Troubleshoot a drop in earnings
Identify the issue that caused the earnings drop
The first step in identifying what's caused a drop in earnings is to know the key metrics that influence your earnings. There are multiple factors that affect revenue, but, in general, the important metrics are: cost per click (CPC), CTR and impressions. You can view these metrics on the Reports page in your AdSense account.
Is your Google AdSense revenue declining?
- Review how your account has performed historically. Create a new report and extend the date range to at least the last three months to help identify trends or specific issues.
- Check what changes you've made to your account and when you made them. This will help you to understand the root cause of the revenue drop.
- When you've confirmed the date of the decline, start breaking down the problem. For example, check which platform your revenue dropped on. If you can see that the drop occurred only on mobile devices, this might indicate poor ad implementation, changes to your mobile site, or low page speed, etc.
- Add the CTR, CPC and impressions metrics to your report and try to understand which metric actually caused the drop. Revenue is calculated by multiplying CPC, CTR and impressions. A change in any of these metrics triggers a change in your total revenue. Look to see which metric has a similar trend to your revenue.
Note: We recommend that you complete all the steps in this guide to understand what's caused the drop in earnings. Please don't contact support unless your metrics have dropped significantly, or you've seen a downward trend for more than a week.
Next step: Earnings drop because of CPC.