5,000 of you have! 11:11 am on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
For those wondering what may, or may not, be happening with their AdSense arrows (Nessie).
User Mike in adsense forum get response from Adsense support:
"""Thank you for your email.
On Friday 9th, a change went out that removed the arrow button (Nessie) from the text ads appearing on about ~5000 publishers websites. These publishers possibly intentionally or unintentionally have ad implementations that mislead users as measured by the rate of accidental clicks. For these publishers we will continue to serve ads but we have removed the arrow button. These changes are meant to optimize the experience for advertisers, publishers and users alike. Some of these publishers may see fluctuations in their CPCs, CTRs and/or RPMs from smart pricing due to these implementations.
We have put together this FAQ:
Q. Why is the button no longer on my website?
A. Our systems have determined that some ad elements in text ads implemented on your site are not performing well for users, advertisers, and/or the publish network, therefore, the arrow button may not display on your ads moving forward. Different ad elements may or may not appear in text ads depending on what is deemed best performing for users, advertisers, and publishers. We believe these changes will encourage advertisers to spend more on the network, and lift earnings for our publisher clients in the long term.
Q. Why was the button removed from all the pages of my website?
A. Our systems have determined that some ad elements in text ads implemented on your site are not performing well for users, advertisers, and/or the publish network, therefore, the arrow button may not display on your ads moving forward. Different ad elements may or may not appear in text ads depending on what is deemed best performing for users, advertisers, and publishers. We believe these changes will encourage advertisers to spend more on the network, and in our publisher clients in the long term.
Q. Why has my CTR gone down?
A. Clicks/CTR are largely a factor of ad type, ad rendering and ad placement amongst others. Depending on the performance of an ad unit we may change how ads are rendered to prevent accidental clicks. You may want to check your ad implementations as they may be causing users to take unintended actions. Please see How you can help to prevent invalid activity for more.
Q. Why has my CPC gone down?
A Many factors determine the performance of an ad including CTR, CPC, user intent, advertiser ROI, and others. While we can?t draw specific conclusions about your site, in general our algorithms are designed to optimize and reflect the value users and advertisers are receiving from specific ad placements.
Q. Why has my Revenue/RPM gone down?
A.. Many factors determine the performance of an ad including CTR, CPC, user intent, advertiser ROI, and others. While we can?t draw specific conclusions about your site, in general our algorithms are designed to optimize and reflect the value users and advertisers are receiving from specific ad placements.
Q. Can I do anything specific to get the button text back?
A. No. While we can?t draw specific conclusions about your site, in general our algorithms are designed to optimize and reflect the value users and advertisers are receiving from specific ad placements. This can change over time and may or may not include additional ad elements like the clickable button.
Our internal team is working on this now and will have more information on the network wide impact of these changes.
Thank you for your understanding. "
1:17 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
One of 2 sites I manage is affected (no grey arrows). It's a very high volume traffic site. My other site, small traffic like 10K pageviews a month is unaffected.
1:50 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Yep, arrows gone from my site also. Earnings have fallen about 50%. I'm slightly positive that smart pricing will iron out my earnings to normal levels after a while, it's just reflecting the drop in clicks at present.
jpch
msg:4555282
2:17 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)5000 sites is less than 0.25% of sites running AdSense...just trying to put this in perspective of the bigger picture.
2:25 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Nope.
Yea, the fact that there's only 5000 seems odd to me, it's such a statistically small percentage of AdSense sites. I wonder how they found them and determined they had to turn off the arrows?
> I wonder how they found them and determined they had to turn off the arrows?
I clicked through to a gallery site the other day that appeared to not have any navigation links at all, just a couple of AdSense ads. If I didn't know better, the AdSense arrows would be the thing I'd click to advance to the next page. Pure MFA. My hunch is Google went after high CTR sites and niches abusing the navigation angle.
.25% of sites but most likely those are the higher traffic sites, so a much higher percent of search traffic than .25%.
3:26 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
I don't know if I believe that 5,000 publisher number. My site that was affected, even with the arrows which definitely helped CTR still had a very low CTR. But it is so high volume that the sheer amount of "invalid clicks" must be what caught Google's attention. Honestly, the text ad relevance dip is a much bigger impact on my bottom line than the loss of the arrows.
3:31 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Interesting that the system allowed turning of this feature on a site by site basis.
I guess it's more or less the reverse of turning on Beta features for select sites.
Arrow is misleading? Eureka! It's like putting a big arrow on your shop and then wonder why your customers go to the neighboring shop.
It seems I'm one of those 5000, I just realized that there are no arrows on my site.
Our systems have determined that some ad elements in text ads implemented on your site are not performing well
They are damn right.
...ad implementations that mislead...
One of my 728x90s has a small news box on the right side. I guess users thought (or google thought that users thought) the arrow is pointing to the box and clicked the box instead of the ad.
msg:4555335
3:52 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)Lost the arrows (never liked them) and can't find any arrows on competitors' websites.
4:14 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Also wonder why they named them after the Loch Ness Monster.
4:29 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
I didn't like the look of the arrows, but the extra money was nice while it lasted.
6:33 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Still have arrows, yet no real increase in income since they were introduced. Who wants my arrows for free? I'll send them ASAP. :)
7:03 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
If I didn't know better, the AdSense arrows would be the thing I'd click to advance to the next page. Pure MFA. My hunch is Google went after high CTR sites and niches abusing the navigation angle.
Interesting observation. One that had not occurred to me. When Nessie came out my CTR definitely rose. The layout of my site has always been the same and hasn't changed since I launched it on Oct 2nd.
My site layout has longer pages, about 3-4 screens worth for each item. At the top is a leaderboard, about half way down there is a leadboard. At the bottom was a rectangle (now removed).
The ads were placed in the open (no border), while the content areas are bordered. I've now added blue rounded borders around ads, so that it's clear what part is the ad. A bit late though.
If someone thought the arrow took them to more content, I can see that. Hadn't occurred to me, but that makes a lot of sense.
I'm one of those people who eliminates ad javascript when a page is viewed from any of my own ip addresses and the ip addresses of my employees. I never wanted anyone to click on our own ads.
[edited by: Chris13 at 7:16 pm (utc) on Mar 15, 2013]
I only wish they would get rid of all the ads in French and Spanish on my site. Most of my visitors are from the U.S.
8:30 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
Would be better if we received this kind of notifications instead of their unhelpful suggestions. Only after reading this post I discovered that the arrows are gone from my site.
9:22 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
I didn't like the button arrows when they first started appearing, but I like them now because they've increased our CTR. As others have said, 5,000 out of something like 2 million Adsense publishers is a drop in the bucket.
10:55 pm on Mar 15, 2013 (gmt 0)
My solution to this is just to ride it out. Google can easily see my page design before and after Nessie and see that the page design hasn't changed one bit and that my ad implementation didn't change until after figuring this out.
I expect it will take a few months for everything to settle down. I've probably lost advertisers over this and only time will bring them back, if ever.
At least now I understand it and can move forward.
CTR now is well below that of before Nessie. While this change is for 5,000 sites, the message is for all 2,000,000 and if you have an increased CTR, I'd be double checking my layouts for any positioning where people would think there might be more content on that arrow button. Just my opinion.
Also wonder why they named them after the Loch Ness Monster.
"Update? What update? You're imagining things. There was no update."
12:59 am on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
The arrow definitely increased the earnings on my high traffic site, by a huge margin. December/January were my biggest months ever.
Now that it's gone, the text ad CTR & CPC is laughable in comparison.
I have a high traffic site that lost arrows. Very high earnings while they were on. I don't know why Adsense didn't turn arrows off system-wide but instead singled out specific sites. This must be one hell of a manual job - 1. Find 2. Block.
2:33 am on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
Still have the arrows. But CTR & CPC went down in the last couple of days.
12:27 pm on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0) 4:23 pm on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
i would not believe anything that google says - 5000 is just a number they are happy to announce they messed up with.
7:14 pm on Mar 16, 2013 (gmt 0)
Have You Been Affected By The Nessie Update? Yes!
You better watch out
And it's best not to cry
No reason to pout
Wish I could tell you why
Google has me shaking my head
I've checked all my ads,
And I'm checking them twice;
Getting rid of those that are naughty not nice.
Google has me shaking my head
They see you when you're clicking
They know where you have shopped
Google knows when you are bad or good
But either way the revenue stopped
No changes to the layout, the site left alone
My clicks have disappeared enough to make me moan
Google has me shaking
Google has me shaking
Google has me shaking my head
Sorry, I do feel better now though.
Same here as supergml. I still have the arrows but CTR and CPC went down.
levo
msg:4557303
2:52 am on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)Got arrows back today & earnings dropped 50%.
View the original article here
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