Are AdSense Earnings Dropping Due To Recent Policy Changes?
I’ve noticed a small decline in earnings over the past few weeks, and some discussions I’ve had with other AdSense publishers seems to indicate that I’m not the only one. Based on what I’ve seen, it seems clear that the drop is due to two things:
- Google requiring AdSense publishers to follow landing page quality guidelines, and
- Google’s disapproval of the AdSense arbitrage business model.
These policy changes are likely causing bid prices on the Google content network (AdSense sites) to drop as both MFA (made for AdSense) and arbitrage-driven sites are being shut down or forced to find alternate traffic and/or monetization methods.
Question for my readers: Have you seen a drop in your earnings? Leave a comment below and let’s take an unofficial poll…
In the short term this is bad for us publishers, of course, as it reduces the pool of advertisers who are willing to show ads on our sites. (Don’t forget that it’s the AdWords advertisers who ultimately pay us!) Of course, that pool was being kept artificially smaller than it should have been because many advertisers opted out entirely of content network advertising due to concerns about click fraud and the general quality of typical AdSense sites.
It seems, however, that Google is showing a renewed focus on the content network and wants to make it more appealing to potential advertisers. It could be that they’re finding that advertising growth on the search network is slowing down and that content network growth is one way to keep growing overall advertising revenues. I don’t know, that’s pure speculation, but for whatever reason they have decided to improve the quality of AdSense sites in order to grow the content network.
Today, for example, many PPC news outlets are reporting that Google is making detailed content network information available to its advertisers. This is great news. Up until now the content network has been a bit of a “black box” for advertisers, with no real way to track how ads were performing on the content network. The new reporting features will vastly improve this situation. (Warning to advertisers, though: you can ultimately expect the content network to start affecting your CTR rates and your quality scores, which they don’t do today.) More data about clickthrough and conversion rates will attract more advertisers to the content network. (Plug: if you want to advertise on the content network today for cheap, try the technique described in the AdWords180 ebook, it works very well. Actually, those costs are surely decreasing as well for the same reasons — fewer advertisers to compete against.)
So ultimately AdSense earnings will probably start climbing again, once advertisers start to realize that the content network is again a viable option for their advertising dollars. Until then, though, some publishers may be in for a rough patch.
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Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.
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AdSense, AdSense arbitrage, earnings, Google, Internet marketing, quality, SEO
Comments
24 Responses to “Are AdSense Earnings Dropping Due To Recent Policy Changes?”
My AdSense earnings have TANKED today; they started sliding on Saturday.
I’m still using the AdSense Arbitrage model, (which is why I’m using one of my seldom-used email addresses here) and almost all my keyword terms on the search network in AdWords just got bumped to a $10 minimum.
Honestly, I’m glad to still have retained my AdSense account, so I’m counting my blessings. But I’m rather waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I’ve actually noticed a nice increase in CPM of about 20% over the last week or so. The week before that was pretty typical.
Steve, Google just did another AdWords “slap” and it looks like you got caught in it. The relevancy of the ad to the website is very important, and make sure the web pages you’re sending traffic to include links to a privacy policy, a contact page, an about us page, and a disclaimer page. Make it look like a “real” site as much as possible.
Toivo, I figured some people would be up, some down…. this is why it’s unofficial. But I was curious to know if there was a general trend…
I’ve actually seen an increase in earnings.
I have noticed an increase of about 15-20% over the past week and no particular reason for it, except maybe what Google is doing. It also seems to be across all my sites. Hope this keeps up.
Down approx 25% since Saturday!
My earnings in the last 7 days are only 6% down on the average for the previous month. That’s probably a traffic fluctuation more than anything.
My site was identified by the click fraud network as being a low quality MFA site which I heard Google was on the hunt for. Am I in any danger of being shut down?
Brent
Big drops over the past few weeks,Eric. I have a small niche blog with essentially AdSense only. Many days the same ads appear. My clicks are about the same, income has gone from clicks that paid around $.70 to clicks that pay $0.01! It’s turning from a tiny moneywmaker to a big time waste of time … I do no arbitrage or any other ‘tricks’ and just 100% original content. My rraffic from Google is actually up, but not so the rate of return *sigh*
A decline started on Friday and lasted through Monday. Usually down on weekends, but slightly more than usual. Today (Tuesday) it came roaring back though.
Not arbitrage site, just regular old good original content sites.
I’ve seen a decline over recent weeks. I have though been experimenting with different layouts and designs and put the decline down to that. I’ll monitor things over the coming weeks.
Really difficult to pinpoint anything. My site’s Google results, hence traffic, hence AdSense earnings, have been all over the place since around April - one day I’m page 1, the next nowhere.
This craziness seems to be settling a bit now and so far my June AdSense income is about average, with a slighly higher CTR and eCPM than for previous months this year, although daily variations seem greater than normal. I only earn between 9c and 10.5c a click and this has remained fairly constant for 2007.
Sorry I can’t point to anything more concrete happening - everything is just too unstable at the moment.
Noticed an small increase myself. I have tinkered with the layout, but that’s just the logo and colours, really, and traffic is continuing to increase (organically), but still, even allowing for the traffic, I’m up maybe 10% That said, I’m getting my vistors looking for help and support lately over games solutions. Maybe it makes a difference.
I did notice one lunatic with an incredibly bad MFA site the other day. If he isn’t banned already I’ll eat my shirt. He was scraping the questions from Yahoo Answers, injecting them into a google search, then offering it as the answer and directing folk to a site where he repeated the question. Wall to wall Adsense, images pointing to ads etc etc.
This clown must have read the rules and tried to see if he could break every one. It is people like this that are ruining Adsense for all the honest web sites, eh
So far it looks like there’s no real trend here… some people are up, some are down. I wonder if there are trends by niche, though. The spammers tend to target the higher-paying niches, after all, so perhaps some people who are seeing drops in income are in those kinds of niches?
Or maybe this is just normal fluctuation…
Apparently this WAS a good post topic, Eric! LOL…
My income has dropped dramatically. Very frustrating. I am all in favor of MFA sites being shut down and the search engines refining and trying to do things “the right way”…but man, is this painful to live through. Right now, where I sit with Adsense is…I have better traffic than I had two years ago on the same basic sites, and about the same number of clicks…but I am making about a THIRD of what I was making then.
Fortunately, this isn’t all about the money for me, or I would have thrown in the towel or eaten a gun by now. Instead, I am trying to follow the advice that investors give when the market is down (althought the direct parallels here escape me)…I am continuing to invest in quality and in the future. We all know that things will come back. They may not look the same, but they will rebound somehow. I want to be set when that happens.
I have always hated the game-playing. It was obviously short-sighted and I not only didn’t practice it, but argued vociferously against it. Unfortunately, a lot of folks didn’t want to listen…and they are sitting on piles of worthless domain names and sites full of scraped content today. The one thing that I know for sure is that VALUE and UNIQUENESS will win the hearts of site visitors. I am one of the few I know who can proudly pointing to pages of comments from visitors talking about what the site’s content means to them. THAT is the definition of “value”.
So I am continuing to build good sites…shut down ones that aren’t making the grade…and investing in a link-building campaign to help me survive the shakeup as the MFAs lose their A’s.
June traffic is up by about 50% over May, but AdSense earnings are flat to slightly up. Seasonal fluctuations make it hard to say anything is a trend. What we have seen is traffic growing about 20% per year and flat income.
Chuck - Why shut sites down? I figure if they make a $1 or more they pay their hosting costs and they may as well gather age and trust.
Mine have gone up almost 35% the last 7 days. I’m not a big time player like some, but I’m pretty happy with that. It’s also mainly from one site.
My adsense has improved tremendously. What used to be 1 cent click has now gone back to more than 10 cents.
This happen since the new Google policy.
Traffic went down but earning has gone up. What a relief.
I’ve actually seen an average increase of 300%. But there are a number of factors:
- Changed layout -> Increase CTR
- Fathers Day approaching, people increasing ad spend?
- Increased CTR -> Google pushing higher paying ads?
Either way, I’m smiling, and yet dreading next monday.
Well, my earnings are up. So I didn’t suspect anything. But my ecpm is about half of what it was, traffic has been increasing and sort of masked this from me. Damn!
hey guys, just starting out in the adsense program and was wondering if anyone could answer some questions. i know it isnt relevant to the topic but i stumbled upon this page and thought i would ask a knowledgable group. thanks
I’m about to start an introductory AdSense series here on this blog. Send me your questions, either here or to ericgiguere@ericgiguere.com and I’ll be happy to answer them.
Interestingly, after sucking so badly last week, my earning have started to trend slightly up every day. And yesterday, it jumped up again to what I was seeing a couple months ago. I hope this is a continuing trend…and that we all benefit from Google’s recent changes.
That’s great, Chuck. My earnings have been going back up, too, so I guess we just went through a hiccup. We need to spend less time worrying about these things and more time writing great content