February 2010 collapse

[3oltan]

I would really like to know if anybody else has experienced collapse in CTR+ECPM+CPC-wise starting in February (Jan 31 was totally normal day).

Facts:
- Same traffic
- Same advertizers with the same budgets (small niche, everybody knows everybody)
- Everything was rock solid the last year
- Last minutes of January looks normal

... then... February starts and CTR drops 20%, eCPM 25% in one second and has stayed at the new level every since.

Is this something only I am experiencing, or...?

I just cannot figure this one out... If it is penalty (and the level of the jump would support this), why has my CTR jumped down?

Only explanation I can think is that: I have hit some penalty word, which has ""disabled"" some of the ads. But without knowing the exact problem, it's kind of difficult to "undo".

[Dani]

Are you talking specifically about AdSense/AdWords?

[ayestmam]

Maybe is a penalty.

[autotrans10]

I did find that google adwords went through some updating to there algorithm. This is what I was told from my manager. We saw conversion rates drop and cost went up for certain keywords. You have to roll with the punches. We are still ironing it out.

[InsightsDigital]

Something to consider is also - have your campaign been saturated - that means have you reached a point in your campaign where it has reached all the new acquisition it could?

[jay 11]

i assume you are referring to Google AdSense, yes?? FWIW - I have not noticed a dip in any of my KPI's - in fact my company has been fortunate to see an increase in revenues over the past few months. We attribute this to better ad placement and overall site performance (load speed, fixing of broken pages, improved site navigation).

The timing of the drop (Jan to Feb) is most likely a coincidence. Have you changed anything to your site? Do you run SiteMaps on your site? If so - have there been any glaring errors? IE. pages unreachable?