This week I’ve had at least 20 emails from bloggers asking if I (or others) have noticed any changes in Adsense performance.
These types of emails are not unusual for me – I get a number of them every week. Usually about 60% of these emails report per Adsense performance and 40% better than usual performance (I guess people email more when they are worried) but this past week has been unusual because out of 20 emails (a higher number than normal) 100% have reported poorer than usual Adsense performance – most over them referring to a period over the past 2-3 weeks.
At first I thought it might just be coincidence but the emails continue. Today I notice that my own Adsense earnings have been on the slide over this period also – largely due to a poorer than normal CTR. Earnings per click are stable for me and traffic is also (in fact its a little up if anything).
I’ve been putting this down to the fact that I’ve added Chitika ads to my blogs which perhaps have taken some of the focus from Adsense ads (I was willing to live with it because the increases in overall earnings that Chitika have bought are more than the losses) – but in talking to those who are noticing decreases in earnings it is only a minority of them who are trying the Chitika ads.
Others have noticed this trend also – a forum over at Webmaster (Something is Definitely Screwy at Google) world has been very active over the past 10 days with many reporting decreases in CTR and eCPM. As usual – theories are flying about what is causing it and among the complaints are a few stories of increased earnings – but the more I dig the more I find people worried about their Adsense earnings.
I’d be interested to hear how things have gone for you over the past few weeks. Don’t share specific figures – but are the experiences that I’m talking about isolated to a few (earnings do go up and down over time so I half suspect it’s just one of those months) or do you find yourself in the same boat?
Update: Actually I’ve just done some digging around in my Adsense channels and want to say that while my overall CTR has decreased – that the real reason for the decrease in earnings does actually seem to be a decrease in click value on a couple of my bigger blogs. They have decreased by about 10-20% which to me indicates that the changes (I can only speak for my blog) seem to be coming from either less relevant ads being served or a decrease in the bidding by advertisers for these topics.
