Sometimes When Google Updates, The Conversions Disappear

by Darren McLaughlin

One phenomena I’ve noticed with Google has seemingly occurred again. When Google does a massive update, you generally hear a lot of squealing in webmaster forums, and you also tend to observe changes in your own logfiles. Google traffic goes from being very “sharp” to very “fuzzy” for lack of a better description.

For the last “many weeks” Google has been experimenting with their traffic, IMHO. I’ve seen the numbers fall off on personal conversions, as well as a lowering of CPM, despite seeing generic increases in traffic. When the new traffic is fuzzy, you don’t notice a huge increase in revenue. In fact, you start seeing the decline in CPM and wondering what happened to your end of the deal? Could it be fewer people are converting? Assuredly so. Google has always maintained their program is based on conversions mainly, so a generic downward trend in CPM seems to indicate the traffic from your website is not as sharp as it used to be and people aren’t buying at the advertiser’s websites.

With some indication that ad rates are dropping for publishers, it pays to keep our eyes open concerning any trend we’re noticing. The main thing that keeps me from worrying too much is that 1) worrying never helps anything and 2) Google generally pulls out of these tailspins fairly quickly.

Of course from my singular vantage point, I have no idea if my observations are true, but I can only relay that it seems like there’s validity to my theory. Today I did notice an increase in conversions, despite continued sluggish Adsense traffic. Maybe a new trend is coming to town as we speak.

What are you noticing in your log files?

Tags: Google Traffic