Sudden CPC Drop in Google Adsense in 2024

If your adsense earnings dropped dramatically in 2023, there may be various reasons for this.

I will not consider seasonal search queries, which were quite naturally expensive during a certain period, and at the end of the event ceased to be interesting for advertisers.

I think that a webmaster who has a website targeted at a certain event or a seasonal boom understands the reason for the drop in the price per click for advertising in Google AdSense in 2024.

How well does your website earn in Adsense? Use the calculator and draw your conclusions!

No one specialist will give you a direct answer to the reason for the drop in the cost of clicks on your site without analyzing it. But it is safe to say that the “steeper” the drop in CPC and your income in General – the easier it is to find the cause of this problem.

Reyus Mammadli, SEO specialist

Below I will give the main reasons that affect the cost per click in contextual advertising from AdSense affecting in March, 2024, and you can check how this applies to your website.

Where does the cost per click in Adsense come from?

If you’ve ever been in the role of an advertiser, you should understand that the person placing the ads is important that the clicks on his ad units are of high quality. This means:

  • Place ads only on quality sites that have credibility and a good target audience;
  • Users who have clicked on ads are likely to be interested in the product or buy it;
  • Users know they follow the link and are not tricked into clicking;
  • Not to pay for the clicks;
  • And other points related to budget optimization and good conversion rates.
  • Smart Pricing is Google’s attempt to give advertisers the ability to optimize budgets and protect against clicks. Adsense marketers understand that the great danger in their service is posed by webmasters who place ads temporarily on junk or non-authoritative pages in headlines that are very likely to attract
  • high-paying ads. Clicks on such pages are not really valuable to advertisers.

Smart Pricing sets the click price for each ad based on many factors, all of which are not public.

Factors that influence google Adsense CPC rates

In various forums, webmasters have suggested a number of factors that they believe affect click pricing:

  • Site relevancy. That is, is the entire site is dedicated to the topic or just one page?
  • The number of impressions. If the site has good traffic, it is very likely that it has good credibility.
  • The size of the site.
  • PageRank (as another factor of authority).
  • Age of the site.
  • The relevance of incoming links (ie, many sites refer to yours with the keys that are relevant to the overall theme of the site and contextual advertising).
  • CTR – the percentage of users clicked on the ads.

Authority of Your Website

CPC and website authority
CPC and website authority

Do you have a website about medicine or cars, and before you had solid clicks, but now they have fallen by 2 or more times? One of the reasons why CPC suddenly dropped on your site is the credibility of your site. The fact is that in almost every niche where expert opinion is required, monster sites have appeared that have provided a platform for reviews and articles for specialists in this field. More and more advertisers who are willing to pay good money for a click on their ads prefer such sites.

Full-time contextual advertising specialists already have their own database of “trusted” sites that are selected as priority sites for displaying their ads.

The Traffic of Your Website

Traffic dropped and PCP decreased
Traffic dropped and PCP decreased

Yes, Yes, I’m not kidding. Two websites in the same niche with a similar semantic core can have a significant difference in cost per click. For example, if one blog on children’s health has 25K per month, and another has 300K+, then earnings will not be proportional to attendance. A more visited website, in most cases, will have higher bids from advertisers. I agree with you that this item is related to the previous one. But, nevertheless, it is correct to designate it as a separate reason for an unexpected drop (or increase) in the cost of PPC advertising in Google.

Deleting (by Mistake) the Advertiser who Paid More

Also, the reason for a significant drop in the cost per click may be an attempt to “clear” impressions on the site from “cheap” clicks. You can, without knowing it, forbid the display of a rich and generous advertiser, by mistake classifying it as cheap. Since Google does not show how much an individual advertiser pays per click, the webmaster is forced to try to remove unwanted ads based on his experience. And we are not immune from mistakes.

Advertiser’s Mistake In Determining the Audience and Niche

Advertiser's Mistake can cause your revenue dropping
Advertiser’s Mistake can cause your revenue dropping

Yes, this also happens. The advertiser can choose your site or the subject in which you work to advertise a product that does not belong to this area. For example, on a site about personal hygiene products, advertise a window cleaner. Such advertising may cost little, and if there is no competition for a place, you will have cheap and rare clicks, and your revenue will decrease. It is better to ban such an advertiser at the account level.

Automated Ads

Automated ads from Google AdSense are much better than they were when they first appeared. But there are topics where the audience, in General, prefers not display or native advertising, but, say, blocks of links (the same webmasters). Therefore, replacing (even partially) ad blocks with automated ads can lead to a drop in the cost of clicks on your website. This problem is not difficult to solve – experiment with your ad blocks.

The Ad Language is Different from the Website Language

Ads on different language
Ads on different languages

Have you seen ads in Japanese or Russian on your English-language website? I had that. Users do not have confidence in such advertising. And even if the advertising language is clear to the visitor, it is not for this advertising that he entered the English-language site to go from there to a site with a different language. This also occurs here and manual cleaning of ads should help.

When Should We React And Take Action?

Ad campaigns in the AdSense system are constantly starting and ending. Therefore, we are used to the fact that the cost per click number of clicks is a floating value. Therefore, do not panic if your PC and PPC are down for 1-3 days. However, if the traffic has not changed, and the situation with the price per click does not improve for about a week, then this is a reason to start acting.

Hidden Reasons of Earning Sharp Drop in Adsense

All of us understand that changes in CPC, CTR and overall traffic impacts Adsense revenue. But anything that has an impact on CTR, CPC, or traffic quality and amount has an indirect but typically considerable impact on adsense incomes.

Reason #1

Google says: HTTPS-enabled websites need that all content on the page, consisting of the advertisements, be SSL-compliant. As such, AdSense will eliminate all non-SSL compliant advertisements from competing in the auction on these pages. If you do decide to convert your HTTP site to HTTPS, please know that due to the fact that we remove non-SSL certified advertisements from the auction, therefore lowering auction pressure, ads on your HTTPS pages might earn less than those on your HTTP pages.

So non SSL advertisers won’t have the ability to bid on your advertisement auctions, driving down “auction pressure.” So the service sadly is to eliminate your SSL certificate. Do not stress, the ranking result of SSL is someplace between not and hardly statistically considerable based on recent studies.

Reason #2

I made my site mobile responsive and started serving responsive advertisements since my neighbor informed me to or Google stated “mobilegeddon”.

I’m less clear on the common foundations on this: Google Groups. But it appears as though clever sizing option for responsive ads can be glitchy but this guy has an option: How to repair the AdSense auto-resizing mistake and blank ads. You desire to keep things mobile responsive. And if you have a mobile variation of your site, you need to change to mobile responsive. You likewise wish to make certain that your mobile responsive site does not have any problems like missing out on overflow: hidden for css selectors on wrapping divs. A good designer can aid with this.

Reason #3

Google was all like, “I wonder how many mobile advertisement clicks are unexpected?” We can test that with popups when individuals click ads resembling, “Did you actually wish to click that or are your pingers simply too huge for the puttons?”

Reason #4

Smart Pricing. You decided to attempt it and it injure your profits. Google did some complex non-transparent estimations on the quality of click adsense advertisements on your site and stated they weren’t so hot. Maybe you’re all over the board on subjects and its tough to get pertinent marketers. Maybe spammy advertisers are targeting your site due to the fact that you appeal to low self esteem users and that’s having a result. Or possibly you simply have low quality traffic.

Reason #5

Macro patterns. They occur. Believe of Google’s pattern and drop in typical cost per click on network properties like adsense quarterly YoY, or the mandatory switch to Google Enhanced projects requiring marketers to utilize bid multipliers they don’t understand to bid on mobile vs. desktop. Or individuals in basic getting “banner fatigue”, tired of your “one easy trick to eliminate bellyfat” advertisements, or retargeting in general.

Reason #6

You pissed somebody off and they decided to spend for click fraud traffic to your site and Google recognized it as such. Perhaps you just climbed very high in the Google search results for a high-frequency query and the competitor(s) will take you down.

Questions and Answers about Google Adsense Cost-Per-Click

How much does AdSense pay per click?

Publishers get 68% of the click amount. The commission you get depends greatly on the competitors and CPC in the specific niche. In average, the commission per click can range from $0.05 to $15.

Why is my AdSense CPC so low?

I have given several reasons why the cost per click in AdSense may be lower than expected. There is also a factor such as the geographical location of visitors. If there are no cool advertisers in the region where your site is most often visited, then their place is taken by cheaper ones. Also pay attention to what your articles call for. If you offer free products, software, and promotions, then clicks there will be low, because “in the eyes” of the advertiser, your audience is insolvent. And many other reasons. Each case should be studied separately.

How does AdSense calculate CPC?

CPC stands for Cost Per Click so in your example in the comments, the CPC is $0.6 as that is the amount paid per click. CPC on AdSense is calculated as the overall amount you have made divided by the overall number of clicks.

Which country has highest CPC rate?

Top 10 highest CPC countries in the world:

  1. United States
  2. Australia
  3. Canada
  4. Marshal islands
  5. United Kingdom
  6. Germany
  7. Switzerland
  8. Brazil
  9. New Zealand
  10. Italy

How do I increase my CPC AdSense?

This is a serious question and the answer may differ for each niche or project. But here are the main criteria that should be considered so that the CPC is as high as possible:

  1. The choice of a niche. Entertainment has a large audience, but one of the lowest CPC. There are fewer motorists, but there are really expensive clicks.
  2. Select the promotion region. Although you don’t have to choose a region at all and Google will determine who to show what to, SEO experts advise you to focus on a specific region. For example, in the United States pay more than in India.
  3. Choosing the product attractiveness of the site. As I answered earlier, if you offer free products, the CPC will be low. And if your audience is focused on paid services or products, then your site will be much more attractive to advertisers. in Other words, the CPC will be higher, perhaps 2-3 times.
  4. Age and gender. When setting up targeting, advertisers often pay great attention to these two parameters. in Other words, if your site is aimed at young people under 18, then only in rare categories can you expect good clicks (such as gaming). But, in General, advertisers prefer the paying age category. Also, depending on the category, women may be more inclined to buy than men or Vice versa. The advertiser knows this and is guided by it.
  5. Seasonality of goods or services. Do not forget that if your site is subject to seasonal drops and spikes, then the activity of advertisers will be appropriate. Budgets during periods of falling consumer interest are much lower and clicks in AdSense also fall in price.

The reasons for low CPC are not limited to these points. I just gave you some examples that make it clear that the process of calculating the CRC for each individual site is complicated.

What is CPC in blogging?

In our time, earnings in AdSense with a blog depends on the coverage of your niche and your audience. For example, if your blog is “about everything”, then clicks will be low, since this is not the best platform for advertisers to target. However, if you are talking about a certain type of service or product, the chances of high clicks increase. But here you need to find the balance “attendance vs. niche coverage”. If you take the probability of 1 click per 100 visitors (a fairly low, but not uncommon option), it is better to count on traffic from 2000 visitors per day (60K per month). Then you can take about $200-$300 a month or more with a high CPC.

I dare to assume that a CPC of $0.15 or more will be a great result for blogging.

Reyus Mammadli, SEO specialist

What is a good CPC rate?

For those marketing on online search engine, the service or product being promoted is the single biggest factor to cost-per-click.

Many online advertisement platforms are auction based. Marketers determine just how much they’re willing to spend for each click, and those who are willing to pay more get their advertisements placed higher on the page or are more likely to be displayed in a newsfeed, according to webstrategiesinc.com.

The more costly your product and services, the more your competitors are ready to spend for the click. If you sell a $10,000 item, and your website and sales group can convert one out of every 100 advertisement clicks into a sale (a. 5% conversion rate), you ought to be willing to pay $10 per click on your ad. This leads to paying $2,000 in advertisement costs to get a $10,000 sale (there’s that 5:1 ratio mentioned earlier).

Companies offering less expensive products can not afford such costly advertising costs. For example, if your item costs $100, and you convert one out of every fifty ad clicks into a sale, you must target a CPC of $.40. Fifty clicks at $.40 each produces one sale worth $100, so your $20 investment would have achieved the 5:1 ratio.

To assist compute your target cost-per-click, use the following formula:

Target Cost Per Click = (Revenue Generated per Sale x Your Website Conversion Rate) x 20%.

Why do some countries have low CPC?

CPC is based on the kind of budget the advertisers leep for their project. So in nations like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal generally Asian Countries. The CPC Is low due to the fact that these are establishing countries and the advertisers choose low CPC for their project. However in countries like US, Canada, UK, France and Germany which are established nations so the marketers there keep greater CPC due to the fact that they can afford it.

My AdSense CPC 0.4. Is this considered very low CPC?

This is a fairly good indicator. In particular, the indicator below $0.1 can be considered low. Usually low CPC in AdSense, as I noted earlier, is observed in countries such as India, the Philippines, Pakistan, many Asian countries, Russia and the former Soviet Union. It is worth noting that in some niches, a CPC above $0.05 is considered a good indicator.

Why is my AdSense CPC going down?

Of course, first you need to determine for what period of time the information is taken that the CPC has started to fall. Your expense per click and other metrics like CTR and RPM will fluctuate all the time. You truly require to look at that by month. Is CPC decreasing progressively every month, or is it down one month and back up another? In other words, I wouldn’t get too worried over a short-term dip– short-term fluctuations of a few days or weeks prevail and no cause for alarm. Focus on the longer term trend.

CPC is affected by the surrounding content and the pertinent keywords. If you are seeing a long down slide in CPC with time, then concentrate on producing content for greater paying keywords pertinent to your audience, to lift your numbers over time.

Likewise, think about re-optimizing your more popular existing content for a number of higher paying keywords per page. If you’re currently getting decent traffic to those posts, you might be able to enhance them by adding a couple of more paragraphs of good content appropriately optimized. At least it can assist your search rankings. However it may likewise help raise your CPC on those pages. The 80– 20 guideline uses here. When returning to older posts, focus on the ad-supported pages that generate the most traffic (and, if you can tell, the ones that generate the most advertisement income).

Why is my Adsense CPC so low?

As I wrote above, a lot depends on the country, niche, number of ad units, etc. You can choose a popular topic, but its audience will be non-paying (children, teenagers). You can also allow any kind of advertising on the site, which is used by unscrupulous advertisers, making loud/shocking ads worth 1-2 cents.

My site has a small amount of traffic (about 400 people a day or 12,000 a month). It is a site about homemade wooden crafts. But the clicks there are no more than 5-8 cents. Why does AdSense pay so little?

Maybe it’s about your audience. They come to get some ideas, crafts schemes, but not to buy something. The advertiser is not interested in such a platform. Try adding pages with reviews of tools and materials that you use, use the words “buy”, “inexpensive”, “Amazon”, etc. This will give a signal that the audience of the page may be interested in the advertiser’s product, ready to make a purchase. In my opinion, this is one of the most common reasons why Google Adsense pays so ” low ” for clicks.

Cunning Advertisers and Your CPC

The Adsense account also has this feature: if the ad is well clicked on, it is shown more often, as it is fully consistent with the theme of the page.

Ads with a price of 1 cent are very well clicked on, because they have beautiful headlines that almost urge you to click on the ad.

Ultimately, over time, one-cent ads displace expensive advertisers from your site. And then you decide what’s better – 50 clicks on the dollar or 200 clicks on one cent.

Conclusion

If you find a sharp and/or unexpected drop in CPC for AdSense on your site, pay attention to analyzing your site. There may be many reasons, and not all of them are obvious. But if you approach the problem from different angles, and not just by blocking advertisers in AdSense, it will be easier to find a solution. Pay attention to our recommendations and you may find “the main problem” that is dragging your CPC down.