Adsense Firefox Referral Conversions Being Withheld?

Hey everyone, I was wondering if someone could shed some light on this situation.

I have had a Firefox referral link on my site for over 1 year now. Generally, I was making 40-50% conversion to clicks daily since I started making money from this link, and the income was good.

Unfortunately, recently my account was disabled for invalid clicks, but was quickly reinstated because I was not clicking on my own ads nor was I telling anyone to. Since my account was reinstated, my Firefox referral conversions have fallen to about 15-20% of my clicks daily. My regular Adsense ads are still performing on-par.

Is Google withholding my conversions now? This is extremely frustrating because I was making good money from those conversions, now I can see TONS of clicks without one conversion. As a matter of fact, I've had 36 clicks today, and 1 conversion!

I have kept always kept a close eye on the account, so I know what is normal and what isn't. Also, I know that Firefox referral conversions only go through if the person has Windows and has never installed Firefox. But 36 clicks with 1 conversion today is unbelievable. Before my account was disabled, I was getting 80-100 clicks a day with anywhere from 35-50 conversions.

Can anyone fill me in on what could be going on?

Thanks in advance.

Anyone? I know I'm not alone in being screwed by Google Adsense.

Yesterday I had 100 clicks, and only 17 conversions!

Do not think that your CTR will always be constant, there are reasons for this such as :

a. maybe someone is playing around with your ads and IMO Google lower down your conversions.
b. most of the users in your niche or partner sites may now be using firefox as a result of previous conversions.
c. 17% conversion rate is great, and i can hardly believe it, maybe someone is playing your ads, it maybe be your brother in other locations. joke only.but careful, google has the power to shutdown your account if you will tolerate this type of behaviour. Better ask other persons having this type of referral ads of what are their conversion rates.

Communicate with Google. Anyone here who answers is wild guessing.

I understand that it will never be consistent, but the research I have done is very fishy. These are referral conversions, not regular ads, so you can't really "play around" with them to make them seem false. To have a Firefox conversion, the user must have Windows and Internet Explorer, and never have installed Firefox. The the conversion only counts once the user installs and runs Firefox. These are strict regulations, but for the last year and 4 months, haven't brought me down this low.

I have maintained a 40-50% conversion to click ratio for 1 year and 4 months. Once in a blue moon, it would drop below 40% to about 35% but never lower in that time frame.

Using February as an example, I had a 45.4% conversion to click ratio which was pretty much the average. These were pretty much normal stats over the passed year:

www (dot) 1fastws6 (dot) com/pics/random/adsense2 (dot) jpg

It stayed that way though the beginning of march when I was disabled for a few days for invalid clicks (seems like somethnig common for someone making any money on Adsense). Once my account was re-enabled, I had poor clicks but the average was still the same. I did some work to bring up traffic, and then all of a sudden, since the 17th everything seemed wrong.

I have now been averaging 21.4% Conversion to click ratio since the 17th!!

www (dot) 1fastws6 (dot) com/pics/random/adsense1 (dot) jpg

I even digged down deeper, and my site is getting 48.69% users who use Windows and Internet Explorer, so I KNOW that more conversions should be counting!

www (dot) 1fastws6 (dot) com/pics/random/analytics (dot) jpg


Don't get me wrong, I know that 21.4% is not bad, however, I have consistently been getting 40%-50% for 1 year and 4 months. The fact that it would randomly drop down for a few days RIGHT AFTER I get disabled and re-enabled is very fishy.

I've emailed Google a total of 5 times since March 6th regarding other issues, and they have not gotten back to me.

I am seeing exactly the same problem. I have 2 years of historical data which shows a pretty clear conversion rate of clicks to downloads. That has slumped in the last week in exactly the way described in this thread.

By the way, my account has never been disabled and re-enabled like the original poster, so I don't think that is related. But something seems to have happened and I'm taking a mighty hit at the moment because of it. I am awaiting a response from Google too.

Interesting. So now that makes 4 people that are having the same problem. 2 others came forward in my thread in the Google groups thread I made. Search for " Firefox Referral Conversions being withheld" in Google Groups for Adsense Help.

Some of the guys on there thinks Google is having errors tracking the FF conversions.

Yeah, I think there has to be a problem tracking conversions. I hope they acknowledge this and resolve it ASAP.

I think Google Pack conversions look fairly similar to what I would expect, so I think I will give that even greater prominence as the main download option ("Firefox + these useful apps") until this gets sorted.

Sometimes when something, a bad new for example, is spreaded arround, people start to believe it affects them also. If they havent heard it, they would never think of it. Also, do you know the anecdote about this man, who have read an encyclopedia with all diseases. Later, according to him, the only thing he didn't had is PMS Syndrome and Pregnant related worries. Could it be a general drop in traffic? Or some of your backlinks dropping, some very important backlink that is bringing traffic maybe.

I can't speak for everyone, but if you read my posts carefully you will see that this has nothing to do with traffic OR clicks. Its the amout of CLICKS that are being converted. Something that traffic or back links have no effect on. The only thing that can effect this is the Google Adsense program. I am, in fact, getting MORE traffic and MORE clicks than before...and less of those clicks are turning into conversions. According to my analytics trends that I posted, over 50% of my traffic is using Windows and IE which is a prerequisite for conversions.

Hi Squintz82 - I'm seeing conversions today which are finally back approaching what I would expect. How's things looking for you?

Unfortunately, I am not yet. However, it has been discovered that this is a glitch in the system according to the digitalpoint forums.

Ah ok, I don't want to jump the gun but definitely seeing conversions so far today back in the 40%-50% area after that very prolonged slump.

Have you got a link to the Digitalpoint thread so I can follow it over there too?