My Google AdSense earnings dropped 60% overnight
I run a blog with about 50k monthly visits and my AdSense earnings went from $12/day to $4/day literally overnight. I didn't change anything on my site. I checked my account and there are no policy violations. What could have happened?
1 Answer(s)
A sudden 60% drop without a policy violation almost always comes down to one of three things. First, check your traffic sources. If you had a viral post or social media spike recently and it faded, your RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) can tank because the new traffic is lower-quality. Go to Analytics > Acquisition and compare your traffic sources from last week to this week.
Second, it could be seasonal. Ad rates fluctuate wildly depending on the time of year. Q1 is notoriously bad for most niches because advertisers cut budgets after the holidays. If your drop happened in January or February, this is probably it.
Third, check if Google changed how your ads are being served. Go to your AdSense dashboard > Performance > Pages and see if certain high-earning pages suddenly dropped. Sometimes Google shifts ad formats or reduces ad density on certain page types without telling you.
Also verify you haven't accidentally blocked ads with a new plugin or code change. Install the Google Publisher Toolbar and check if ads are actually showing on your pages. If they are, the drop is likely market-driven and will bounce back.