Field notes
What our own sites taught us
We run a network of content sites, and everything this site recommends gets tested there first. These are the field notes: what actually happened, with our own numbers, including the parts where we were wrong for weeks. Sites are described by niche and not named, the same convention as the receipts.
Diagnosis
The discovery window
Four days after we published the position-40 note, the site it describes lost its search visibility in 72 hours. Not a penalty, not a technical fault: Google ended a new domain's indexing trial. The forensics, and the rule we bought with them.
Diagnosis
The recovery that was not one
A legal-rights site looked like a March core update casualty that recovered in June. The Search Console forensics said something else entirely, and the difference changes what you should do next.
Diagnosis
The RPM dip that was not seasonal
Traffic held, revenue fell by roughly three quarters. The cause was not placement or the season. It was how Google had classified the site, and the recovery after the fix was a curve, not a switch.
Approval
What actually blocks AdSense approval
We put a batch of brand-new sites through review at once. The blockers we found on our own pages were not the ones the forums warn about.
Strategy
The site where display ads could never work
A news site with real traffic and thin ad value. The problem was not execution, it was the model, and the tell is worth knowing before you spend a year optimizing.
Strategy
The position-40 ceiling
Top-decile technical hygiene, original data, thousands of pages, and an average position stuck around 40. What that combination means, and what it does not.
Placement
Google started an experiment on one of our sites (we are letting it run)
Day one of an open loop. An Anchor ads experiment appeared in AdSense, created by Google and already running. Why this one gets to run, where the controls live, and the outcome, which is still pending.
Why we publish these
Most monetization advice is written by people who do not run sites. Ours is written from the network we operate, and the honest failures are more useful than the wins. If your site is in one of these situations right now, the triage quiz will place you, and When it breaks maps the way through.