I just received the same announcement two ways - As an AdSense publisher and an Adwords user and it looks like we might be getting less money per click.

The update is referred to as Smart Pricing and the Adsense mail left me a little confused - does this means I get less money?. The AdWords mail left me in no doubt:

It seems that our sites will be judged for the quality of the leads and paid accordingly.

This is something I am not totally against. If I spend time writing content then I think my clicks are worth more than someone who simply creates a page from Google's own search results simply for the purposes of displaying AdSense. However I can't see it being what I consider fair unless I decide who's clicks are worth most, so I think a lot of us are going to be more than a bit annoyed with the changes.

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Dave

UK Affiliate Marketing Schemes | Tools for Amazon Affiliates

Time will tell, yesterday was good, today is abysmal.

I noticed some ads on my site today that were not targeted well at all, you could say they just weren't targeted period. Hope this is just a glitch in the new system.

__________________
Sailing Texas is a site I originally made to promote my sailing classes. It has taken a life of it's own, now the most popular part is the Sailboats for Sale section, and it just keeps expanding.
http://www.sailingtexas.com/

My money per click today is less than 1/10th what it was yesterday, and about 1/8th what it was for my average all of last month. I pray this is an abberation, or else the good times with Google will be at an end and it'll be time to look elsewhere. That email they sent out two days ago about the lower prices per click really worried me, and it seems to be taking effect with a vengeance.

Same as the above poster, my ads also don't seem to be targetted at all now. On a page where I had a Flash movie-related game, before I had movie and DVD related ads, now I'm getting Flash-programming ads. On my main page I'm getting debt relief in Africa and other crap that has nothing to do with my site. Well I'll definitely give it the rest of the month, but the next few days will probably give a good indication...

The ads for debt relief etc are public service ads (i.e. You don get paid at all) I too am getting these on my front page and poor targeting elsewhere on many sites. Hopefully they will sort it out as this is probably having more effect in lowering payments than new rates.

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Dave

UK Affiliate Marketing Schemes | Tools for Amazon Affiliates

Those public service ads are not a result of poor targeting.

You get them when:
1) New page and Google not yet crawled it to know what to feed up
2) There are no adwords that match your site (either because there are no advertisers that match your page or the advertisers that do, have reached there max daily spend)
3) Geo-targeting - there are ads that match our site, but not the region of the IP that the site is being viewed from.

BTW - my earning are up since the change in payments.

CBP

I became concerned while reading this thread, so I checked my AdSense and seen no difference. As a matter of fact yesterday and today were slightly higher than the past?

We are seeing significant changes. Not only do the ads being delivered on our sites appear less relevant than they used to, but we're also earning poorer sums than before. Our impressions/clicks haven't dropped - if anything, they've risen slightly.

Aaron

__________________
Business Forum - Sport Forum - Travel Forum
Participation in our forums is rewarded with free ads!

As of April 1 - averaging one relevant ad out of 4.
Revenue has taken a serious dive.
Phooey.

My revenue is still about 1/8th per day what it was in March. Clicks are the same if not slightly higher. I had great targetted ads before, but only getting about 1/4 proper targetting now. I run a movie trivia site that has to do with mainly genre (sci-fi, horror, etc) quizzes, and am one of the biggest on the net. Alot of my ads now seem for some reason to be Christian-related (bible movies, etc), although there is no Christian-related content on my site. Weren't getting them before (and I haven't suddenly added any Christian themed quizzes or anything). Also getting more public service ads than before, and also just the odd weird ones.

Has anyone who has taken a severe hit like me looked at switching yet to another company? If not, are you hoping it will get better, or is there another reason? Any specific companies that can compete with Adsense? I visited Overture and they don't seem to be taking new applications, and I read on another thread on this board that Kanoodle seems to be stock/finance related. Any suggestions?

My clicks are the same as prior to the change, but revenue is up.

CBP

I have never used Google AdSense ads but was wondering....

Many of you say your revenue was down 90% compared to previous days because of Google's change but what does that mean??

How many visits are your sites getting and what is your click thru ratio????

For example if you site is getting 5,000 visits per day how much do you earn on average from your click thrus???

I would like to get a average from many sites, to see if I should include Google Adsense on my site.

I use FastClick and I average .001274 cents per visit so for every 10,000 visits I earn $127.40 I usually get approx 15,000 visits per day. Does
Google on average beat this average on it's click thru ratio????

thanks

Nick
http://www.hbonline.com

I too have noticed a huge decrease in revenue as well as a complete fall off in ad relevance on my site.

I'm not getting too many PSA's but many of the ads have nothing to do at all with the content of my site.

I could understand a change in the revenue structure, but the way it is now with the ads screwed up, nobody is winning. Google needs to re-address it quickly or lose plenty.

MW

"I too have noticed a huge decrease in revenue as well as a complete fall off in ad relevance on my site."

Ditto!

The ad relevance is ridiculously off. One of my sites sells locksmith tools and the phrase cd-rom is used once in the body text of the index page. All the ads today are for dvd duplicators!
I am SO sure that law enforcement and locksmith personnel needed to know where to go to duplicate dvd's...

Naturally I wrote to the AdSense team. Naturally they sent me an auto-responder message back:

"The team at AdSense is constantly working on improving the algorithm...blah, blah, blah...."

I really hope "the team" works late a couple of days this week and gets the relevance tweaked. If and when that happens I think the revenue will level off immediately following.

__________________
Glynn Gallagher aka "RED"
lock picks, locksmith tools

I don't know where the fault lies. All of a sudden I recieved a Bombmail from AdSense stating that my account was de-activated and then now closed for an illegitimate click, that never I made from my computer. When I searched the log, no untoward or suspicious activities found excepting the Google & AdSense Bots frequenting!

After reading their Terms & Conditions, and after having a lots of advise and discussions in this forum, even an insane would never click on his own ad to booted out. After a thorough check, I sent the entire log report for them to verify. As AdSense policy will not let them pass the date & time of such occurance, I had to send the log report for full three days, upto 300 pages! Alas! This too did not help me. Unfortunately, they just closed the account wherein my earnings for around 80 days was more than 100 Dollars plus. The amount forfeited. Now it is a lesson for others to take the matter seriously. Who is the culprit here for my loss?

Just my CableNet provider is the one to be accused. The server IP address is almost changed, everytime I log in, I am getting a different channel IP address. It is in general, one gets the free channel at the time you log in. That much is for sure. I feel, it might have caused this confusion. How then I prove, that I never clicked on my ads? There is no way you can convince them, since it is their decision that is binding on the contractual agreements. Better watch out for your log reports before it is too late.

I just was getting some good increase, very small but steady. When I reached the minimum payable target, that too after more than two months wait, this sort of mail from AdSense to hit me hard. I feel so Sad that I could not prove my honesty.

Namasthe Everyone,
TRS Iyengar
Internet is the well organized industry, to shrink the size of the world; but it caused more damages than developements to the common man. When the honest one suffers in silence, the crooks have their field day!
www.trsiyengar.com

__________________
TRS Iyengar
Namasthe Everyone! Srivaishnavam Practices / Hinduism

Please answer my survey:

trsiyengar says that he earned $100 for 80 days with Google AdSense. So now I am going to do some interpolation: His ALEXA ranking is 1,600,000 so... if my ALEXA ranking is 184,000 or 8.6 higher than his can I assume that my earnings with Google would be 8.6 times better?? in other words my earnings would be $860 or $10.75 per day??

So here is the survey question:

What is your ALEXA ranking and how much do you earn with Google ADSense per month?

to check your ranking click this link: http://www.alexa.com/data/details?am...l=hbonline.com this happens to be my rnaking page, but on the left hand side where it says "Search The Web" enter your web address and hit "GO" (leave off the http:// part ) IE: www.google.com Google ranks #3

be honest, cause if you rank low but make way more than someone who ranks high that won't make sense ;)

I think this would be a interesting survey to calculate how much a particular site would earn on average based on how much traffic the site receives.

later

Nick
http://www.hbonline.com

ps: I check every site on Alexa, I tend to give more weight to the opinions of those who rank above 500,000 and way more weight if your have been in the top 100,000

hbonline wrote:

What is your ALEXA ranking and how much do you earn with Google ADSense per month?

It is the click through rates and visitors hits that count and it has nothing to do with your page ranking in Alexa or for that matter any other SE. You earn only when the visitors click on the ad panels. Even if you are ranked on the top or botton, it never goes parrellel with your earnings, unless your CTR increases.

Further more, be cautious, if you are discussing with your earnings and click through rates in an open forum, you are going against the Terms & Conditions of the AdSense contract. Why, it already hurt many members who lost their account, just because of throwing their statistics open for others. There is no harm as long as you discuss these matters in general without quoting the specific CTR & earnings in open.

Namasthe Everyone,
TRS Iyengar
Learning from others mistakes, committing mistakes for others to learn!
www.trsiyengar.com

__________________
TRS Iyengar
Namasthe Everyone! Srivaishnavam Practices / Hinduism

Alexa rankings are totally irrevalent - ignore them.

CBP

cbp wrote:

Alexa rankings are totally irrevalent - ignore them.

I was a bit hesitant to write it, but you made it clear; exactly reflecting my opinion.

Namasthe Everyone,
TRS Iyengar
From the Land of Himalayas
www.trsiyengar.com

__________________
TRS Iyengar
Namasthe Everyone! Srivaishnavam Practices / Hinduism

Whoa!
I was just trying to get a feel for an average earnings potential for from Google AdSense with a given Alexa ranking.


trsiyengar Wrote:
It is the click through rates and visitors hits that count and it has nothing to do with your page ranking in Alexa or for that matter any other SE. You earn only when the visitors click on the ad panels. Even if you are ranked on the top or botton, it never goes parrellel with your earnings, unless your CTR increases.

Alexa is NOT A SEARCH ENGINE Although it does get merged info from Google.

And yes I know that you earn only when your visitor clicks so....

It would stand to reason that the higher your ranking the more visits you receive, therefore the more click thrus you would receive (it's just pure Math)

And, How in the world are Alexa rankings irrevalent?? If you truly get the visitors it will show in your Alexa ranking, and if you don't it will show that too.

I put alot of weight into a third party like Alexa that is not bias and does not gain, by ranking over 3 BILLION WEBSITES!

test it with several sites and you will see that it is pretty much right on.

The math does not lie.

later

Nick

One More thing, for clarification:

Your site could be on the 150 page of a search engine but get tons of traffic, or your site could show up for your keyword very high in a search engine but get low traffic.

Alexa has nothing to do with where you rank in a search engine for a search term or keyword.

It is pure TRAFFIC RANKING, whether you are a automotive site, craft site, real estate site, it only depends on how much TRAFFIC your site gets. Not a search engine ranking.

So, again if you have a high ranking in Alexa it means you have high TRAFFIC, compared to the other 3 Billion other sites out there whatever they are about.

Later

Nick

We have been around this so many times here before.... Ignore Alexa rankings as they are crap.

Alexa gives sites a ranking based on the number of visits to a site by those with the Alexa tool bar installed (a very biased population - more likely to be webmasters or technically orientated people - certainly not representative of the www surfing public).

Alexa is so easy to manipulate.
I can get any site to under 50 000 to 60 000 in a few weeks by clicking on them regularly - -- problem is if I uninstall the toolbar, they drop back to > 1 000 000 ..... very dodgey of one person can change a sites Alexa ranking that easy.

If you do not beleive me, install the tool bar - find a site with an Alexa ranking of >2 000 000 -- click on the site and several internal pages for a few times a day for a few weeks - watch its ranking shoot up to under 100 000. Uninstall the toolbar and give it a few weeks to see what happens to their Alexa ranking !!!!!! (Sometimes it helps if you can get someone to help you by doing teh same from another IP address).

There are now scripts that you can buy to automatically do the above from a whole lot of different IP addresses to get a massive improvement in your ranking.....

Any webmaster who says they have a good ALexa ranking, are really saying they have the toolbar installed.

No it dosen't - it means you have got the toolbar installed.

CBP

I don't like toolbars so I don't have it installed. For my ranking I rely purely on the 10 million sampling.

You gotta admit that of a sampling of over 10 million web users who have the toolbar installed is a big enough sampling to gauge traffic.

It is like a poll, in political polls they sample maybe 5,000 people and yet people believe them and Alexa is sampling over 10 million! and you don't believe Alexa???

One person with the Alexa toolbar artificialy clicking a site out of 10 million is not going to effect the stats.

here is a great article about Alexa: http://www.globalpromoter.com/seo-to...ationArticle=5

later

Nick

Statistics 101 - its a biased sample, no matter how big it is.

Statistics 101 - I would rather trust a random sample of 5000 than a biased sample of 10 million.

Thats were you are wrong - it