The way Google AdSense works is a complete mystery to me. One minute my CPC is 14p with 27 clicks, then clicks increase to 30 and the CPC drops down to 13p, it just doesn't make sense to me. Also, it seemed that all of my ads no matter where they are placed or what format they are in are earning the same money.

When traffic drops, the money that you would have earned will simply be earned by the site that got the traffic you didn't. There is no difference to Google's bottom line.

I'm not talking about traffic dropping, I'm talking about revenue dropping. A common complaint here is the drop in earnings per click, compared to the good old days before automated ad-buying and the rise in mobile use. If you're earning less per click, so is Google.

@EditorialGuy
Possibly but not necessarily. On the same basis as I explained in my last post, and if one assumes that there is a steady market of advertisers, (and there is very little to suggest that there isn't) then the high value ads could be displaying on other sites, those with high traffic and high demand. In turn low demand sites are left showing the many low value ads. Again Google doesn't care whether the ads are shown on site A or B and in the end Google pockets its commission from all the ad impressions.

Today is excellent. September is so good!

Page RPM is £4.97 today, page CTR 2.09%, and CPC is 24p. Should have a fabulous day if the figures stay like this for the rest of the day. And I have had 11 clicks already. I suspect the CPC will drop off slightly, but hopefully it should still be fairly high by the end of the day.

On the same basis as I explained in my last post, and if one assumes that there is a steady market of advertisers, (and there is very little to suggest that there isn't) then the high value ads could be displaying on other sites, those with high traffic and high demand. In turn low demand sites are left showing the many low value ads.

Let's not forget that advertisers and ad-buying processes are a lot smarter than they were in 2003 or 2004. Also, "high traffic" and "high demand" aren't the same thing. On our own site (which might be characterized as a medium-traffic site), some channels attract more advertisers--including placements--than others do and earn much higher RPMs as a result.

Anyone here have auto ads enabled and noticed that there are multiple ads at the top of your site? My RPM is great but this not only makes my site look like crap but also is going to lead to a ton of accidental clicks.

Also noticed they have implemented popup video ads with no option to stop them. These slow up my site and are incredibly annoying.

I have multiple ads at the top of the site and I too have good RPM :D

You cannot change the placement, they are called auto ads for a reason ;). Also, Google has clearly mentioned in the email that they are not responsible for any ad crap on the site.

Are you using manual and auto ads together?

@EditorialGuy agreed, I was over simplifying to some extent.

This month is coming to an end, I have reached new traffic highs, both sessions and impressions are up. All as a result of lots of love from Google. But this month is looking like it is going to be one of my lowest earning month in a long while. A review of my stats, indicates that it is the results of low CTR and CPC. Coverage is unchanged, my ratio of CPM, to CPC is unchanged. My ad inventory looks OK, the spam is still there (no more, no less) and as always it is being blocked. The remaining inventory looks decent with many big brands advertising.

Today is looking as bad as August 8th, CTR is lower today and the CPC is only a penny more.

What is up?

Bad start. CTR is very bad!

Yesterday was good - day before was good.

It still means this month I will be 10% down from sept last year (which was lowest year ever at that point)

You can’t be too mad at 10%. But when visitor numbers are the same - you still really want the same money.

I am noticing a ctr drop and the same with rpm, although we are doing better this year. September up by 20%, last few months we were up by 60%. We worked really hard this year, increased content creation. Let's hope things improve.

Further to my post above...

Yesterday was horrible, in a statistically significant way. Then this morning I check my earnings, and my earning so far this morning are more than double what my earnings were yesterday, a good day's worth. So nothing really strange in that, just a really good start to a good day. But, when I check analytics to see were the clicks came from, "nada!" the click data in analytics is showing a fraction of what Adsense is showing. So I figure it is a timing issue, I must of had few big clicks late last night. I check yesterday's stats, those coincide with yesterday's Adsense figures.

So to recap, yesterday was bad, today is good, averaging the two out and things are pretty normal. But today's earnings are the result of "ghost clicks". Something strange is happening, is anybody else seeing this?

No need to say it, I know that the "ghost clicks" may get clawed back.

"Click data in analytics"

How do we check that?

You need to link your AdSense account to your Analytics account. Then if you go in GA to "Behaviour" (left sidebar) -> "Publisher" -> "Publisher Pages" you get a detailed report of what pages are getting clicks and impressions including time of day and other useful information.

As I said, our site is down 75% in earnings. It's brutal. Google is now answering the questions that our site used to speak to. It is not true that your lost money is going to other sites. Your money going back to google. Top ads, structured, links all these are leading back to their engine, but using the work of other sites to do it. Our site still ranks first, but that first result is now buried under, ads, then links back to G and local results. It's sickening. It's hard to believe that G doesn't produce a single stitch of content but is rewarded for everyone else's hard work. One engine being so popular and so dominate is not healthy for the web.

What happen to google? Google don’t be evil.

Today is horrible. CTR is very low.

It's my humble opinion that no search engine should put paid advertisements at the top before results. The right rail would be a better place for them. Too many people with excellent websites get buried by putting ads at the top.

RPM is up by about 20-25% this week compared to August, and at least 30% compared to last year. Traffic is up, too, so things are looking pretty good, but October is fast approaching: a new quarter, usually with a big dip at the beginning, and then a slow build-up towards the holidays.

It's hard to believe that G doesn't produce a single stitch of content but is rewarded for everyone else's hard work.

Because we are all dumbass code monkeys who never got our acts together and demanded recognition and payment for our copyrighted works. Is Getty Images the only one to challenge them?

Earnings have been good yesterday.

@egem1367, @RedBar

It's hard to believe that G doesn't produce a single stitch of content but is rewarded for everyone else's hard work.

Do I understand correctly? You are claiming that the service Google provides has no value, and thus they have no right to be compensated. Then the solution is very simple block Google in your robots.txt file. Your content will no longer be "stolen" by them.

Today's still bad.

NickMNS I didn't say it didn't have value, I said they don't provide any content. All the content comes from us. I'll give you an example (this is not my area or niche or anything). Go to G, type in Top 50 Horror films. You will get a list result at the top of google. It's googles list of top 50. Click on one of the movie icons and it goes to another results page. Now, how does the engine know the top 50? Is it going by most traffic? Now way, or the newest movie would be coming up first, like IT. Is someone at G sitting down and entering those results, no way! What the engine is doing is reading other peoples pages, and other people's work, the work you do, the work I do, and using that info to generate a list. The only thing the engine is doing is jumbling someone else's list, and then directing visitors back to page after page of results. They don't even say who picked those movies. Are they from Tomatoes, IMDB, Wiki? We don't know, but if the engine isn't creating them, it's pulling them from some place. No one at google is sitting there writing lists or entering information. Those clicks should be going to a publisher not back to google, and it's not right. If we did that, google would ban us.

Our site still ranks first, but that first result is now buried under, ads, then links back to G and local results. It's sickening. Our site still ranks first, but that first result is now buried under, ads then links back to G and local results. It's sickening.

it's called Pay To Play. Top of the page on popular search terms you have to pay G. Free listing go below 4 ads, answer blocks, local listings and anything else G can shove in there.

Facebook is doing the same. If you want followers to see your content you have to boost post $. Otherwise only a fraction of the people who like your page will ever see the post.

@egem1367 no one cares about content in and of itself. There are billions if not trillions of webpages, each and everyone has "content". But no one cares about that content. What people, users, care about is the value that is provided by the content or service. Google provides an extremely valuable service, and as a result is able to derive value for itself from that service in the form of ads and ad revenue.

It is simple, if you do not feel that Google is providing a service of any value than simply stop participating in the service by blocking Google. (They make it very easy to do so). Or if you feel you can do better, go ahead a build a competing search engine.

But you will not pull your website from Google nor will you build another search engine. Because 1- the service they provide to you is far too valuable 2- it is impossible to build anything that could compete against them.

You want the secret to dominating the serps? Provide users with value.

Why are torrent websites popular? - value, they provide a means of getting something for free that you would otherwise need to pay for (no content created just value)
Why is Facebook popular? - value, they provide a means of connecting with friends and family (no content created just value)
Why is Amazon popular? - value, they provide a means of purchasing goods at the low prices from your home (no content created just value)
Why is Wall-Street Journal popular? - value, they provide high quality journalism and insight into the financial world. They create content, but high value content.

I don't know what type of a site you produce, and it is not my point here to criticize you or what you do. My point is simply that is not content that is the key it is the value in the content, product or service that you provide that is key. Google provides value, moreover without Google you would likely be unable to provide any value to your users because they would never find you.

Bottom line is organic is not free, you are simply not paying for the service provided by Google in cash you are paying for the service by allowing them to advertise on the back of your valuable content. Yes, they are pocketing some of the value you created, but unless you have a better way of propagating and monetizing your content, that just becomes a the cost of doing business.

Nickmns, were you that guy in high school who was beat up by a bully, then followed that bully around for the rest of high school opening doors for him, thanking him for hanging out with you? Come on, don't be that guy....I do have a better way, it's tried and tested, competition. Google never put their sponsors at the top of search until they controlled 99% of search. The structured results were always on the side too. I started using Google because they DIDN'T do those things...like Excite, or Webcrawler, or Yahoo. They were all junking up their searches and google was the best. Something new will come along, it may take a while...look at FB. They are now being eaten up by Snapchat. Myspace, napster, digg, all thought they were all too big to fail. Google has remained at the top for so long because they valued their publishers. Content is king, remember? They had lived by the idea do no evil, when that ends, others will rise up....I'm dedicated to bringing a good value to my readers not to companies...no matter how big they are....

@egem1367 this discussion is going nowhere, and getting way off topic. Read the last paragraph of my previous post. If you don't get that then there is not much I can say that is going to change your position.

I have found that even though websites may rank above you if they are paying, those sites don't necessarily give the user what they are looking for so, in the end, they will probably end up on your website anyway if you are number one on Google organically.