Did you learn anything new?

Nurse becomes more patronising with every post!

Sadly, no revelations on the inner workings of the black box. (sigh)

Simplistic at best. Was someone tasked with writing something? Anything? Anything at all to fill a void?

The Webmaster Troubleshooter is designed to help you resolve common issues with your site in Google Search

Really? One suggestion:

First, let's check to see if your site is in our search index. Please enter the following query using the site: operator in google.com: [ site:yoursiteurl ]

Well using that "especially helpful" tip, which we have known for years, and years. My own-example.com yields?

About 45,500,000 results (0.45 seconds)

Big Sigh!

I suppose its helpful in the sense that they are acknowledging there's a widespread drop in earnings for a lot of people (otherwise why would they write it?)

Well using that "especially helpful" tip

Helpful in the same sense as "You have leukemia! Take some codeine and get plenty of bedrest. It may clear up over time."

I never look for specific and useful advice in Google's PR releases. They're aimed at the million or so dollar-a-day publishers, not the few who work on websites full time. Plus like all corporate PR they never place share prices at risk by admitting a downturn in trade or customers.

My site has 452,000 results. We have a good traffic (in the millions of pages served every month). We use Google DFP and have been with AdSense since 2003. And yet from February 1st two of the three AdSense placements in every page only show text ads. In February alone our AdSense revenue dipped almost 45%. And I haven't managed to get anyone to tell me why things like this happen.

It's not the index, I tell you.

freitasm, could it be an inventory issue? By that I mean a lack of inventory causing a default to text.

I considered that as an explanation but I see text ads for ISPs and tech providers that up until recently had image ads running. What I am seeing is images now 10% of the text ads. According to the AdSense reports Rich Media has a RPM 10 times greater than text and Images is three times... And yet almost 80% of ads are now text, when three months ago text ads were only 25% of the total.

No, I don't think it's an inventory issue. Not something that would go for 40 days. Something caused my DFP/AdSense account to go this way. Google is investigating but apparently it may take a few days.

I'm seeing only a slight increase of text ads over rich media and image ads. What's more significant is that the RPM for image/rich media ads has plummeted. Before Christmas it was almost double the RPM for text ads. Now it's only about 20% higher.

Whenever i get image ads, i'm seeing them repeated in every slot. So every ad on the page is exactly the same.

They are also very loosely targeted. If I have a travel site about new york (for example), then i'll get plenty of travel ads, but they'll be for places like china -- which is next to useless when you want to visit america.

Im guessing it must be a lack of inventory.

The duplication you mention, londrum, was the main reason I removed them and went back to text.

My text ads are almost as bad. In one of my 336px boxes there are four separate text ads, and three of them just say "Start Download".

That's all they say -- "Start Download". Three times in a row. Who on earth is going to click those?

Having identical ads in different ad spots is one thing, but having three identical ads in the SAME ad spot is just daft!

That's all they say -- "Start Download". Three times in a row. Who on earth is going to click those?

I though that topic was extensively discussed on the thread "Google to label sites w/bad ads as dangerous"
Here: [webmasterworld.com ]

Were those ads to appear on my sites I would block them, although I have some recollection it being said they seem to have hundreds, if not thousands of domain names.

"Start Download"

I don't understand how those misleading ads get through ad review, when one of the editorial policies clearly states it does not allow "overly generic ads that contain vague phrases".

And yet almost 80% of ads are now text, when three months ago text ads were only 25% of the total.

I've heard reports of more text ads slipping through ad blockers. Could that have something to do with it? Or have your image ad impressions gone down as well?

Robzilla... Ad impressions remain on a similar level. Text ads % of total increased. We use PageFair to track ad blocks within our domain and there is no change on this front really.

Simplistic overview on Adsense optimization. I guess it fits newbie publishers who are in the early stages of Adsense. Key is always not to rely solely on Google earnings. Diversify.