Did a Google AdSense Maintenace Phase Kill My Income?

Many webmasters have been complaining this past weekend about poor income earnings on Google AdSense. The mentality is that there are "terrible stats" and that the earnings are "ridiculous." Complaints range from "maybe the AdSense era is finished for me" and "soon, I'll be owing Google money from the poor return." And the timing is suspicious because we are in the midst of a holiday shopping period--regardless of the economy, earnings shouldn't be so low.

One individual has expressed sentiment that the Internet is a fad that's wearing off. That thought is repeated from a user who says that his behavior has definitely changed from when he started surfing in the beginning.

The world economy is bad, the net is maturing, people are out Christmas shopping, and my main sites cater to unnecessary travel - a real luxury at the moment that many will not even be thinking about.

I'm not over optimistic about 2009 either but think that things will start to get better in 2010.

On the other hand, maybe there's no economic correlation at all to this issue. It was suspected that maintenance may be the reason for poor earnings. n Barry's post about AdSense ads being served through DoubleClick tracking, it's thought that the maintenance was related to DoubleClick and hence the AdSense earnings are down. Maybe this is related to the new tracking tools DoubleClick can give advertisers -- or maybe not. This is not suggested in the particular thread I highlighted but it is mentioned in another WebmasterWorld thread.

Ed: Blind men and the elephant.