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What Happened to My AdSense?

Mar 19, 2006 1:02 PM
Tags: adsense, google, joegrossberg

Something really odd and abrupt has happened to my AdSense numbers, but I haven't seen any discussion of this on the many blogs I read.

During the first seven days of this month, I had my usual number of impressions, click-through percentage and normal earnings. However, there was a sudden drop, starting on March 8th.

In the second week of March, my number of impressions were one-seventh what they had been. The click-through rate is comparable, so my earnings are now like $.35/day instead of $2.07/day.

WTF?

I understand that "click-fraud" is a big problem with AdSense, but wouldn't that affect the click-through rate and not the total number of impressions?

Similarly, I can understand my readership declining over time, but not dropping by 86% overnight and then staying there.

Has anyone seen a similar phenomenon on their site?

(No, I didn't remove AdSense from my page templates or anything obvious like that.)


Comments: What Happened to My AdSense?

I'm seeing similar weirdness. $2+ one day, and $0.03 another.

Maybe the problem isn't click fraud, but Google fraud. Who knows.

Posted by: Dossy Shiobara on March 19, 2006 4:30 PM | permalink

Hmm ... if you and I are both seeing it, it's that much more likely that there's a change on Google's end. I wish they weren't so damn secretive about it.

Posted by: Joe Grossberg on March 19, 2006 4:52 PM | permalink

My revenue varies pretty dramatically day by day but it has always been that way - impressions over last few months has been pretty constant - I've seen no significant change since March 8th as apparently you have.

Posted by: john on March 20, 2006 8:01 AM | permalink

Do you have a stats program on your site? Is there any correlation between your site's traffic in the stats program and what Google AdSense is reporting?

Posted by: Ed Kohler on March 20, 2006 6:15 PM | permalink

Ed:

It's a good question, but no -- my site traffic did not suddenly plummet on the 8th. The first week of this month was about 10% higher than the following days; nothing huge.

Posted by: Joe Grossberg on March 20, 2006 6:48 PM | permalink

It sounds like that reaffirms your suspicion that something's not quite right with AdSense.

Posted by: Ed Kohler on March 20, 2006 6:52 PM | permalink

Definitely weird, if your other traffic stats don't show any drop.. I would say maybe you are getting the charity banners instead of real ads but I am not seeing any of those as i look through your posts..

Posted by: Jay Smooth on March 21, 2006 12:26 AM | permalink

Hey me too, I was on $200 a month regular as clock work. last month paid $100.00 so a huge drop and the past few days prior to 30/03
down to .3 cents a day????
Also has anyone noticed that where ever you go today
and this is NOT an april fools day joke by me, maybe google has been hit with a hack but NO Adsense ads are working anywhere....

Check your sites and see where the ads are I can only get google search bar but no contextual ads.

I hope this is just a one day affair.

I am really peeved to have the income slashed in half and I am looking at ditching google in favor of Yahoo ads.

cheers
Jon

Posted by: Jonathon on March 31, 2007 8:10 PM | permalink

No more comments! Either someone has violated Godwin's Law, I'm tired of the discussion or, most likely, the ten-week window has closed. You can, however, contact me through email.