes.

Yayabobi

1:03 pm on Oct 25, 2015 (gmt 0)



Haven't gone through all the comments but from what I read it seems that when you make a change in your setup you see an increase for a few days and then it goes down again. That's just how banner blindness works. Now, you can keep changing it manually or use multi-arm bandit algo. testing platforms that test for banner ads and they will continuously display the best performing setup making the changes you perform manually automatic and increasing adsense earnings on the way.
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