U.S. Traffic RPMs Sustain Drop After Temp. India Traffic Surge
We have a bunch of sites on AdSense, but most revenue comes from one site, which receives 90%+ traffic from the U.S., ranging from 3-10K daily views. One of our articles ranked in India -- it was not India-specific, and we got a surge in traffic from India, like 20K in one day. Not what we targeted or desired. We're a U.S. site and we write for an American audience, but this article was on a topic of global interest.
Naturally, the RPMs for the India visits were low, but this 1-2 day surge from India has now triggered a decline even in U.S. RPMs for us going into the third day. There was a lag effect: U.S. RPMs were initially unaffected, but now our U.S. RPMs across all our sites are down around 75%.
Is what we are seeing the result of Google's Smart Pricing? How long do you think it'll take for our RPMs to recover? It makes no sense for this to impact other sites on our AdSense account.
The irony (and injustice) is that we write for a U.S. audience, but Google gave this article top SERP placement in India and is now punishing us for that on AdSense.