Over the past 48 hours, there has been a spike in complaints around Google AdSense showing huge CPC, cost per click, declines after August 5th. There is a thread at WebmasterWorld and Google AdSense Help and a bunch of chatter on Twitter around this drop.
Many are saying they are seeing a 50 to 70% drop in their cost per clicks they are getting on the ads on their web sites. Google has not commented or replied to any of the complaints on social media yet.
Here are some of the comments:
We have noted an extreme drop in the CPC of our content ads while CTR remains stable. This started on Sunday the 5th.
I have noticed huge CPC drop over the past 2-3 days. Today is almost -60%.
Here are some tweets:
@rustybrick Received any reports on Google AdSense bugs? There's a global widespread issue amongst many publishers reporting HUGE drops.
— Vlad Rappoport (@vladrpt) August 8, 2017
@AdSense whats up with the 50% drop in CPC, it would be nice to get an official statement on this, Never, ever been this low in 5 years!
— Salomon Ptasevich (@SaloPtase) August 9, 2017
Noticing a huge drop in @AdSense earnings starting about Aug 5-6. About 50% drop in CPC. Web traffic has been same. Is this an adsense bug?
— Kampbell (@13flmd) August 9, 2017
What the hell is going on w/ @AdSense? Every webmaster I talk to seeing a 50-70% drop in earnings this week. Same for all my sites. Fix it!
— Christina T (@Samstealsfirst) August 8, 2017
loving the 60% drop in adsense ;)
— Tom (R4bbit) (@TarryMRT) August 7, 2017
I checked my reports and it seems like the little I make on AdSense saw a drop as well in terms of CPC on August 6th and August 7th:
I am not sure if this is a reporting bug or something to come.
Google did publish a notice about annoying ads for AdSense publishers yesterday. I am not sure if that is related. I am working on an answer from Google.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Google AdSense Help and Twitter.
Update: @expressblogger share an email from Google they just received this morning:
Update 2: Google has confirmed the issue. Note, your CPCs will not change, it was not a reporting glitch. It does seem to be an issue with how some rouge advertisers were able to maybe game the system. So going forward, Google blacklisted these advertisers and hopefully closed this loophole they discovered. Here is Google's statement:
Over the past 48 hours, a number of AdSense publishers alerted us to an issue with declining cost-per-click for ads on their sites. We were able to identify the cause of the issue quickly and resolve it quickly: Several ad buyers were using irresponsible campaign parameters, lowering query coverage for specific creative types in some countries. The ad buyers responsible have been blacklisted and impacted publishers should see that their coverage is back to normal in their AdSense account.
Update 3: Want to know how this happened and who did it? I have more details in this new story.
