Triage
When it breaks
A revenue collapse has exactly three shapes. The money fell but the traffic held. The traffic fell. Or a policy or network decision cut you off. Each has a different first move, and the most expensive mistake in a recovery is running the fix for the wrong failure. Name it first, then work it.
The three failure families
Every collapse is one of these
RPM fell, traffic held
Sessions and clicks look normal; earnings per thousand views do not. The market, the auction, or your own setup changed. Your audience did not.
The traffic fell
Sessions and GSC clicks dropped, usually from a date you can point at. RPM is roughly steady; there is simply less of everything. A search problem wearing a revenue costume.
Someone turned it off
A notice in your AdSense Policy center, a disabled account or site, or a letter from your network. The reports did not drift; a decision was made. The first move is reading that notice precisely.
The tells
What each one looks like in your reports
You do not need new tooling to tell these apart. Three reports you already have, read side by side over the same window, separate the families cleanly.
| Where to look | Demand-side | Supply-side | Policy or network |
|---|---|---|---|
| GA4 sessions | Flat | Down, usually from a date you can name | Flat |
| GSC impressions and clicks | Flat | Down. Read impressions and clicks separately: clicks falling while impressions hold is its own tell | Flat |
| AdSense page RPM | Down. The whole story lives here | Roughly steady per page | Down or zero, and earnings stop tracking traffic |
| Policy center and inbox | Quiet | Quiet | The tell itself: a limit, a disablement, or a letter from your network |
| Start with | RPM collapse | Update diagnosis, then AI Overviews | Serving limit, disabled, or eviction |
Compare like for like: last 30 days against the prior 30, same pages, same countries. A hunch is not a diagnosis. If the columns still will not separate, the six-question triage walks it.
The spokes
Read the one that matches
Each spoke is a working guide for one failure: what to check, in what order, and what recovery realistically looks like. Read one deeply rather than all eight anxiously.
Demand-side
RPM collapsed, traffic held
Sessions look normal, earnings do not. How to read the demand side of AdSense and GA4, separate market movement from setup damage, and decide what to change.
Supply-side
Was it a Google update?
Traffic fell from a date you can point at. How to check that date against the known update windows and read the pattern before you change anything.
Supply-side
AI Overviews took the clicks
Impressions holding, clicks falling. How to tell whether AI answers are absorbing your clicks, query by query, and which pages still earn the visit.
Policy
AdSense put a serving limit on you
Ads stopped showing on some or all pages and there is a limit notice in your Policy center. What to read first, and the order to work in.
Policy
AdSense disabled the account or site
The hardest notice. What exactly was disabled, what your options are, and what to do while it plays out.
Policy
The Policy center flagged a violation
A violation name you have never seen before, on a page you thought was fine. Every name Google uses, in plain English, with where to start on each.
Policy
Invalid traffic
Earnings deducted, ads limited, or worse, over clicks and impressions Google does not count. What it covers and what you can actually change.
Network
Your network dropped you
The relationship ended, or your traffic fell under the minimum. How to land softly and what the road back looks like.
The decision
Pivot or persist
The honest framework for deciding whether this site gets another year of your effort.
The decision
Sell the site
Sometimes the calm move is the exit. What buyers actually pay for, and what to fix before you list.
When to get help
What we can and cannot do
Most of this is work you can do yourself with the spokes above and a quiet hour in your own reports. The audit is for when you want the placement layer checked properly: send your URL and, if you have it, your ad network's viewability reporting, and you get back a placement scorecard and a fix list in priority order. It is the same method we run on our own sites when a number moves.
Two honest caveats. If the failure is supply-side, an ad audit will not bring the traffic back, and we will say so and point you at the right spoke instead. And if an account is disabled, no audit reopens it. Where the audit earns its fee is demand-side drops and post-eviction rebuilds, where placement and network choices are the levers that move.
Get the audit