Try the new AdSense Earnings Checklist to optimize your earnings

If your AdSense earnings have dropped, the new AdSense Earnings Checklist can help you review your reports to understand why your earnings decreased, and offers best practices to optimize your earnings. 

Note that the troubleshooter is for AdSense publishers monetizing a website or blog. If your YouTube earnings have dropped, check out the YouTube Creator Academy courses on using YouTube Analytics to understand your earnings. Use the Revenue tab in YouTube Analytics to understand where your revenue comes from and review your channel's ad revenue metrics.

An earnings drop can be caused by a decrease in the amount you earn per ad click (CPC), a decrease in the number of clicks on your site's ads (CTR), a decrease in the number of ad impressions, or a combination of those factors. 

Understanding all the factors that affect your earnings and updating your site will take some time. I recommend setting aside the time to go through all the troubleshooting steps thoroughly. 

How to use the earnings troubleshooter

1. Sign in to your AdSense account. I recommend you use a desktop computer so that you can easily see your AdSense account and the troubleshooting tips at the same time. 

2. Open the Troubleshoot a drop in earnings page in the AdSense Help Center. 

3. Follow all the steps in the checklist: 

1.  Use AdSense Reports to identify whether the issue is a drop in cost-per-click (CPC), click through rate (CTR) and/or impressions.
2. Troubleshoot an earnings drop because the cost-per-click (CPC) has decreased. The CPC is the amount you earn when someone clicks an ad.
3. Troubleshoot an earnings drop because the click through rate (CTR) has decreased. The Page CTR is the number of clicks per page view. Common issues are a non-optimized site design or poor ad targeting.
4. Troubleshoot an earnings drop because ad impressions have decreased. Impressions are the number of ad units or search queries that loaded ads. In addition to the AdSense reports, data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console can help you understand changes in traffic to your site.
5. Optimize your website and ads. This may involve trying new ad types, modifying blocking controls, improving your site traffic or changing where ads are inserted on your site. 

Note that the changes you make may not increase your earnings immediately (or at all). Keep an eye on your AdSense Reports to see how your account does over time. 

Also be aware that if your site doesn't have many views or ad clicks, your earnings are more likely to fluctuate. 

More tools for understanding your AdSense for Content earnings

• If your ads are not displaying on your site, use the Can't See My Ads Troubleshooter. 
• Learn why your earnings may fluctuate during the day. This is often due to the lag between when a click is counted and when invalid activity is detected and removed. There are steps you can (and should) take to prevent invalid traffic.
• If you are having trouble seeing your AdSense data in Google Analytics, use the Analytics Troubleshooter. Bear in mind that it is expected that stats may differ between AdSense and Analytics.