Why Did My AdSense Revenue Suddenly Plummet? Lessons Learned After a Lot of Trial and Error
Have you experienced a sudden drop in your AdSense revenue? One day, my earnings were over $5 a day, and then suddenly, everything went downhill. After a ton of trial and error and a long period of frustration, I’m sharing the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned.
AdSense Revenue Drop
Not long after I started my WordPress blog, my AdSense account got approved. Excited, I began writing posts, and soon enough, I started seeing earnings from AdSense. At first, it was around $1 a day, then it increased to $2, $3—and on some days, I even made $5! It was so much fun and motivating to see earnings from the posts I had put so much effort into writing.
In fact, it’s usually difficult for a newly launched blog to generate revenue this quickly, but in my case, the traffic to my blog increased significantly as it started getting featured on Google Discover.
AdSense Revenue Crash in November vs. Strong Performance in October
Then one day, my Google AdSense revenue suddenly began to plummet. From the middle of the chart above, you can see a steep decline, and in November, even making just $1 a day became a struggle. 😢 The red box in the graph below highlights my AdSense revenue during November.
Here’s a breakdown of my earnings during the red box above.
What was truly baffling was that the number of ad page views hadn’t changed much compared to when I was earning $2–5 a day.
Below are the results from October, when my blog’s AdSense revenue was higher. In early October, even with fewer blog posts, I had days like October 7th where I earned over $4 with around 1,000 page views. In contrast, on November 1st, despite also getting about 1,000 page views, the revenue was just $0.66.
The cause of my AdSense revenue drop – Core Web Vitals
After a lot of searching, trials, and what can be called “trial and error,” I finally found the cause of the sudden drop in my AdSense revenue. The reason was a drop in my Core Web Vitals score.
One of the reasons I switched from Tistory to WordPress was because of better website optimization (SEO). As I managed my blog, I naturally became interested in how to improve my Google search ranking, and as I delved into SEO, I started paying attention to my site’s Google performance score.
While studying SEO, I came across Google’s website performance evaluation tool, PageSpeed Insights, and learned that passing Core Web Vitals measurements directly affects Google search rankings and exposure through Google.
- In May 2024, Google’s ranking algorithm was leaked. Be sure to check it out!
In the early days of my blog, my Core Web Vitals were in the “passed” state, which is why my posts were getting exposure on Google Discover. However, after I improperly applied Google AdSense to my site, my Core Web Vitals worsened, and by early November, my blog was branded as a low-quality blog by Google. I’ve written in detail about why it’s crucial not to mess up Core Web Vitals in a previous post, so please refer to that for more information.
Recovering AdSense Revenue
It took exactly one month to restore my blog, which had a broken Core Web Vitals score, back to its original state. The image below is from Google Search Console, showing data for the blog “Smart Statistics Life.” The blog’s URLs, both for mobile and desktop, all changed from yellow (URLs that need performance improvement) to green (Good URLs) on November 7. In other words, the blog was no longer considered low-quality and was reclassified as a good-quality blog.
After this change, what kind of transformations occurred on “Smart Statistics Life” blog? And how did the revenue turn out? Next, I’ll share the two changes that took place on the blog.
Increase in AdSense Revenue
Not only that, but Google finally started showing my blog posts in Discover again. This means that my blog posts were deemed good enough to be shown to other Google users.
Did the number of visitors increase drastically? No, that wasn’t the case. As you can see in the image below, the pageviews were the same as they were in early November, where I couldn’t even make $1 a day.
Instead, the overall number of clicks and page RPM (Revenue Per Thousand Impressions) increased. This means that when Core Web Vitals improve, AdSense revenue increases even with the same number of visitors.
Increased exposure on Google Discover
But that’s not all, Google finally started showing my blog posts in Discover again, which means that my blog posts were deemed good enough to be seen by other Google users.
So, I expect that the blog’s traffic will increase in the future, which will naturally lead to improved revenue. 🙂
In this post, I shared the causes behind the drop in AdSense revenue and its relationship with Core Web Vitals. If you, like me, suddenly experienced a drop in Google AdSense revenue, be sure to check whether your Core Web Vitals have dropped. Also, if you’re currently maintaining good Core Web Vitals, it’s very important to continue managing them well. Wishing everyone happy blogging!
Also, check out the “Core Web Vitals Perfect Score Blog” that is guaranteed by WPlaybook. Over 100 members of the WPlaybook community are already satisfied and using it!
