Are your Google Adsense Earnings down?

Many theories are flying around in the Internet at the moment. It seems that 55% of the webmaster community report heavy losses on their Adsense accounts. The other 45 percent of the community report no changes and in some few cases even a slight raise on earnings. To me this looks like a flue and i hope they find a cure soon because the Adsense flue seems just to have reached my account. When i checked this morning, my Adsense earnings where down by 50%! Now, there i start getting worried. Even though i don’t have all my eggs in one basket, it still hurts.

Now where ever something happens there are roumors and theories. This one i like best: Google has reported a 30% increase in AdSense clicks over the last quarter 2006, and a 9% increase since the third quarter 2007. But even though the clicks are up, revenues for publishers seem to go down.

Google also reported a 34% increase in AdSense revenues over the last quarter 2007 and a 12% increase quarter after quarter. The interesting part is that Googles traffic acquisition cost, the portion of revenue shared with Google AdSense publishers, went up only 1%. Google controls 77% of the search market and 75% of the search advertising spend and they report consistent growth. Maybe they are saving up to buy Microsoft now; the perfect "All in One" package. 

But seriously, i still think it’s a flue. Going over my several websites after i discovered the downfall in my Adsense account, i found that besides of the front page, where everything seems to be alright, only very few if at all, ad boxes where shown. Some pages showed ads after refreshing the page 3 times but many pages don’t show ads at all. Nothing, not one, not even charity ads. I checked the source code and everything is fine. Google just seems to reduce the number of times ads are shown. Doing this on purpose wouldn’t make sense at all, given the numbers above. So i do the same as everybody; wait and see what happens. Google is in the position to do whatever they want anyway. No competition on the horizon and the only competition that could be counted for is just about to be swallowed by giant number two. Does anybody here see the big picture? There will be only two companies left who will pocess all the computer power of the world. And i’m afraid that this will not be a most harmonic relationship.

If you are currently displaying referral ad units for AdSense on your websites, you need to read this. There are some major changes coming up to the referral program that you should be aware of. Only referral units promoting AdSense will be affected by the new rules. It will not affect referrals to other products and services. The changes that will be effective from February 1^st 2008 to referral ads promoting AdSense will be different, depending on the location given in your Google account settings, regardless of the whereabouts of your users.

North America - Latin America - Japan

If you are located in one of the above countries, the referral pricing will undergo massive changes.

Old Prices

• When a user you referred earned 5 $ within 180 days, you would earn5 $ too.
• When the publisher earned 100 $ within 180 days you’d receive $250
• When you referred 25 people who mad 100 $ in 180 days you’d get 2′000 $
  

New Prices

• When a user you referred earned 5 $ within 180 days, you nothing anymore.
• When the publisher earned 100 $ within 180 days you’ll get $100
• When you referred 25 people who mad 100 $ in 180 days you’ll get nothing.

A referred user who reaches $100 within 180 days of signing up and who removes all payments holds before the change occurs will make you 250 $. If the referred user reaches the 100 $ after the changes have taken place he will only generate $100.

All other Countries

If you are an Adsense publisher and you are not located in one of the above countries you will have to remove all referrals promoting AdSense. Google has found that this referral product has not performed as well as they had hoped for in these countries.

You can still add referrals for all other products listed under the ‘Referrals’ section of your AdSense Setup Account.

For referred publishers who have not reached the 100 $ before February 1^st 2008, the same changes are valid as in the statement above.

Firefox and Google Toolbar Package Referrals

The commission will be reduced from 2 $ to 1 $ per referral. Keep in mind though that this still supports the Firefox Open Source Project. So don’t go and remove all ads there.

5′500 Back Links over Night

Now how does something like that happen and is it positiv or negativ? Last night i checked my back link count on several search engines and my chaw dropped down. Google had suddenly found hundreds of back links to all of my 25 websites. But that was only Google. Yahoo had found a couple of thousands to each of my websites and Altavista broke the record with 5′570 back links over night on http://www.diveshopsoftware.com.

Now the question is what did i do to deserve seach a golden shower? And is it the golden shower i want? In reality? Nothing, i’ve simply gone down the same lane as always, a couple of linkexchanges each week an article here and an other one there, nothing extraordinary. Yet my link count is still raising and no one knows where it stops.
continue reading "Unexplained Back Link Explosion"

Long Outstanding Changes to Google Algorithms

There is a lot of logic in this wise decision. Up to now it was consistency that counted most for Google search results. That went as far as older sites being listed higher than newcomers. But since nothing is as old as the news from yesterday, changes towards more future orientated and news related content where long outstanding.

When it all begun

In 2007 already Google had begun to identify more contemporary. It is estimated that Google adds every 5 -10 minutes new search results to its search engins. Google now also acquires data the number of searches on a certain key phrase or keyword to determine its importance to the user. This tool has been there a long time but has become much more sophisticated now. Google will now list the latest published content, to an often searched keyword, on the top of the search results instead of feeding it’s users with old news.

Massive impact on Backlinks expected

Due to the much faster identification process now Google takes less time to take back links in consideration for their search results. Back links always have been used to get higher page rank results at Google. The downside of this system was that so called link farms grew all over the internet to explode the system. Even with all the fine tuned robots Google was not able to gain complete control over in this way falsified search results. With the new Google algorithms in place since January 1sm all this will change. Webmasters and website owners will be forced to work a lot harder than they did before.

It want be so easy anymore to setup crappy websites full of Google ads and than never change any content besides the mostly software driven link pages.

New Google Algorithms’ Impact on Bloggers

Now the good news is that eventually bloggers will profit from the new Google algorithms. Most experts I have talked to foresee that the blogs and websites, such as this one, who publish breaking news first, also will be listed first at Google. Therefore older web directories such as wikipedia, who always have been listed on top of the search results, will have a disadvantage of dropping down in Google’s search results.

What Experts say to the changes of the Google Aglorithms

The experts though do not agree on whether or not these changes will lead to better search results for the user. For example on the “Google Operating Blog” is stated that for the search of the term “TCP/IP” which celebrates it’s 25th anniversary in January 2008, only unknown spam sites appear in the search results. The in this special case most wanted and informative results of Wikipedia are gone.

According to the Internet Service TechCrunch, are the new adjustments to the Google algorithms especially helpful for blog searches and will keep the pressure up on blog search engines like Technocrati. The actuality and user defined search results are undoubgtfully a step towards “Semantic Search” on the Internet.