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AdSense Publishers Reporting Earnings Slump

Posted By Darren Rowse 20th of June 2007 Adsense 0 Comments

I tend not to report too much on the ups and downs of AdSense performance because from day to day it is quite normal for a publishers earnings to go up or down (for a variety of reasons). However over the last 48 hours I’ve had emails from quite a few readers asking if I’d noticed a downturn in AdSense earnings?

The performance of my own blogs with AdSense hasn’t really been impacted too much (although today for the first time in ages my CTR is quite a bit lower and click values are down by around 40%) but from what I can tell quite a few AdSense publishers have seen significant decreases in CTR and click values for the last few days.

My Adsense Nosedive (at Digital Point), AdSense EPC Going into Freefall (Webmaster World) and Is it slow, is it the weather or is it me? (Webmaster World).

As I’ve mentioned above – it’s quite normal to see variations in earnings from day to day but perhaps something a little bigger is going on here?

Have you noticed any changes in your AdSense earnings over the last week or so?

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. It seems so for me

  2. I’ve been noticing a lot of irrelevant ads that have been showing up on my blogs. What gives?

  3. Really? Mine go up and down all the time. Yesterday they went up. Weird.

  4. The New York Times this past Sunday had a front page splash (I think) of the very real reality that internet commerce (be it through purchases or revenue generating items like ad-clicks) itself is slumping. So I guess it would make sense to see a big dip in AdSense given the large trend floating through the web. I don’t use my site/blog to earn money (that’s not why I come to this site, and I don’t even have banners or adverts) so it doesn’t so much bother me as much as I’m sure it does the majority of people on this site…

    -jeremy

  5. yes from 1 week this sites adsens revenue decreased atleast by 50%

  6. If blogging is seasonal I am definitely worried!

    In the winter the earnings were poor enough and I hate to think they might halve in the summer.

    Things certainly seem slower.

    I hope Google aren’t in trouble lol!

  7. I’ve noticed a dip lately, too. Traffic is about the same, and CTR was actually going up, but my RPC going down. eCPM is about 20% below average. Naturally, it fluctuates, but for about two weeks, I’ve been wondering what’s going on.

  8. To be honest, my adsense earnings these past few days got high, i have experienced very low ctr but very high in turnout, meaning those few cents on every click has gone. This might due to Google new policy against MFA sites.

  9. Oddity upon oddity – Glad someone is blogging this anomaly.

    All my least exposed blogs and sites are getting extraordinary results, all the sites and blogs that normally get between 10K and 100K traffic a day are seeing scary NO TRAFFIC, adsense is following the flow of traffic.

    Google is going through something, personally I do not mind in an odd way because the normal struggle to get new sites viewed is being helped by this oddity of google :)

    Can this be a blessing in a strange sort of way?

  10. Unfortunately, I’m one of those whos earnings have taken a nosedive over the last two days. Any word from Google regarding this?

  11. I have seen some variations too. And i tried this not sure how it worked.

    First:
    My channels were open to be targeted by advertisers. When i saw getting 2-3 cents per click I closed them and within an hr I started getting 12-14 cents per click.

    Second:

    Yesterday I saw getting low price again when my channels were closed. I opened it again and started getting back 12 cents on an average.

    Third:
    I removed my link unit when i got low earnings and my click price increased again

    I am not sure if anybody had tried this but it works for me.

    When you close the keyword make good money but when you opne it depends on advertisers too

    Ashish

  12. I’ve had a drop of 30 to 40 percent over the past three days.

  13. As the saying goes…to attract the bots…1. Add more Pages, 2.Get more Links!
    You have to continually do this to your site to attract a fresh batch of visitors.
    It’s a never ending process.

  14. There was an error with Google Reader a few days ago that caused some people to lose all of there feeds. A lot of people here are reporting that they’ve noticed their Feedburner stats show a huge drop in subscribers. The G-Reader error could be the reason for the drop in subscribers and the resultant drop in AdSense revenue.

    Of course, correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation, so I could be wrong.

    Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I read about the Google Reader error, otherwise I’d provide a link.

  15. There was an error with Google Reader a few days ago that caused some people to lose all of their feeds. A lot of people here are reporting that they’ve noticed their Feedburner stats show a huge drop in subscribers. The G-Reader error could be the reason for the drop in subscribers and the resultant drop in AdSense revenue.

    Of course, correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation, so I could be wrong.

    Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I read about the Google Reader error, otherwise I’d provide a link.

  16. Oops! I thought I hit “stop” in time to correct my typo without having that comment post twice. Sorry about that.

  17. On the contrary, I’m having higher CTR and better revenue for the last couple of weeks.

  18. My main money-maker had its best day ever on June 10, but has had several crummy days since then — not one day since has even reached the previous month’s daily average amount. The CPM seems to be the culprit; CTR seems about the same.

    I had attributed the decline to a summer slump (as others have mentioned) because overall traffic is down a bit as well.

    Anyway, it’s a relief to know that I’m not alone in experiencing this!

  19. Mine went down, too. Maybe it’s because of the termination of MFA sites that made the bids a lot lower on ads.

  20. Darren,

    I do not know if things are different on the foodie side of the blogosphere, but I have seen an increase in earnings this month alone. In fact, my Adsense earnings are about 20 percent higher this week than the same time last month. Cool part is that traffic and impressions seem to be the same. Maybe google is serving up some really great ads. Who knows.

  21. Ashish’s comment above has me wondering:
    I added link units to the bottoms of my sidebars a few weeks ago, right about the time when Google started allowing multiple link units per page. Perhaps the presence of those link units is harming the revenue per click on the regular ad units?

  22. During the last 3 days, my adsense earning dropped around 50%, but strangely, everything came back to normal around lunch time today…

  23. My overall adsense CPM has remained stable and perhaps slightly increased. All of my sites are legit white-hat, such as http://mapwow.com

  24. About ten days ago one of my posts at http://agylen.com/2007/06/11/35-years/ got linked by a popular blog and was later picked up on Stumbleupon, which made my traffic go up tenfold for a few days, and it’s still going strong. I did not expect many new visitors to click on ads, but to my dismay I saw the total number of AdSense clicks to actually decrease!

    To be honest I have been experiencing a slow decline in CTR for months now (ad blindness setting in?) but seeing a marked decrease in the number of clicks together bit a big spike in traffic is, to say the least, disappointing.

  25. About a 50% decrease in income the last couple of days on my website….
    I don’t really understand why.

  26. Believe or Not says: 06/21/2007 at 9:09 pm

    I have a MFA network with auto-generated content and this month the revenue from AdSense is down 60%!!!

    That’s right 60%. From $100 bucks a day to $40. I hope to get the income back. Maybe they are just testing their f**king algorithms or some sh**

  27. Me too….
    Thought it was due to an ad format change I made, but my earnings are currently sitting at about half my monthly average…

  28. My earnings per click have been way down over the last couple days. I am glad I am not the only one experiencing this. I wish Adsense was more stable income.

  29. I found that article I was referring to earlier, it was from the Official Google Reader Blog, which makes sense.

    The dip might have had something to do with that. Although, if it’s still happening, then maybe not, since the problem with GReader seems to have only been temporary.

  30. Aw crap, I forgot to close the code…

  31. As a Google AdWords advertiser in my daytime job, I haven’t seen any variation in revenue spent per day, CPC and the number of clicks over the last several months (I haven’t changed campaigns much).

    My personal travel blog is just re-done and doesn’t have much traffic yet so I haven’t noticed a change on the AdSense side.

    http://www.aboutspaintravel.com

  32. fixed it Adam

  33. Thanks Darren.

  34. Yeah. I’ve been in a slump here. Kind of weird. Low CTR and low PPC. Happens sometimes, so I don’t really have any viable evidence that something’s happening on a larger scale.

  35. Every year about this time Adsense earnings begin to slow down, and every year this time we see post like this one.

    I don’t care what industry, market or vector you’re in, the general public is going to be leaving their computers for the lakes, the swimming pools, and their relatives open arms.

    I’ve been tracking all my earmings via Adsense and Chitka the last 2 years, using Excel graphs, and charts – the trend is obvious.
    http://www.zulit.com/category/earning-reports/

    We’re in dozens of markets and they all have this trend. If you have a site on school supplies, you’ll be making some cool cash in August and September.

    Just enjoy the summer building sites that will even out your income for the year. Get a boat site, travel site, etc.

    – Terry

  36. Agree with Terry in #85. School just got out most places.

    In other breaking news…

    That big shiny ball of fire in the sky, it’s called “The Sun”. Step away from your computer for a couple minutes and go experience it. It’s freakin amazing.

  37. Google made a rule to eliminate several arbitrage accounts as of June 1st. I believe we are now feeling the effects of that rule change in our revenue decline. The effects should be temporary as other advertisers move in to fill the void.

  38. At this point, my Adsense revenue is in freefall. I’ll clear about half of what I did last month.

  39. has anyone seen any improvement in ctr and ecpm? my figures are still ~50% down :( has anyone heard any comments from google about this?

  40. Still in a slump here… What the heck?

  41. I’ve seen the opposite. My site traffic is down but CPM is either on a par with the best times or even higher so I’m keeping up the same revenue with slightly less traffic.

    Use the competitive ad filter to get rid of the rest of those pesky MFAs!

  42. Steve M says: 07/05/2007 at 11:16 pm

    Hi, glad you wrote about this. Google has clearly changed the goalposts again. I have a good quality, chocked full of content site that Google should, in theory, love. But for the past couple of weeks my EPC has been hammered to about minus 70% of what it was a few weeks back.

    In fact I’ve earned a steady $20 per day from it for the past 2 years, the last three days have seen earnings of $3. The strange thing is that my traffic is about the same or slightly more and CTR has actually increased.

    I have noticed duplicate ads on a page and also a few spammy “sponsored results” type ads that Google is supposed to be filtering out. This is a major downturn and I think Google has stuffed up (again). They are alienating the very sites that they need to keep and promote. Just wait till Yahoo goes global – bye bye Google.

  43. My ad revenue is up due to more clicks. I am averaging $2 more per day compared to last month and the only thing that has really changed is that I am getting more impressions and more clicks.

  44. My adsense revenue is dropping 50% from last 3 month until now… this situation make me headache!

  45. I don’t understand Adsense at all …. some days I’ll make $4 and other days $0
    Very weird – all depends on where my page is listed on a Google Search I suppose. Or what’s on the news on any given day. Had a nice spike with the Live Earth concerts… oh well….good thing I have a real job.

  46. I’m pretty new with my site and adsense so I can’t really tell. Some days I get a few bucks, some days I don’t.

  47. Rates per click seem to follow a pattern of decline over time, and with increased clicks.

    Websites that were generating $.50 – $1.00 or more per click a year later generate $.10 per click. My CTR is quite good on a number of these sites: 40% and over. But, pay per click follows a gradual pattern of decline.

    Recently, pay per click as declined about 400%, from $1.25 and over per click to about $.10 per click within a space of one month.

    There seems to be a pattern of declining pay per click as clicks increase, producing a slow decline in revenue over time, despite receiving significantly more hits.

  48. Correcting stated percentage: a decline of over 1000%, not 400% within one month.

  49. In August I see a drop almost 50% in CTR and eCPM, and the earnings. The traffic stays the same. I hope it’s because of vacation time in the western countries, and it will be back to normal in September.

  50. my adsense’s rate per click is going downward. the growing number of visitors doesnt make any effect at all because of these. any suggestions for adsense alternatives?

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