You people don't realize this recession has not been caused by the Covid-19. This was just a trigger. No vaccine will ever stop this from happening. There was the longest boom or bull market in human history (2009-2020), so logically, there will be the longest bear market in human history. People and companies are deep in debt and we will have to stop spending for a couple of years for the economy to heal itself. And no vaccine or FEDs money printing will help.

Almost 15% clawback, in last 3 months highest clawbacks in almost 10 years I'm using Adsense. The big robbery continues, it's not only me being robbed I bet it's with most publishers.

@frostitomik

True. I’ve been saying that for a while, but people don’t want to believe it. They think things will continue normally after covid. Heck, we were on track for a depression, not recession, long before covid.

I earned 38p yesterday, crack open the champagne :-)

I've long given up on AdSense, I received a payment a few months ago for £63, since then I think I've earned £27. I'm earning just a few pennies every day. I was so close to completely scrapping the website a few months ago. However, I decided to revamp the website completely using WordPress. I'm now on a secure server as well which I thought may have helped. Strangely, I'm still ranking number one for a few keywords. However, traffic is almost nothing. According to my Google search console, I had 64 clicks yesterday. Although it said I had 2000 impressions, strange. I think that things may be improving slightly. Having said that, most of my traffic comes from mobile devices and I really don't think many people bother with adverts on their smartphones, they are more of an annoyance than anything else.

75% clawback

@dethfire, placement must be in violence with the Adsense rules.

Are we allowed to review each other websites here to help?

@Runfun

For some reason, some people seem a little bit twitchy about sharing their website, not sure why that would be.
Five years ago I was bringing in between £500 & £700 a month.. Now, I don't even earn enough to get paid each month.

I think it would be very helpful if we could share our URLs and share thoughts and ideas. That can only be a positive thing for us.

I think Google have got a lot to do with why earnings have dropped drastically. It used to be a case that you could type just about anything into Google and Wiki How would be there in the top search listings. I swear to God, if you typed on how to wipe your backside they'd have an article about it. However, I'm not seeing them in the top listings as much as I used to so it will be interesting to know their AdSense earnings have dropped dramatically because they were way up as one of the top earners in the world.

@runfun that is an interesting thought. The massive clawbacks started in March. I run a large forum and the ads are in thread posts. I never got any warnings or notifications from Google, but perhaps their algorithm has changed and the ads are too close to the post text. hmmm, I'll have to experiment.

@Ironside, I'm not afraid of sharing my website but I'm not sure if it's allowed at Webmasterworld. I a worse case scenario G. could see my critics here and relate it to my website.

@Dethfire, interesting because about 90% of my traffic is at a forum. Placement of ads is the same for years and suddenly double figures at the clawbacks.

30% clawback here. I didn't even make enough to get paid for July. As soon as I hit $135 this month, I'm gone for good. I've given them enough chances. There is nothing in my logs to indicate any click fraud whatsoever.

Earnings are really low for me also this year. Much lower than in 2019.

Only 1.9% clawback in July. 3% clawback in June. Maybe my clawbacks are low because I have a label with the text ADVERTISEMENT above each ad unit. And each ad unit has a margin of 20 pixels at the top and bottom of the ads, which also may help in the low clawbacks.

On my main website, I have only one ad placed inside the content, below the title and first paragraph. And 1 ad placed at the end of each article. The rest of the ads I've replaced with affiliate banners.

On my other 2 tech-related websites, I only have 1 Adsense ad placed inside the content, below the title and first paragraph, and the rest I replaced with affiliate banners.

I also noticed that responsive ads caused warnings in the "Core Web Vitals" report in Google Search Console. The warnings were gone after I've made modifications to the Adsense ad code. Now, my ads have a fixed height (250px on main website and 100px on my other 2 websites), but the width adjusts to the screen.

I've read that Core Web Vitals will play an important role in the future of SEO, so it might be a good idea to act now if you have warnings.

Anyway...

I hope it will get better soon.

21% clawback in July. 21% clawback in June.
Has this become a new trend? I remember a time from 2-3 years ago when I had problems with click bots like many others.
At that time, earnings were in five-digit numbers and 6-7% were deducted.
Now in the last two months 21%. It's a shock considering that so far in the last 17 years since I've been with Adsense I've always been below 5% and only a couple of times 6-7%

btw
It is strange because i have a label with the text Advertisement above each AD unit except Adlinks unit.

I'm not fully familiar with the terminology as I don't frequent the Adsense thread as much.

But, does "clawback" refer to the earnings amount/percentage reduced due to "invalid traffic"?

Yes I think it does jmorgan - the same has happened to my website so it's obviously happening to many sites. The final tally on my July earnings dropped by 12.5% for the first time since I've used Adsense - 2007. They never drop but they dropped last month and now this month again, but by much more this month.

I've been researching to find out what happened because I've been freaking at the idea of invalid clicks and I see Google say this on their "Understand your earnings" page: "We reserve the right to adjust a publisher’s earnings in the case that an advertiser who advertised on their site defaults on payment."

Could be that advertisers are defaulting more and more because of the dire economic state of the world! If so, it's beyond unfair that we have to pay for that because we've already carried their advertising.

So it's either that or they made a big technical error at the end of the month but it seems there's definitely something going on that doesn't involve invalid clicks.

If you are getting 20-30% clawbacks every month, then there is clearly something wrong with your sites. I have ads next to the content which is interactive (some accidental clicks are expected) yet I always get less than 10% clawbacks.

Your ads must be literally indistinguishable from your content.

Weird though that they don't give any warning or notice. If it's so obvious our implementations are against their policy, then where is the communication?

@frostitomik "Your ads must be literally indistinguishable from your content."

Not at all. I have one 300 x 600 ad on the right rail and it is well set apart from anything else on the page.

Your ads must be literally indistinguishable from your content.

No, mine are clearly indicated and I got over 10% last month.

Normally I had about 2%-5% clawback but since the Covid outbreak it's around 15%. Plus my CTR dropped a lot and visitors 1st half of 2020 up with more than 20% compared to 1st half of 2019.

In general my website is showing excellent figures with visitors but awful numbers with Adsense. Lucky me affiliates and direct advertisers are performing well.