Besting Adwords

SEO Mistakes: Not checking your site

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 00:11:05 GMT

One of Matt Cutts readers posted in his comments that she couldn't understand why her Website had been banned form the Google index. Matt responds with "Your problem was hidden text." and then goes on to find many other problems (keyword stuffing) with domains owned by the same person and provides steps for re-inclusion. Matts a great guy, didn't have to help a known search engine spammer. It's amazing to me how many people don't know they are breaking the Google rules and search engine spamming. If you are running a domain and require search engine optimization, then I suggest you refresh yourself.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/

Site maintenance this Friday

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 21:56:12 GMT

Inside AdSense: At 8PM PST this Friday (12/30), [the AdSense site] will be unavailable for up to 6 hours while we complete some engineering work. Of course, all your AdSense ads will still serve properly and all your stats and earnings will be recorded as usual.

http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/12/site-maintenance-this-friday.html

Randy: The AdWords site will also be down. I'm going to pause by campaigns during this window. I often pause my AdWords campaigns when my own site experiences outages. I don't want my campaigns running when my site is down (money out, no money in). Just in case my own site goes down in that outage interval, I'm turning my campaigns off beforehand. I would suggest others do the same. Of course, I'll leave my AdSense active, because that's all money in.

How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 01:31:00 GMT

Wired: Which is why Cauff was infuriated when he discovered that up to "40 percent, maybe more" of the clicks on his keyword ads apparently came not from potential customers around the nation but from a single Internet address, one that belonged to a rival based in New York City.

Randy: Up to 40 percent, maybe more means between 0 and 100%. I believe, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, that everybody is experiencing between 0 and 100% clickfraud. Everybody who claims to be a victim of clickfraud says pretty much the same stupid thing. Cry me a river. The reporter and his sources are the real fraud.

WMF vulnerability

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 23:49:34 GMT

Matt Cutts: In case anyone has doubts, pages which exploit browser security holes to install software (esp. malware/spyware/adware/scumware/viruses/worms/trojans) are outside our quality guidelines. Pages that use security holes to install software may be removed from Google’s index.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/wmf-vulnerability/

Search Employee Most Likely to Flame You For Spamming?

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 20:25:33 GMT

Search Engine Journal: The nominees for the ‘Matt vs. Jeremy : Which Search Employee Most Likely to Flame You For Spamming?’ Category are as follows:

Matt Cutts Blog (mattcutts.com/blog/sketchy-testimonials/)
Jeremy Zawodny’s Blog (jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/002403.html)

And the winner is …

Matt Cutts and the Matt Cutts Blog. Congratulations Matt, 60.9% of Search Engine Journal readers voted you the Most Likely Search Employee to Flame for Spamming!

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=2707

Online Ad Growth Accelerates

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 19:08:31 GMT

Bloomberg: The market for online ads will increase 32 percent to $16.6 billion next year, fueling growth at companies including Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc.

Randy: ...and KBCafe (sub your Website/blog).

Content Bid Experiment, Part II

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 06:09:43 GMT

Monday, I explained that I was experimenting with AdWords content bids. I'm now producing many hits daily for $0.01. I'm creating a campaign with tons of keywords with bids of $0.05 for the search network and $0.01 for the content network. The bids are so low, that I get few impressions on the search network, but still get thousands of impressions on the content network. As I increase the number of keywords, the number of hits continue to rise, that is, it scales up.

Linking Adwords and Analytics

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 20:40:26 GMT

I've been lazy and wondering why I can't add a second domain to my AdWords account. Well, for security reasons, I always used a unique Google account to log into Adwords. My Analytics account was in my primary Google account. Today, I added the AdWords account as an administrator of my Analytics and then was finally able to link my AdWords account to my Analytics account. This triggers additional AdWords data in your Analytics reports. But there's more. I was then able to add a second domain to my Analytics account.

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=26789&topic=8116

Malicious software targets Google AdSense ads

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 19:51:23 GMT

JenSense: A new trojan horse discovered by an Indian publisher replaces Google AdSense ads with their own ads, advertising sites including dating, sex, viagra and weight loss.

http://www.jensense.com/archives/2005/12/malicious_softw.html

AdGenta w/ AdSense

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 23:55:19 GMT

Just before the holiday, I fired off an email to AdSense support asking if AdGenta and AdSense ads were allowed on the same Webpage. I didn't really expect an answer until the new year, but somebody at Google is working boxing day and provided me an answer.

AdGenta ads may be displayed on the same page as Google ads on your site.

Content Bid Experiment

Mon, 26 Dec 2005 20:40:01 GMT

I have one AdWords campaign that I run, mostly for fun (experiment) where I bid $0.05 and get mostly (85%) of my click-thrus from Google's content network. That's because AdWords only disables keywords for their search network and not their content network and I get more than 99% of my impressions on the content network, of which the CTR is extra low. What this means is that I get can a lot of low CPM impressions on their content network. This seems an easy opportunity for AdSense arbitrage. Let's see how low I can reduce my content big (while leaving my search network bid at 5 cents). Today, I reduced the content network bid to 1 cent.

Domain Pay-Per-Click Services Growing Rapidly

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 19:37:31 GMT

Rich Miller: [Domain parking] services place pay-per-click ads on parked domains, optimize the sites to attract traffic, and split the resulting ad revenue with the domain owner. [cut] Domain parking services use advanced analytics for ad matching and traffic building, and are efficient in their use of web hosting, packing thousands of domains on their servers.

AdSense Webinar

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 03:52:47 GMT

The recent AdSense Webinar is now available via WebEx playback.

click here to play

Notes: If you have trouble installing WebEx just restart the install, I find it fails more often than it succeeds. Also, if you experience connection errors, then just restart again, eventually you'll get thru. WebEx hell! I had to restart three times before the Webinar loaded.

Google Sucks (except at everything)

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 17:16:06 GMT

Last year tomorrow, I wrote an article about how Google sucked at everything except search. And I stand behind what I said. It was true. Google Groups, Gmail, Orkut and Blogger were their high profiles applications beyond search and they were getting a lot of bad publicity. Groups was still hanging onto a legacy interface, Orkut and Blogger were slow and buggy. Things sure didn't look good for Google applications other than search.

Fast forward 12 months. Wow! What a difference. Gmail rocks! Groups is much better. Orkut actually works. Blogger is no longer slow (maybe it's a little sploggy). Now we have Google Reader, which is an awesome RSS reading interface (~~a little~~ very buggy). Adwords, AdSense, Sitemaps and Analytics are an SEOs dream come true. So what changed?

Someone left the following comment in my blog, "google makes too much money to care what you think." That made me think of something that happened this week. I wrote the following in Matt Cutts' (Google employee extraordinaire) blog.

Hey Matt, I moved one of my applications two months ago from kbcafe.com to r-mail.org. I was willing to put up with not being indexed, cause I’m in a long term game here. Anyhow, you mentioned about 301 and thought I’d bring it up. Seems to be some mystery around getting new domains indexed [http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ar%2Dmail%2Eorg].

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/the-little-301-that-could/#comment-7067

Matt responded.

Randy Charles Morin, looks like you grabbed r-mail.org in Nov. 2005. Looks like there might have been some seaminess with r-mail.org before you owned it though. Now that the domain is clean, I’ll put in a reinclusion request.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/the-little-301-that-could/#comment-7082

I've also complained on other occasions about Google applications and Matt and other Google employees are jumping at these opportunities and helping out who? Remember that commenter who wrote "google makes too much money to care what you think." It's the other way around. Google makes too much money because they care what we think. It's amazing what and ear and year will do.

Decking the halls

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 04:42:19 GMT

Last week, Google told us how to enable themed AdSense ads. Today, they started running the christmas themed ads. You might be looking at them right now on the Besting Adwords blog.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/decking-halls.html

Track Chitika Clicks with Analytics

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 00:57:26 GMT

Using Shawn's javascript as a base point for tracking Google AdSense and YPN clicks with Google Analytics, I was able to add support for Chitika eMiniMalls. Sample code follows. I've implemented it on the kbcafe search engine (View Source).

<script type="text/javascript">
// by Shawn - 
// http://www.digitalpoint.com/~shawn/2005/11/track-adsense-clicks-with-google-analytics.html
// Put this at the bottom of the page (after the last AdSense block)
// Update: Randy added Chitika
	
function adsense_click() 
{
    if(window.status.indexOf('go to') == 0) 
    {
        urchinTracker ('/AdSenseClick');
    }
}
	
function chitika_click() 
{
    if(window.status.indexOf('More Info') == 0) 
    {
        urchinTracker ('/ChitikaClick');
    }
}
	
var elements;
if(document.getElementsByTagName) 
{
    elements = document.body.getElementsByTagName("IFRAME");
} 
else if (document.body.all) 
{
    elements = document.body.all.tags("IFRAME");
} 
else 
{
    elements = Array();
}
	
for(var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) 
{
    if(elements[i].src.indexOf('googlesyndication.com') > -1) 
    {
        elements[i].onfocus = adsense_click;
    }
    else if (elements[i].src.indexOf('mm.chitika.net') > -1) 
    {
        elements[i].onfocus = chitika_click;
    }
}
</script>

8 ads per Webpage

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:54:48 GMT

Inside AdSense: On each page of your site AdSense is now able to support up to:

3 ad units
2 AdSense for search boxes
1 link unit
1 referral button per product (i.e., 1 AdSense referral button and 1 Firefox plus Google Toolbar referral button).

http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/11/from-mail-bag.html

Dropping Chitika

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 16:34:22 GMT

I started dropping some of my Chitika eMiniMalls ads from some of my blogs. I figure, if I'm gonna make less than $10 per day on this stuff, it's not worth bothering my readers with. I'm leaving them on Besting Adwords, because part of the goal of this blog is to figure out how to make money from this stuff. I think I'm gonna try FastClick and AdGenta next.

AdSense Author Banned

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 05:49:36 GMT

Eric Giguere, author of Make Easy Money with Google, had his AdSense account disabled for violating the Google Adsense policies. The same was also reported on WebmasterWorld, where a publisher was re-using Google trademarks in his domain name. I wouldn't call this a smart move on Google's part, but neither was this smart on the publisher's part, who were obviously not complying with Google Adsense policies and Eric admits he knew it.

WorldVillage promises bloggers serious cash

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 14:59:41 GMT

PR: WorldVillage promises an opportunity for serious bloggers to make some serious cash. [cut] The best part is that members of the WorldVillage Blog Network can make money by using Google AdSense to show advertisements on their blog pages. The ads don’t interfere with the content of the blog, and bloggers stand to make 50% of the ad revenues generated by their site.

http://blog.worldvillage.com

Randy: They are giving you 50% of their revenues, which is likely 50% of Google's revenues. Totaling 25% of actual ad revenue generated. You can sign up for Blogspot.com, add AdSense and get 50% instead of 25% without the middle man. You can do the same at BlogSpirit (50%).

Blogvertising Survey

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 05:05:28 GMT

I'm getting closer by the day to 100% of my blogging income coming from one advertising source; AdSense. I'm just wondering, what are my readers using and how much of your income is also from AdSense.

eMiniMalls eCPMs Grounded

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 16:01:27 GMT

Over the last couple days, my Chitika eMiniMalls unaudited CTR is 10 times smaller than my audited numbers from two months ago. My eCPM is 50 times smaller. It was nice while it lasted, but it's over.

Standalone RSS Ads Perform

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 15:31:58 GMT

Pheedo: A standalone RSS ad (the entire post is the advertisement) generates, on average, a 7.99% click-through rate - over nine times more clicks than an inline RSS ad (an advertisement within a publisher's post).

http://www.pheedo.info/archives/000283.html

Chitika is a Rip Off

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 21:36:15 GMT

coolz0r on Gtalk:

dude
chitika is a rip off
total rip off
nobody in my country can order anything
I've had people actually willing to buy things
routers, ipods
and they all arrived on sites which delivered us only
wtf
no shipping overseas
AAARGH
wtf
example :
users wants to buy router
arrives on newegg.com
no delivery outside us
still, they told me in a previous mail, belgium was supported
what's up with this

Randy: Can you say PR nightmare?

CPC Rising

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 20:22:05 GMT

DoubleClick: Both the average monthly cost per keyword as well as the average cost per click showed steady increases throughout the third quarter.

PDF

Randy: Yeehaa!

Themed Adsense Ad Unit

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 20:48:29 GMT

If you remember, during Halloween and Thanksgiving, Google had holiday themed ads. Now everybody can enable holiday themed ads. In the My Account tab, click Edit Ad Type Preference and check Enable themed ad units when available.

http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=30056

Email your Adsense Report

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 20:29:54 GMT

You can now have your AdSense reports emailed to you periodically; daily, weekly, monthly.

https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=27210

Note: I don't actually see this option when logged into AdSense. I assume this new feature will be rolled out ASAP.

Update: Found it!

Removing Blog Related Adsense Ads

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 17:23:30 GMT

Nick Wilson: One thing many blogs [who use AdSense] suffer from however, is adverts for "blog related" products and services. This sucks if you're not talking about blogs, but *are* posting on one -- is there anything we can do about that?

Matt Cutts: The most concrete immediate advice I heard was a reminder about section targeting. Here's more info about it.

http://performancing.com/node/397

Why Your eMiniMalls CPM is Dropping

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 17:30:56 GMT

Two days ago, I wrote "Chitika CPMs Dropping Again!" Which described how many publishers were seeing much lower CPMs with eMiniMalls starting on Dec 1st. I received an email from Venkat Kolluri, CEO of Chitika explaining what has happened.

Right off the bat, we noticed that clicks from countries that we do not support accounted for the lion's share of the difference between the raw clicks stats (that we summarize on a daily basis) and the final audited stats. So, starting December 1st, we started removing clicks from those countries from our daily reports, rather than waiting till the end of the month audit process to kick in. This is one of the main requests that we received in feedback from customers regarding the discrepancies between the daily raw stats and the monthly audited revenue figures: "Why report clicks from unsupported countries when you are anyway going to discount those clicks (and the resulting revenue numbers) during the audit process at the end of the month?"

So, in addition to giving users the option to use the alternate url feature, we are also dynamically removing clicks from unsupported countries in our daily reports.

So what does this mean? Are we now keeping the resulting click-revenue (from regions that we do not support) to ourselves? No. Even we don't get paid for the clicks from unsupported regions. Rather than waiting till the end of the month we are trying to speed up the reporting process and tackle the main factors on a daily basis so that publishers can get better revenue estimates. We still do need to rely on our monthly audits, but we are trying to address the easy ones on a daily basis as much as we can. Our goal is to speed up the reporting process as much as we can and decrease the differences between the daily and monthly (post audit) stats.

My reply to Venkat was simple.

My earnings dropped 15% from the unaudited to the audited numbers. This drop is over 50%. There must be something else. No?

He replied again.

Filtering clicks from unsupported countries (because of geo targeting) is the main factor. Also, late November and early December we started (slowly) integrating a variety of merchant feeds from other European countries... and as a result we are seeing a lot of fluctuations in the CPCs, CTRs, and hence eCPMs.

To give you a gist of what we are working on now to update the service: 1) optimize the units to find the right balance between varying CPCs across feeds from multiple regions and maximizing the overall eCPM that we can deliver and 2) speed up the logic in the audits process so that we can push to front (as much as possible) some of the easy filters to run on a daily basis and update the daily reports to give the best estimates for what clients can expect to see at the end of the month in the final audited revenue. A challenging problem but we are confident that we can work this out and make this program work for all parties.

This didn't answer my question. The October audit cut about 15% from my CPM. The current filtering of clicks (which is suppose to filter out the same clicks as the audit) is cutting more than 50% from my CPM. Because Venkat has been so nice to answer my questions, I'll hang in there, but if the CPM remains low, then I'll be reducing the number of impressions acccordingly.

Chitika CPMs Dropping Again!

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 21:12:08 GMT

I'm now finding that many eMiniMalls publishers are seeing their CPMs drop off a cliff since December 1st.

My unaudited revenue drop more than 50% in a last 8 days from the beginning of the mount.

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=43136

I've experienced a similar drop. After the curiosity clicks drop in CPM, the audit drop in CPM, this is looking very bad for Chitika. I'm actively looking for an alternative.

What's Up at Google

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 12:28:24 GMT

I'm seeing some weird numbers coming from EhList. That's 200k new KBCafe Web pages indexed in Google. That's a lot. I'm seeing big shifts in the number of pages indexed across a large many domains. Mostly upwards, but some downwards.

eMiniMalls CPM Falls

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:02:47 GMT

After recovering in the trailing 10 days of November, my eMiniMalls CPM has again fallen drastically. In fact, my highest daily CPM this month is 20% lower than my lowest CPM in the trailing days of November and about 50% lower overall. I would suspect that the time of year would actually cause CPMs to increase. Is anybody else seeing this? Is there an explanation?

Chitika Supported Countries

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 22:32:21 GMT

Via the coolest blogger in the blogosphere, I've received the following list of Chitika supported countries; US, Canada, Mexico, UK, France, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Finland. Note that all clicks from other countries are added to your unaudited earnings, but will be removed from your audited earnings.

Coolz0r: Unless you're from these countries, don't click my ads! You'll only give me false hope!

More on eMiniMalls' Curiosity Clicks

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 22:23:38 GMT

I got the following email yesterday from Venkat Kolluri, CEO of Chitika and asked if I could just republish it as it. He explains some of the misperceptions I and others have had about the curiosity clicks. I removed all pleasantries, reformatted slightly to keep it short and on point. Thanks Venkat!

I want to make a small clarification. In your post you mentioned that we might be going a "cash grab" because we removed the "product links":

http://www.webvertization.com/?guid=20051120122444

If I am not mistaken you are under the impression that we are getting paid for "sales" and then we are keeping the sales commission while removing the less converting links. Actually it is the other way aroung. We are getting paid on a click basis. So if there is no click on the product title (because we removed the link) then there is not revenue and hence no one is making any money here. So, since merchants did not want to pay for those clicks, we removed the links. And even we are not getting paid.

1.7 PageViews per Visitor

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:36:29 GMT

Darren Rowse: After surfing the top 50 blogs listed there (I couldn’t find stats on 6 of them) I found that on average they have 1.7272 page views per visitor. [cut] I then decided to see if this figure was comparable to blogs with less traffic and then surveyed a random 50 blogs from other pages on the traffic rankings. [cut] The average of these 50 random blogs was 1.7083 page views per visitor - a remarkably similar figure to the higher trafficked blogs.

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/06/blog-stats-page-views/

Randy: Google Analytics is also reporting 1.7 pageviews per visitor for the page I'm tracking on kbcafe.com. My own blog reading behavior might explain these stats. I usually read blogs offline (via RSS) until I find an interesting article and I click thru to the original Webpage. I read. I close the browser window. Almost always 1 pageview.

Inactive doesn't Always Mean Inactive

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 00:50:18 GMT

I just noticed this new message in my Adwords account.

AdWords has revised the 'inactive' status for keywords. Inactive keywords do not trigger ads on Google or the search network, but from now on they may continue to trigger ads on content sites if your campaign has the content network enabled.

Yahoo! Sponsored Crap

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 00:28:26 GMT

If were a Yahoo! advertiser, then I'd be pretty pissed off at Yahoo! for allowing sites like recipes dot com (no Google Juice, so you'll have to type these domain by yourself). If you click thru to the parent site, then you'll notice they have a farm of this crap. In fact, I'm pretty pissed at Yahoo! for allowing this. I don't mind low value sites, but these are no value sites and Yahoo! is paying them to pollute our Web.

BTW, if you search for recipes on Google, then you'll get their ad in the right sidebar ;-)

Chitika on Angry Publishers

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 23:43:32 GMT

Chitika has published an FAQ to address the questions of angry Chitika publishers who saw their earnings plummet in the recent end-of-month + 30 days audit.

Q: Why did I see a significant difference in the number of clicks after audits?

The daily reports only summarize the data from the raw click logs. On a monthly basis we run our audited process to remove and discount potentially fradulent clicks [cut] and clicks from countries currently not supported.

http://chitika.com/blog/?p=30

eMiniMalls is Excellent!

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 01:50:26 GMT

I just got $307.84 USD in my PayPal account from Chitika. In my books, that makes Chitika the 2nd best blog ad platform on the market. You see, I've only ever received money from AdSense (big cheques) and Amazon (insignificant amounts). So, don't let anybody fool you, eMiniMalls is excellent and compliments my AdSense. That's gold in my books.

AdBrite is OK, at Best!

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 22:14:23 GMT

I've been playing with AdBrite for just over a month now and my conclusions are that you can't generate anywhere near the same revenues as AdSense or eMiniMalls. Adding to this, a constant stream of technical problems and it's really not worth your time and effort. The latest problem, I can't find my ads with their search. As such, I'm gonna pull back substantially on the number of AdBrite impressions I'm running. I'll leave it on a few page, but solely for testing purposes and I have a few recurring ads that pay little, but little times 365 days will pay for the gas to fuel the RV to Florida and back in March.

Eh List Keeps Getting Better

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:28:32 GMT

Chris Nolan: You'll be pleased to see in your morning Eh List feeds you have a lot more information available to you now. I've included the increase/ decrease for each stat and I've also gotten around to including not just google in the feed, but Yahoo! and Technorati too.

http://chrisnolan.ca/archive/ID/00000742

Randy: I'm subscribed to a half dozen or more eh-list feeds. I get my SEO breakfast every morning now. Thanks Chris!

Amazon ProductWiki

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:18:33 GMT

Ben McConnell: Amazon has launched ProductWiki, a route for "customer editable product information" to appear alongside most, if not all, of the items the company sells.

http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2005/11/amazons_custome.html

Alternate URL in eMiniMalls

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:05:37 GMT

Chitika now has alternate URLs that allow you to specify an alternate ad when eMiniMalls doesn't have an appropriate ad for your readers.

What is "Alternate URL"?
The alternate URL feature allows you to make use of your ad space in the event that Chitika is not able to show a paying eMiniMall ad (for example: traffic from non-accepted countries). In such an event, the Chitika system will redirect to the url you specify.

How to specify an "alternate URL"?
There are two ways of specifying an "alternate URL":
1) Code Panel: You can login to your account, click on "eMiniMalls Code" and then specify an "Alternate URL" (in the "Set Options" section)
2) Code Hacking: For existing users who have already deployed code, you can add this line to the code (anywhere after the line with ch_client but before the line with /script). You need to replace the XXXX below with a valid URL like "http://yourdomain.com/chitika.html".
ch_alternate_ad_url = "XXXX";

Chitika Publishers Angry

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 15:45:37 GMT

Chitika finally produced the audited earnings for October. Publishers seem angry that Chitika has reduced many publishers earnings. My own earnings dropped about 15%.

The audit process is clearly spelled out in Chitika's FAQ.

In the audit process we remove any invalid clicks such as: repeated clicks from the same ip.

https://chitika.com/faqs.php#PRC10

And long-term publishers have always indicated that earnings drop significantly after the audit.

The Chitika eMiniMalls figure is before their auditing process takes effect. From what I’ve seen of this process last month - this is likely to decrease that figure by around 10%

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/10/05/chitika-eminimalls-how-much-do-they-earn-me/

So, publishers don't really have anything to complain about. That said, Chitika is stumbling thru PR nightmare after PR nightmare. I expect that most of the complaining publishers thought they were getting away with click-fraud until the audit numbers were released. Legitimate publishers are not complaining that much. The biggest hit for legitimate publishers is likely referral revenue. Some are claiming loses of 50%.

I lost 50% of my referral revenue with this audit.

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=469807&postcount=15

The obvious explanation is that you don't know who your referrals are and it's highly likely they are generating those earnings via click-fraud.