Google Stealing My Adsense Revenue???

[marketershandbook.com]

Hi all,

A quick question, probably wont be a quick answer though.

On the site in my sig, I run adsense ads on some of the pages.

It's a practise site of mine, so I know that it has a mixture of pages for business, computer games and gps equipment. I like to experiment to see what's possible.

I'll just get to the point.

This is an adsense focused question.

On day 1 I go into my stats on adsense, and I'll use an example to better explain what I'm asking.

I go into my adsense account and look at my stats for the day. It says that I have recieved 100 page impressions and 20 clicks on adsense ads, resulting in $10.

On day 2 I go into my adsense account again and click on "see yesterday's report". It says (as it did before), however, this time it says 0 clicks (Or ALOT less than it said previously) and 0 revenue.

Why does it do this?

I NEVER click on my own ads, as I consider that morally wrong (Not to mention against the terms and conditions).

My pages aren't spammy, but to be perfectly honest SOME of the pages don't have extremly useful content, but it it unique content none the less.

Could anyone please shed some light on this?

thanks

[bhartzer]

Google has certain checks and balances in place that check for valid clicks. Sometimes their systems that perform those checks are not run until the the end of the day. And sometimes they have someone manually review your account.

The bottom line is that any time during the month--anytime before your monthly total is actually approved and a check is written--they have the right to fix things.

There's really not much you can do except continue to add your AdSense code to pages that contain good, quality, content--and, hopefully, good search engine rankings.

[marketershandbook.com]

But I don't click on any of the ads myself, so really they are ALL vaild clicks.

This is a daily thing not monthly. So i have clicks appear in my account, and at the end of the day almost all of them have dissapeared.

This is before any checks have been written.

Alot of them have good search engine rankings so that's not really the problem. And the pages aren't like "spam spam spam click on all of the ads to make me money etc".

As far as I can tell it's completely legit.

[bythevineyard]

Check it close. It could be the spiders!

[bhartzer]

Search engine spiders do not click on javascript text ads.

It could very well be a competitor or someone else clicking on your ads if it isn't you. I wouldn't worry too much about it, concentrate on building pages with good content on them so you can rank well and have Adsense on them.

Honestly, there's really not much you can do.

[Creatix]

I understand your concern though.

My problem is a little different these last 2 days however. I am wondering if something is wrong with Adsense right now.

I have regular reports for months on end, I know what my click through ratios are etc etc...
BUT suddenly, yesterday, and today, there has apparently been no clicks. This is completely unprecedented across my sites.

One day I could put down to a strange fluke, but 2 days in a row is a little weird. My impressions are still up there...

Has anyone else noticed anything strange?

[DrTandem1]

Looking at the site in your signature, I could not find any adsense ads. Also, $10/day seems extremely high for your site, especially when I can't even find the ads.

Am I missing something?

By the way, on a site I am managing, they have Adsense, and it's been consistent for the past year as well as the past few days.

[freehits]

Originally Posted by Creatix

One day I could put down to a strange fluke, but 2 days in a row is a little weird. My impressions are still up there...

Has anyone else noticed anything strange?

Yes, the last 4 days, click % down from the 4 month average of 9.6% to 7.0%.

The other differenc eis that when no ads appear (often it seems) they are not leaving blank spaces like normal, they are just not there.

Revenue down 40%.

[smakyyy]

Adsense has been a little erratic - i have adsense on over 20 websites and suddenly my click thru ratio has gone down and also the payout rates for clicks has gone down.
i dont know why this is happening - but am keeping a eye on it.

[marketershandbook.com]

bhartzer I don't understand why a competitor would continually on my adsense ads, as that would actually help me alot, it it were adwords then I can see why someone would do that, but not adsense I wouldn't think.

And if someone else is clicking on them isn't that what adsense is all about, people clicking on your adsense ads once they've read your content?

Also, I DO rank well for most of the pages that I have adsense on, so ranking isn't really a problem, granted, traffic isn't amazing yet, but I'm working on that, might change titles and descriptions to make it a little more compelling.


Hi DrTandem1, $10 a day was an example, because adsense is being a little odd with me I can't really give you an accurate idea of how much I could make on average in a day. If you want to see the adsense ads, go to the site map click on one of the links about half way down the page. One that starts with "garmin" "ever quest" "world of warcraft" or "guild wars" has adsense on them.


wow, just looked at those pages again. They used to display extremely targetted ads that were perfect, now I look at them and they're just crap lol. Some are still ok. But for one of the pages "ever quest map" (I think) it used to have ads for ever quest (An online game for those unfamiliar), when I last checked, it has maps for south east asia and a wall paper ad lol.

Think I might need to expand the content a little more on the pages that aren't displaying correct ads and maybe moan to google if the rest of my day isn't amazing :)

still doesn't explain disapearing revenue that was once there though.

[DrTandem1]

Okay, now I found your ads. I'm surprised that you get any clicks burying them in a site map. By the way, your Lotto page returns a 404 error. Also, the ads appear to be relevant to your pages' content.

[marketershandbook.com]

yeah DrTandem1 I know the lotto page and I think 1 other aren't there any more, I keep forgetting to delete the links to them.

Most of the time my pages don't get clicks from the site map (As far as I can tell), they rank fairly well in google and msn, so my click come directly from the search engines directly to those pages.

Are adsense ad's relevency partly determined by the location of the viewer. The reason I ask, is because most of the pages that I have adsense ads on are relevant, but some aren't.

So either you only got to the pages that had the relevant ads, or perhaps the wall paper ads (That I saw on one page) were uk based and deemed more relevant (As I'm from the uk)

[Creatix]

Yes, the Adsense algo provides different ads based on many factors.

Ine of my sites is a tourism guide about NZ. I live in Switzerland, when I visit the site, the ads are often in German, and are frequently specific to Swiss or German companies selling travel. Likewise, when I have a staff member in Australia of NZ check the ads, they are particularly suitable to their viewing.

In short, the ads you see in the UK on your site, will likely be completely different from what US visitors are seeing.
I forget where it is, but there is a tool you can download ( I think from Adsense site) that allows you to see what ads would be shown on your pages in other locations around the world.

[marketershandbook.com]

A Google staff member just emailed me back.

Please note that the guy was very polite and I'm not saying that he directly called me an idiot or even inscinuated (I don't know how to spell that :) )it.

But he said "Please rest assured that your account is being properly credited for all
valid clicks and impressions and there are no missing funds."


I wont quote the next part because it's kinda long.

But he suggested that I must have been looking at "effective cpm column" and then went into great detail explaining to me what it was.

Grrr I know what cpm is.

I hope I'm right in assuming a valid click is someone that finds your website, looks at the content, then clicks on an ad?

What I'm going to have to do is just do a screen shot when it DOES say that I've generated clicks/revenue, then the next day when it dispears (Which it hopefully wont) emailed them again and show them the screen shot as proof.

[marketershandbook.com]

Hi guys,
just a quick update.

Since my moan at google, not only have my clicks actually stuck, they've skyrocketed. Perhaps this is because my unique visitors per day have jumped from 20 per day to 300 (WOW :) ).

I don't think it's related to my moan at them though, I think it's just because I had quite a few extra pages indexed.

I'll certainly keep an eye on my clicks and see if the revenue suddenly dissapears .(Since they are certainly adding up now)