Google no longer paying for Firefox Conversions?

There have been a couple of posts here in the last few days from publishers seeing an 80%-90% drop in Firefox W/Toolbar conversions, myself included. It has also been posted over in the Adsense Google-Groups. In each case traffic has been the same, clicks are the same, yet overnight conversions dropped up to 90% .. In my case my clicks and conversions have been extremely steady for over a year, so a sudden drop from 40 or 50 conversions per day down to 4 really indicates an issue.

I sent an email to Adsense Support, and the reply was that it must be due to invalid clicks/conversions. This tells me that either:

1) the automated response i got was totally FOS and wrong, or
2) Adsense has changed how they count or review Firefox conversions, and basically doesn't want to pay for them anymore.
​

I've sent another email to Asense support, and asked for it to be looked into further, and if you are seeing a drop in conversions, I suggest you do the same. I'll be posting updates in my blog if i get any response to my second email to Google, but I fear that Google isn't interested in paying for Firefox Toolbar conversions anymore.

 

soory realy i dont know i hope tath u find an answer

 

I can't imagine why they would do this. Are you talking about adsense click from people using Firefox that originated from Google search in the toolbar, or all Firefox users? Do 90% of your conversions come from Firefox users?

 

i am referring to the Google Adsense Firefox with Google Toolbar product, which pays $1 per conversion. About 2 years ago i was getting as many as 150 per day - and for last year or so, i've been getting about 40-50 conversions per day, every day. Suddenly a few days ago it dropped from 40 or so per day down to 3 or 4 per day.

 

I currently get 70-100 per day. As far as I can tell it is still going on.

 

thanks for posting your observation Tearabite. i dont use it anymore so didn;t have a clue. google keeps paying lower and lower for everything now. if their stock wasn;t going up, i would think they are going down to ditch

 

Yeah right, there is some problem I think.

I used to have Firefox referral ad on all pages of one of my sites, but I have removed it from each page, as I had the same problem as yours

 

I get rather statistically significantly large numbers of conversions too.

Today?

I've had four. FOUR. Four conversions. I've had more Pack conversions than Firefox conversions.

Something's up.

And it's NOT the quality of my traffic. *points at link in sig line*

I've seen it suggested that the conversions we're seeing are people who downloaded Firefox in the past and just now installed it and/or accessed the internet-- that Google isn't tracking ANY new Firefox conversions. This jives with the fact that my number conversions are tapering off over the last few days.

What I'd like to know is if it's possible to DOWNLOAD Firefox successfully from Google. Are they having download problems or tracking problems?

If they're having download problems, it's one thing. If they're not reporting conversions, that's entirely another.

If they've decided to stop paying for Firefox referrals, they need to kill the buttons and tell us. Though I doubt this has happened, at least they've been reasonably good about communicating program changes.

-- Leva

 

I normally get 5 to 10 conversions for more than 50 clicks, but it suddenly went down to 4 ~ 5 conversions for the same number of clicks.

 

There is more discussion about this in the Adsense Google Groups, as well as other forums.. Something is either broke, or has been changed.
If i get any response to my 2nd email to Adsense, i will post it in My Blog post about the problem.

I wonder if they would care if the publisher of the only Firefox Success story they ever published, dumped Firefox referrals? I'm going to give them a few days.. but i'm close to sending all that traffic to Mozilla..

 

Google continues to pay firefox conversions. I got payments from Google.

 

The response you received certainly has one major clue in it, and that is that they are able to SEE the conversions, even if they consider them "invalid."

So it's not a download problem. And it's not a tracking problem. It's something to do with the algorithm -- how they determine what a "valid" conversion is.

My click-to-conversion ratio of people surfing with Explorer, who clicked on the Firefox button, is less than 2% today. It was VERY much higher until a few days ago. You can draw your own conclusions about the likelihood of someone surfing with Explorer who goes to my site and downloads Firefox being an "invalid" conversion.

Oh, and my Chinese traffic is around 1% -- forget what it is exactly, but I looked recently, and it's a tiny percentage. So it's not that.

Something's really wrong here.

OTOH, it may be something fixable. If they can see the conversions, they can fix it. So maybe they'll realize they're fubar'd and give us a nice fat conversion dump sometime soon.

However, if this turns out to be a deliberate change and they're trying to claim that I'm sending them that many invalid conversions ... hnnh. I might do better with a Netflix banner in that spot.

-- Leva

 

ok i think i have the same problem too, just looked at my conversion stats for the last 7 days, usually i get 15~20 firefox+google pack, last 7 days always have less than 10 conversions ... i dont really care since my cpc dropped to crap amount and i can't stand to look at the stats anymore.

Oh, what's funny is there is 1 cent at the end of the total for 1 or 2 days. I mean isn't the lowest they pay is $0.10 cents for those firefox/g pack conversions? how did that 1 cent end up in the amount, i dont use other affiliate ads from them.

btw how can u guys expect that much conversion daily and they never drop? do you have to make a page that only works with firefox and if the visitor is not using firefox you tell them to downlaod firefox? that's not against the ToS so i guess that's the trick.

 

In my case, pure dumb luck. *points at site linked in sig line* I registered my domain in 1997; Mozilla didn't come along for a few years after it. (Seriously. When I registered that domain, making it Lynx-compatible was one of the concerns and Netscape was the browser of choice.)

I think most of the rest of the people here have tech-related or geek-related sites.

-- Leva

 

Have a look at the Adsense help page on referrals.

The example given on that page was "invented" by me, and that's my site in the example

That method, along with one or two more methods work very well (except this week!).. But no matter what method you use, if your traffic isnt interested, it wont matter..

 

I was the one who started the discussion on Google Groups. Here's my proof that something is going very wrong with this:

My best month ever was July of 2007. I had over 4300 conversions...even with those kind of stats, I averaged 45.56% conversions to clicks.



Another example was last month. I never had a month as good as August, but in February 2008, I had a 45.42% conversion to click ratio. It has barely changed in the months between.



It stayed that way though the beginning of March. Unfortunately, my clicks fell off because one of my major traffic sources was removed. However the conversion to click ratio in fact was HIGHER for some reason. It was like this until March 16th. Through those days I did a lot to increase my traffic back to what it was in the months before. Then, all of a sudden, since the 17th everything seemed wrong.

I've had a 22.22% Conversion to click ratio since the 17th!!



So I even digged down deeper into my analytics, and my site is getting 52.12% users who use Windows and Internet Explorer, so I KNOW that more conversions should be counting!

 

Sorry, couldn't post more than 4 images in my post above..

Some more data shows that 88% of my traffic in this sample is from the United States



If this isn't proof enough that something is wrong with the Firefox referral program or with Google, I don't know what is.

 

Squintz, I could post very similar screenshots showing the same thing -- only the exact numbers would differ.

I've had a couple hundred clicks this morning and single digit conversions. Something's seriously fubar'd.

-- Leva

 

Leva,

Wow, thats crazy. I've had 19 clicks and 1 conversion which was only 50 cents.

 

My click to conversion ratio is historically lower than yours, probably because of the nature of my traffic. However, it's over an 80-90% drop in recorded conversions.

I will say that Google's lack of communication is encouraging, except for the note to Tearabite. (Which might be clueless CSR feeding a canned response. They haven't responded to me at all.)

If this was genuinely a planned algorithm change, their past behavior would lead me to believe they'd give some advance warning. OTOH, if it's a bug, they usually don't say anything about it publicly, they just fix it. Sometimes, if it's a major issue, they mention something later. This might get a mention later if they have to do a credit.

But usually it just gets fixed.

-- Leva