Ive seen this term everyday... Whenever someone's adsense earnings has dropped, he posts his/her rants in DP forums... and always include the f.f. terms... "Is Google Adsense is ending???" or "Does Google Adsense lower their rates recently???" or "Have anyone feel the drop rate of your earnings???" To explain, here's a brief summary of what the users have replied... - "You've been hit by smart pricing" - "You've changed your content" - "Depends on the season" - "You've changed your ad placement" - "You're generating lesser traffic day per day" - "Advertising Trends for keywords is like a zigzag. It may go up today, it may go down tomorrow. " ^_^ Hope this helps
My adsense earnings vary depending on the day of the week too.... and the season... and the movement of my sites on Google's search engines... There are just too many factors to really list. I laugh when people panic when their earnings drop... either they did something dumb to their site, traffic patterns changed, or they're just not being patinet enough to see their earnings rise again. Nobody's earnings go up every single day/week/month. It goes up... and down... and up... and down... and, over time hopefully it will rise as your site builds more quality content and more regular visitors.
Heh, I've had a lot of ups and downs since I joined the program, and it's natural to worry when things swing down. I do wish people would post more threads to the tune of "Today was my best Adsense day ever!" instead of all the negative stuff. Once you've been getting checks from Google for a while, you realize there are patterns. Some days of the week are better and even some times of year are better. Things go in and out of season, people go in and out of vacation times, in and out of shopping mode, etc. Once you know the normal patterns for your sites, you worry a little less at the downswings, since you know they'll pop back up again later.
Don't look at intra-day, or even inter-day, stats, use running-averages, they are a lot more telling.