Are people clicking fewer Google ads?

An article in The New York Times by Miguel Helft entitled "A Highflier Loses Altitude as Google's Clicks Go Flat" raises the question "Are Internet users clicking on fewer Google ads and putting the company's growth prospects at risk?" The article highlights number of conflicting views as to what is really going on in the paid-click advertising business. But one thing I can confirm is that Google AdSense ads on my own blogs and webs sites also received fewer clicks in the same period when Google was supposedly seeing a slowing of growth.

Also, I did encounter a period where Google made some changes which resulted in a loss of both page views and clicks for my pages. I made some changes and page views bounced back, although clicks only partially bounced back.

As the article says, much of the recent weakness may have been self-inflicted by Google.

-- Jack Krupansky