I have a number of sites including this one. The oldest is around 4-5 years old and in all that time I have been using my trusty Google Adsense account to see if I could generate some income to offset hosting fees. Frankly, I am disappointed and at a loss to understand what Google is up to? Maybe someone out there can let us know?

After 4-5 years of using Google Adsense, I have a balance of $52 or thereabouts - and since Google only pay when you get to $100 - I haven't seen a cent yet from them. But this is what really concerns me. As I look month-by-month at how my Google ads performed I notice that Google is paying less and less and less and less each month. Clicks stay fairly constant (though more on that topic in a minute) but the payment per click is declining month in and month out. Now I also happen to use Google advertising from time-to-time too and I can tell you that advertising with Google is getting more and more expensive. So what gives? In an effort to hold up profits and maintain that high share price is Google squeezing the middleman? I think it is.

Here is another strange thing about Google Adsense. I look at the statistics for the sites kept by my web hosting company and by the Drupal software I use to create the sites and I can see how many visits they receive. Now, I have Google ads on most posts and also on the side columns of each website. However, when I go to my Google Adsense account and look at the number of impressions per channel (equals website) - something is woefully wrong. Lets say that I have a site that gets 200 visits per day and lets assume that each visitor only looks at the home page and then moves on (they don't - I know that from my statistics kept by the hosting company but this keeps things simple). So if I have two Google ads on the side columns shouldn't I get 400 impressions registered at Google? I mean thats a simple piece of math right? Well, Google can't add then because it says I had just 8 impressions. What happened to the other 392 then?

Its also strange that the site I am referring to is actually the best performer in terms of Google ads. Of those 8 impressions, there were 2 click throughs. Funnily enough, this site gets around 1200 impressions according to Google and NOT ONE SINGLE CLICK!

So, is Google cheating me? I want to know because I am beginning to suspect that I am being gamed by Google. My best performing site seems to be under-reported by them compared to at least two other lines of evidence.

Google used to be the only show in town for ads. Thats not true anymore. I am beginning to think its time to drop Google and move elsewhere where I get paid properly and statistics are kept properly. You see its far too easy for Google to simply say that a click through wasn't real - i.e. It was a click through I made as opposed to you and I think they use this excuse to keep advertisers revenues down. I never click through my own ads....

So, I'm thinking that unless someone out there can give me a good explanation as to why Google seems to be one-sided I'm moving on and to someone else - a competitor. First, I just got to reach my $100 so I can get the money I earned for them this last 4 years.