Money drops dramatically after a 'friend' tampers with adsense

A friend of mine has an adsense account on one of her sites, and it was doing quite well so she wanted to put another campaign up on a second site of hers.

She didn't know how to do this, so asked a 'friend' to do it for her. She gave him all her password and control panel log-in details and he got the adsense banners running for her on both sites.

The trouble is, ever since he played about with it, the revenue has dropped dramatically even through the vistor numbers have gone up a bit. She is concerned that this guy is syphoning off her money but doesn't know how to track it, and without any evidence she is reluctant to confront him about it.

I don't know much about adsense so if anyone can shed any light on what might be happening then I would appreciate it.

JB

 

Check if he has used her published ID in the adsense code or tricked her by using his own in a few adsense blocks. Doing this will generate the earned revenue to him.

 

Most likely, nothing is going on. Just check all the adsense codes and make sure the proper ID is in them.

 

View source for the site in question and verify that the AdSense ID matches her ID. It's part of the AdSense code, looks like:

google_ad_client = "pub-SOMELONGNUMBERHERE";

Check all ads across both sites for consistency.

Unless they were inserting their ID in her ads there isn't any way to steal her revenue, and if they were they are taking a major (and stupid) risk; not only legally but at losing their AdSense account.

View AdSense stats and see what is decreasing. If page impressions are steady or rising, check eCPM and CTR. Significantly lower CTR could result from lousy or changed ad placement. Decreased eCPM just means the value of the clicks has gone down.

 

Well you may have to go into each page individually and click 'view' and then 'source' to look at the source code and check the adsense affiliate numbers. Hopefully there are not too mnay pages. Also make sure you have the channels feature set up as that can help a bit too. The other possibility is that the second site lowered the amount of money the first site is getting, even though overall traffic has gone up.

 

Thanks everyone, I will find out what her ID number is and then run a few checks on the pages.

JB

 

It would not make sense for him to put her code on his sites since the money earned would go to her.

Try his code is in her ads.

 

Make sure to have her change the password for her account. The worst thing one can do is give someone else the password to an account that has anything to do with money.

In regards to the AdSense drop, it could just be the result of smart pricing. The new site might not be performing well and it could be causing her entire account to get smart priced thereby reducing the eCPM of ads being displayed on the original site.