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There are reports in WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help forums of huge drops in the CTR and earnings for Google AdSense publishers on July 1st.
The responses from official Googlers, at least coming second hand from publishers, vary.
One said in response to one publisher that his "Click spam rate increased since June 30." Another received a generic response about reporting in general saying:
Thanks for your message. Please know that it takes 24 hours for the AdSense account to update the days metrics like clicks earnings etc. Therefore, I suggest you five one whole day for the metrics to upload in the account. Please always make sure to check a day before's metrics on a particular day. Else, if you have any other issues please let me know!
The thing is, there is starting to be a lot of publishers complaining about the drop.
So either (1) the reports are buggy or delayed or (2) Google stepped up their filtering of spam?
Here is a chart from my AdSense account, note, I don't make a lot of money from AdSense:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help.
Comments:
me
07/02/2013 04:04 pm
Yes since yesterday! No idea why that happens! Is that a glitch?
Fedor
07/02/2013 06:49 pm
Has anyone checked if it's Nessie?
googler
07/02/2013 07:37 pm
Same thing for me :(
Yotz
07/02/2013 08:16 pm
I have the same problem, dropped almost in 80%!!!
DaveKeys
07/02/2013 09:09 pm
Google is handing it all to brands. Have you searched for real estate lately? Nearly 100% of geo-target queries begin with aggregator results.
Kimi
07/02/2013 10:31 pm
I don't know how many people are affected but it looks like a glitch to me, it started later 30th June and it's still on. It's not about traffic sources or ad units, we've surveyed each other at the help forums and looks like different niches, traffic sources, countries but mostly high end accounts had their ctr dropped. (xxx dollars daily revenue)
Guest
07/03/2013 12:19 am
As a youtube partner, my revs have dropped 80% in the past 2 days.
oneohotspots
07/03/2013 12:23 am
Traffic remained the same. Only variable is ctr on text ads dropped/shaved/counted as invalid
Jeremy Cheng
07/03/2013 01:45 am
Same here. Dropped by 90% since June 30.
webaddict
07/03/2013 02:33 am
I can confirm that my Adsense account is down 29% a day from the earnings reported to what is finalized. Essentially they've moved into ripoff mode. Land grab going on, disgusting.
RohanAdvani
07/03/2013 06:32 am
Follow this thread !! https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/adsense/Kz-9lxPw9VI%5B176-200-false%5D Many publishers have been badly it including me!
me
07/03/2013 10:15 am
Can anyone confirm if is that temporary?
Guest
07/03/2013 10:48 am
if 2nd quarter results suck, then you will know the reason.
sunil kumar
07/03/2013 11:16 am
Since june 30 i am in trouble that CTR is down automatically???
skyblue79
07/03/2013 11:21 am
affected people follow this thread: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/adsense/Kz-9lxPw9VI
RohanAdvani
07/03/2013 12:32 pm
Hi ! nobody knows if its temporary! Just keep your fingers crossed.
Bruce Simmons
07/03/2013 04:10 pm
I agree... the small guy isn't the big draw any more as much as major brands that are sought after. This would seem to be what they have been aiming towards with this penguin/panda era of the Google web.
Dean
07/03/2013 04:18 pm
I was hit too on the evening of June 30th. It's the text ads that have a dramatic decrease in CTR. All other ad types seem normal. I'm really hoping this is a glitch otherwise my 10 year old successful business is screwed.
Chipi
07/04/2013 03:23 am
It is probably because of the stupid logo-icons Google is putting next to the URL of the advertiser. First the ugly and annoying super big arrows, now these little stupid logos, really bad ideas.
trev
07/04/2013 06:42 pm
Same here on July 2nd lost 97% revenue, removed the ads from high traffic areas and CTR jumped back but CPC is at 1/3.
jeffmagic
07/07/2013 03:12 am
My revenues dropped by 50% on July 1 and are still down.
atsad141
07/08/2013 06:53 am
Can anyone explore the real fact of dropping earning, in this month?
Mark Warner
07/08/2013 07:15 am
All the figures have dropped. Since 1 July my earnings have been slashed to a 1/3rd of what they were. And I can think of no reason why. Page views are the same!! My biggest earner was (is???) a 970*70 banner at the foot of the page.and nothing around it would have helped create invalid clicks
chandan
07/09/2013 07:46 pm
I have also fell same problem in my blog www.crack-ibpsexam.blogspot.com . pls help
chandan
07/09/2013 07:47 pm
how to add this share button, pls tell me
Indian
07/10/2013 03:52 am
My earnings dropped by 83% on July 2 onwards..How to solve this issue ?
mister_savage
07/10/2013 04:21 am
I'll add my name to this. I'm getting butchered here on earnings. Let's say a year ago was 10/10. This past week, I'm looking at 3/10 to 6/10 at the most. I'd say I'm averaging at about 4/10 of what would be normal for me. This is really a bad situation right now. I have company is seems like, but that doesn't explain this any better. What's happened here and is this the "new" standard to expect. I am used to getting bounce back days but that just hasn't happened in July.
oliver
07/12/2013 03:52 am
Yep..me too... CTR and earnings were very stable, and suddenly last 2 weeks, they have been exactly half of what they were before.. nothing changed.. still same traffic. Wierd. Sucks. :( Please investigate this more SE ROUNDTABLE
from-bosnia
07/12/2013 01:20 pm
I live in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Europe), CTR rate on my adsense account decreased from 1.7% to 0.4% in one day. Today (ten days later) it is arround 0.8% Regards
Joe
07/15/2013 05:41 am
I thought I was the only one - CTR in adsense and youtube down 30% from July 2nd :(
$847210
07/26/2013 10:56 pm
Mine has dropped this month to 50% of many years' "normal", although last month was also a drop of about 35% from "normal".
$847210
07/26/2013 10:57 pm
Perhaps Google is doing something, so they can pay us less? Just guessing, not accusing.
$847210
07/26/2013 11:00 pm
Perhaps with the logo icons present people now are noticing the URL and are typing it into the browser instead of clicking on the ads? It is a similar effect to when they allow a toll-free number to be displayed in the ad, which I sometimes block such advertisers.
ANDROIDMALITIA
08/01/2013 11:25 am
Ever since July, my website page views dropped significantly. Like what the hell happened?
Silver Moon
08/04/2013 02:37 am
I am seeing a sudden drop in earnings since 1st August 2013 CTR is constant, but CPC has dropped considerably.
Rudy Prasetyo
08/08/2013 02:26 pm
This is because "Invalid Clicks Activity". These day Google often banned Publishers account because of this reason!
Rudy Prasetyo
08/08/2013 02:28 pm
Adwords revenue INCREASE but Adsense earning DROP! Strange isn't?
David Hurley
08/19/2013 11:42 pm
CPC partly based on competition for the ad space, if there are fewer advertisers 'in the pool' then the CPC drops...I've seen a slow but steady decline in CPC for about 2 years...I blame it mostly on the economy...as my page views and total number of clicks have steadily risen...
JohnPaulie
08/20/2013 06:52 pm
Exact same thing here. Earnings down 50% since somewhere June/July. Terrible.
John Hales
08/27/2013 04:54 pm
I have noticed a very low drop on Google Adsense this August. In fact most 2013 has been terrible. I'm a You Tube Partner too, and YT Analytics says I get very more views, compared to what it says on Google Adsense (and all my video's are all Monetised). I would also like to mention the fact that Google Adsense seems to have lots of Glitches, and I am most of the time sure that the Money i earned at the end of the day is incorrect, and should be more
Kinjalk Tripathi
08/29/2013 07:01 pm
I'm Also facing same issue. My Adsense CTR dropped 70% ,Not It's 0.20% -0.30% CPC also gone Down ....
Tivet
09/04/2013 10:31 pm
My views have dropped ridiculously the last month or so..... I personally don't trust those people, then again when all is said and done they are big business!
jk
09/06/2013 12:56 pm
Your accounts are being smart priced
John Gregory
09/07/2013 11:52 pm
I Manege a few different websites and have seen a huge drop in Adsense for my clients....One of my clients said "Yeah July 2013 was one of the busiest traffic months we have had the whole year.. and was the lowest Clicks and revenue we have had in about 5 years! Last month we had 6100 visits to one site only a couple of bucks off it! We feel something is wrong here!" I would say it has dropped about 70-80% of what we average per month. This is disturbing trend for those who have invested much time and money into developing websites!
JJ
10/07/2013 05:11 am
Even though my stats from my server have been fairly consistent, my Adsense revenues dropped about 50% from 2011 to 2012 and 2013 looks like another 50% drop. Something fishy is going on! With my server discontinuing stats and recommending Google Analytics, then Google will be calculating both stats and page/click revenues!
JJ
10/07/2013 05:15 am
No kidding about invested time! Thousands of web pages took a lot of time. Not quite worth it for the current return.
Aric Pennington
10/16/2013 10:40 pm
It's because Google is a secretive and super sketchy monopoly. They lie about the revenue earned and their percentage they take. Why? Because they can and no one can stop them. Youtube RPMs have dropped... I've been doing this for years, I'm partnered, and I'm seeing as low as $0.06 RPM average for the day. I used to see 5, 10 bucks RPM... not even 2 years ago This is all natural traffic on my 2 developed channels with millions of views each. I used to get monthly payments well over 1000 per month. Then it dropped to under 200 per month, Now? 25, maybe 50 bucks total. Same amount of views or more. Better quality content. 'Better' ad formats. Someone explain that to me. Personally I'm done. I post my material elsewhere and have started copyrighting anything I've posted. The Youtube trolls ruined it. They claimed copyrights to almost everything on Youtube and cost billions in losses since they would demand ridiculous RPM and Youtube freaking paid it. Now we pay for what they took. This is not rocket science so stop acting so surprised! Google scroogled the world bro. Handle it.
earl2
10/23/2013 01:42 am
My CTR dropped "mysteriously" on Oct 1st.. it was tracking pretty close to other metrics, then BOOM flat line. I smell something odd..
NoobMovies.com
11/10/2013 12:49 am
Ad sense earns jack on my site. I get decent traffic but ad sense seems to be a waste of space.
Obi
11/27/2013 07:30 am
any suggestions, ideas recomendation to over come this dead phase of adsense
rakesh
12/01/2013 05:08 am
same here