[{"title":"Can I continue my work in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini?","href":"/faq/#continue-with-ai","answer":"Yes. Choose Ask AI in a tool. Review and edit the context, copy it, then open your preferred chat and paste it. Reader notes and page code are optional. Nothing is sent automatically, and your figures are not placed in the provider link. This is a handoff, not a connected account or an AI answer inside Plain Reckoner. The provider may require its own account or plan.","checked":"2026-10-26"},{"title":"How do I turn my homepage plan into a page?","href":"/faq/#page-editor","answer":"Open Build your page. Edit the HTML and CSS, then check the Phone and Desktop previews. Copy code for your website or AI builder, or download a complete HTML file. Nothing publishes automatically. Code stays in your browser; preview blocks scripts and external files. Download a JSON backup to keep your editable work.","checked":"2026-10-26"},{"title":"How do I use the order profit & roas tool?","href":"/faq/#break-even-roas","answer":"Use one matched order cohort. Separate sales, returned product costs and advertising. Replace the example with your costs. Open Other costs and assumptions before using the result. Contribution is not net profit. Tax, overhead, owner pay and unentered costs are excluded. Enter actual fees, including fees on shipping. Match refunds and cost recoveries to the original orders. Ad-platform attribution does not establish that ads caused every sale.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"How do I use the free shipping threshold tool?","href":"/faq/#free-shipping-threshold","answer":"Choose a contribution target, then check the merchandise value needed to cover delivery. Replace the example with your costs. Open Other costs and assumptions before using the result. This is a cost threshold, not an optimized conversion or AOV prediction. Product margin, weight, carrier prices and fee bases can change with the basket. Tax and refunds are excluded. A non-positive marginal rate has no finite threshold in this model.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"How do I use the return cost scenarios tool?","href":"/faq/#return-cost","answer":"Compare kept and fully refunded orders. Set the costs your own fee schedule actually retains. Replace the example with your costs. Open Other costs and assumptions before using the result. This models full product refunds with no customer-paid shipping for one product/order pattern. It does not predict returns, model partial refunds or replace a cohort profit report. The same rate can hide very different recovery and handling costs. Tax, overhead and unentered costs remain excluded.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"How do I use the bundle pricing & stock tool?","href":"/faq/#bundle-pricing","answer":"Price two different components and check the stock that limits the offer. Replace the example with your costs. Open Other costs and assumptions before using the result. A price floor is not a recommended price. Customer-paid shipping, returns, tax, overhead and unentered costs are excluded. Bundle discounts may stack with other offers. Real inventory tracking and price updates remain in your store.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"Can I explore recent online retail data without connecting a store?","href":"/faq/#retail-market","answer":"Yes. The retail market explorer shows a reviewed official ONS snapshot for Great Britain. Compare one-month and three-month spending changes, then inspect the source dates and full monthly series. Market aggregates are context, not individual purchases or a prediction for your product.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"How can I check a discount on slow-moving stock?","href":"/faq/#inventory-markdown","answer":"Open the inventory markdown test. Enter one product’s current price, cost, stock, completed sales and in-stock days. Add the proposed discount, fees and campaign budget. Compare whole-unit recovery targets with available stock. These are conditional calculations, not a demand forecast. Nothing connects to your store or changes a price.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"How do I start using the free tools?","href":"/faq/#how-to-use-the-tools","answer":"Choose a collection on the free tools page. Message and homepage tools help you explain your offer, plan a page and ask readers what they understood. Website and store calculators help you check earnings and selling costs. Choose the task you need; no account is required.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Which numbers should I enter?","href":"/faq/#which-numbers","answer":"Use the counts from your own report. Pageviews, sessions, users and ad impressions are different units. Use the same dates and currency for related figures. Leave an optional unknown field blank; enter zero only when the real value is zero.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Do the message tools send my draft to an AI service?","href":"/faq/#message-workspace-privacy","answer":"No. The message workspace organises your own entries with local templates. Your brief, draft versions and reader notes stay in this browser when storage is available. Exported files contain your entries; shared tool links do not.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Do the reader tools provide people to test my page?","href":"/faq/#message-reader-feedback","answer":"No. You recruit relevant readers, save the exact draft they see and record their actual answers. A small self-recruited group can reveal confusion, but it does not establish a population conversion rate or guarantee sales.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"How should I read a tool result?","href":"/faq/#read-the-result","answer":"Check the unit, dates, formula and assumptions next to the result. A historical benchmark describes its sample; it does not predict your earnings. Meeting a numerical network threshold does not guarantee approval. A listing benchmark is not a confirmed sale price.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"How do I import a daily revenue CSV?","href":"/faq/#import-a-report","answer":"Open the two-period comparison and choose a CSV under 100 KB with up to 366 complete days. Use the template, or map the date, traffic and USD revenue columns. Confirm the units, check the preview, then apply it. Files stay in your browser.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"How do I share a tool without sharing my figures?","href":"/faq/#share-a-result","answer":"In the message workspace, Share tool copies a link without your entries. Legacy benchmark tools offer a separate choice to include figures. Included numbers can be read by anyone with the link and may enter browser history and hosting logs.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Can an AI assistant read the tool instructions?","href":"/faq/#tool-help-for-assistants","answer":"Yes. The public tool reference lists inputs, units, formulas, limits and worked checks. It is documentation, not a calculator API or proof that a tool has run. An assistant should keep unknown values unknown, cite the relevant page and distinguish its own calculation from a result it actually obtained.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"How does the connected analysis workspace work?","href":"/faq/#guided-analysis","answer":"Choose store or publishing website, add an optional public address and enter the figures you know for one month in USD. Only the public address is sent to our checker. Unknown figures stay blank. The results separate public observations from your entered numbers and show the next questions to check. Compatible tools reuse those inputs. Store scenarios and the guided context stay in this browser tab for up to 24 hours; Clear workspace removes them. The checks run for as long as the actual work takes, with no artificial waiting period.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"Why are my page RPM and ad impression RPM different?","href":"/faq/#adsense-rpm-cpm","answer":"They count different things. Page RPM is earnings for every 1,000 pages. Ad impression RPM is earnings for every 1,000 ads shown. In a worked example, $100 from 10,000 pages and 20,000 ad impressions gives a page RPM of $10 and an impression RPM of $5. The money is still $100. Neither number tells us what an advertiser paid.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Can I use ad impressions to calculate ad coverage?","href":"/faq/#ad-coverage","answer":"No. Coverage uses the number of ad requests that returned ads, divided by all ad requests, times 100. Ad impressions are a different count. If you do not know both request counts, leave coverage blank.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"How can I make my publisher site easier to find in AI search?","href":"/faq/#ai-search-visibility","answer":"Make your pages easy to read and reach. Show the facts, sources, dates and how you got your answer. Link to the tool or example. Check that search engines can open the page. These steps can help discovery, but cannot guarantee that an AI service will quote or recommend you. Search access and permission to train AI are different choices.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Is Plain Reckoner free, and do I need an account?","href":"/faq/#free","answer":"The message workspace, publisher calculators, public-site checks, research findings and published data downloads are free to use without an account. Source-working requests are separate: availability depends on the records and permissions.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"How much data is available, and what feeds the benchmarks?","href":"/faq/#data-size","answer":"The ad-seller directory contains 25,309 checked records from networks’ public files. The background library holds 25,602 observations about internet use, population and pageviews. Each collection counts different things. Earnings benchmarks use a separate historical study; its source page explains the sample. Seller records do not tell us what a website earns.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Does the median RPM predict what my site will earn?","href":"/faq/#forecast","answer":"No. The median describes businesses in a historical, sale-selected sample. It is not a representative census of publishers or a forecast for your site. Country, content, traffic mix and ad delivery can differ. Use your own matched traffic and earnings to calculate actual RPM.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"What is the difference between session RPM and page RPM?","href":"/faq/#rpm-units","answer":"Both divide revenue by a traffic count and multiply by 1,000. Page RPM uses pageviews; session RPM uses sessions. Monetized-session RPM uses a narrower, provider-defined denominator. Compare the same unit and revenue definition before interpreting a change.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Why can traffic go up while ad revenue goes down?","href":"/faq/#revenue-drop","answer":"Revenue depends on both traffic and earnings per thousand. In a synthetic example, 20% more pageviews combined with 40% lower page RPM produces 28% less revenue: 1.20 × 0.60 = 0.72. This arithmetic does not identify the cause of an RPM change; check matched dates, reporting definitions, ad delivery and audience mix.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Are my CSV files and comparison figures uploaded?","href":"/faq/#csv-privacy","answer":"The two-period comparison reads CSV files locally in your browser and does not upload those period figures or keep them between visits. An explicit language switch transfers numeric fields through temporary same-tab storage, which is cleared on arrival. Use its date, traffic and revenue_usd template or map those columns from a provider export. Complete, contiguous days and confirmed USD revenue are required. The separate benchmark panels save their own figures on this device. Shared tool links exclude figures by default; including benchmark figures is an explicit choice.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Can the ad-network checker guarantee Mediavine, Journey, Raptive or Ezoic approval?","href":"/faq/#network-approval","answer":"No. The actual-report screen keeps pageviews, qualifying Journey sessions, monthly active users, earned annual ad revenue, Raptive country share and domain age separate. Blank values stay unknown. It checks numerical boundaries, including Raptive’s geography tier, and shows what still needs provider review. The traffic-only illustration below it is a separate hypothetical shortlist. Neither can confirm acceptance, content quality or account standing. Confirm current provider rules before applying.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Is the website value calculator a verified sale price or appraisal?","href":"/faq/#valuation","answer":"It is a historical listing benchmark based on sold-status records and their stated multiples. Final closing prices are not verified. The calculation is not an offer, appraisal or promise that a buyer will pay that amount. Net profit and gross revenue must be kept distinct.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Can I download, reuse and cite the data?","href":"/faq/#reuse","answer":"The public research-sample CSVs and combined JSON are available without an email gate under CC BY 4.0, with attribution to Plain Reckoner and a link to the dataset page. Retain the method, date, row definition and limitations. The expanded RPM file adds calculated columns to the same 123 businesses; it does not add independent observations.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Is Ask the research a live human or generative AI chatbot?","href":"/faq/#source-finder","answer":"It is an instant FAQ and research source finder. It matches questions locally to published answers, shows excerpts and links to their sources. It does not generate new claims, diagnose private accounts or connect you to a live operator. Questions are not uploaded or stored; clear the conversation to remove it from this page.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"What does the public-site scan inspect?","href":"/faq/#public-scan","answer":"The scan reads a bounded sample of public pages and files. For stores it checks declared product prices, currency and availability, plus shipping, return and cart links. It also checks search markup, ad setup and crawler directives. It does not follow cart links, submit forms or test purchases. It does not log into analytics or prove revenue, audience quality, legal compliance or a complete site audit. A missing or unreachable file is not automatically a failed policy.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Can search engines and AI tools read the FAQ and research?","href":"/faq/#ai-access","answer":"The FAQ and research findings are served as public HTML with headings, source links and dates; reading them does not require the question widget or an account. The site’s robots.txt permits public content and excludes /api/. Crawler permissions, indexing and selection for an AI answer are separate matters, so accessibility does not guarantee a citation.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Dataset size: rows, columns, businesses and pageviews","href":"/data/","checked":"2026-10-20","answer":"The RPM study covers 123 sale-selected businesses and 1,334 business-months, with 1,174,949,344 reported pageviews and $6,844,447 ad revenue in aggregate. The four public datasets contain 4,266 rows of different units, with possible overlap. These are not individual visitor events or unique sites. Complete CSVs and a combined JSON download are free; an expanded RPM view adds calculated fields without adding observations."},{"title":"Your AdSense estimate changed. Check which number you are comparing.","href":"/notes/adsense-estimated-vs-finalized-earnings/","answer":"Yesterday’s estimated earnings and this month’s bank deposit are not matching measures. Before calling a change an RPM problem, check which earning stage, date range and traffic unit each report uses.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"Buy now, pay later. How much does your store keep?","href":"/notes/bnpl-merchant-fees-profit/","answer":"An extra payment option can bring an extra cost. Before adding buy now, pay later, ask what each completed order leaves after product costs, delivery, ads and the payment fee. Higher checkout revenue alone does not answer that question.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"3× ROAS. Still losing money? Check these costs.","href":"/notes/break-even-roas-hidden-costs/","answer":"ROAS compares an assigned conversion value with ad spending. When that value is sales revenue, product costs, fulfillment, selling fees and refunds can leave much less room for ads than the dashboard suggests.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"A 4× ROAS can still lose money on a new customer.","href":"/notes/customer-acquisition-cost-vs-roas/","answer":"ROAS tells you revenue per advertising dollar. It does not tell you profit per new customer. A campaign can produce an impressive revenue multiple while the first order leaves too little to cover acquisition costs.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"Your store made a profit. Why is the bank balance falling?","href":"/notes/ecommerce-cash-flow-vs-profit/","answer":"Profit does not tell you how much cash you can spend today. A store can sell products at a healthy margin while paying for stock before the related customer money reaches its bank. That timing can turn a busy month into a cash problem.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"The refund is only the start. What does a return really cost?","href":"/notes/ecommerce-returns-profit-cost/","answer":"Refunded revenue is only part of a return's economics. Outbound costs, retained fees, return handling and the value of recoverable stock determine the contribution left from the original order.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"Free shipping can eat your profit. Find your real threshold.","href":"/notes/free-shipping-threshold-profit/","answer":"A free shipping minimum is a cost decision before it is a marketing offer. Covering a chosen contribution target and preserving the current basket's contribution can require different thresholds.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"Google Trends says 100. That does not mean 100 buyers.","href":"/notes/google-trends-product-demand-test/","answer":"A search spike can suggest a question worth testing. It does not tell you how many products will sell. Before buying stock or publishing dozens of near-identical pages, separate public interest from your own evidence of demand.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"That small payment fee gets bigger on small orders.","href":"/notes/payment-fees-small-orders/","answer":"A 3% fee plus $0.30 is not a 3% cost. The fixed part takes a larger share of a small payment. If your store sells low-priced products, that difference can matter more than a rounded dashboard percentage suggests.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"A bigger bundle. A smaller profit? Check before you launch.","href":"/notes/product-bundle-pricing-margin/","answer":"A bundle can raise the order total while leaving less money from the same products. Before adding a discount, count every component, every selling cost and the stock that limits the offer.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"A 67% markup can leave almost nothing. Here is why.","href":"/notes/profit-margin-vs-markup-ecommerce/","answer":"A product can have a healthy-looking markup and leave almost nothing after selling costs. The problem is often the denominator—or the costs that the headline leaves out.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"20% off can halve your margin. Check slow stock before a sale.","href":"/notes/slow-moving-inventory-discount-profit/","answer":"A discount cuts the selling price, not the product cost. In the example below, 20% off halves contribution per unit. You need twice as many sales to match the starting result—before any extra fees or campaign costs.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"UK online sales fell. Some store types still grew.","href":"/notes/uk-online-sales-september-2026/","answer":"Recent official online sales figures can tell different stories at different time scales. Two reported UK store-type categories rose over one month while falling over three months. Check the period and category before changing a price.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"Monumetric vs Mediavine: check which door is open first.","href":"/notes/monumetric-vs-mediavine-journey/","answer":"Monumetric Propel counts pageviews, Journey counts premium sessions and Mediavine Official counts annual ad revenue. Their entry rules differ. The $99 Propel fee also needs a payback check.","checked":"2026-10-23"},{"title":"A higher ad RPM can still leave you with less money.","href":"/notes/switching-ad-networks-break-even/","answer":"In our six-month worked example, moving from a $15 to a $20 page RPM only pays if traffic falls by less than 15%, once a $100 monthly extra fee and $600 switching cost are included. At 20% traffic loss, the higher RPM leaves the publisher $600 behind staying. These are explicit assumptions, not observed provider results.","checked":"2026-10-22"},{"title":"Low AdSense RPM? Check this before adding more ads.","href":"/notes/adsense-rpm-vs-cpm-explained/","answer":"A lower RPM does not always mean less money. Page RPM counts pages; ad impression RPM counts ads. Check the full metric name and matching report totals before changing your ad setup.","checked":"2026-10-21"},{"title":"Ranking third. Almost no clicks. What is your average hiding?","href":"/notes/search-console-good-position-low-clicks/","answer":"An average position of 3 can coexist with only three clicks: in our hypothetical example, 90 impressions at position 1 and 10 at position 21 produce that average. Separate query intent, pages, countries and devices before treating a strong headline position as broad search visibility.","checked":"2026-10-25"},{"title":"Website analytics gives you numbers. You still need the why.","href":"/notes/understand-website-analytics-before-automating/","answer":"A useful website analytics tool makes its inputs, arithmetic and limits clear enough to check. Start with matching units and dates, then compare the cost of acting with the uncertainty in the result. Our free tools explain the first step; you keep control of the decision.","checked":"2026-10-21"},{"title":"More traffic. Less ad revenue. Find the leak.","href":"/notes/traffic-up-ad-revenue-down/","answer":"More traffic can still earn less: in a worked example, 100,000 pageviews earning $1,000 become 120,000 earning $720. Page RPM falls from $10 to $6. Matched reporting periods separate the arithmetic traffic and RPM changes; dashboard breakdowns are needed to investigate their causes.","checked":"2026-10-20"},{"title":"Ezoic’s traffic minimum counts users, not pageviews.","href":"/notes/ezoic-requirements-250000-active-users/","answer":"Ezoic’s current general entry requirement is 250,000 monthly active users, not 250,000 pageviews. Its help page preserves an exception for publishers already monetizing before 19 February 2026, subject to continued use, and describes a possible Incubator route below the general minimum.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"Low Journey RPM? Check the dates before switching.","href":"/notes/journey-low-rpm-after-launch/","answer":"Journey’s help page says its default 30-day analytics view includes initial onboarding and ramp-up, which can depress the displayed average after launch. Check complete earning dates, traffic units and the underlying revenue before interpreting a low RPM as a network comparison.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"Journey needs premium sessions. Do all your visits count?","href":"/notes/journey-premium-sessions-requirements/","answer":"In a hypothetical 30-day period with 2,000 total sessions and a 40% qualifying share, only 800 sessions count toward a 1,000-session threshold. Journey’s current requirement refers to premium sessions; total worldwide visits are not a substitute.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"That website price is an asking price. What actually sold?","href":"/notes/listing-price-vs-sale-price-website-valuations/","answer":"Empire Flippers’ 2026 report lists a 2025 average listing multiple of 28.69 months of profit and a sales multiple of 23.93. Its public listing API exposes listing-price fields. A listing marked sold does not, by itself, turn its listing price into a verified final transaction price.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"Your Mediavine RPM rose. Did your earnings actually change?","href":"/notes/mediavine-monetized-rpm-vs-rpm/","answer":"With hypothetical earnings of $600, 50,000 total sessions and 30,000 monetized sessions, all-traffic RPM is $12 and monetized RPM is $20. The apparent 67% improvement changes the denominator, not the $600 earned.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"How many pageviews do you need to make $1,000 a month?","href":"/notes/pageviews-to-make-1000-a-month/","answer":"At the measured median page RPM of $15.21, $1,000 a month in advertising revenue takes about 65,747 pageviews. Across the same sample’s low and high RPM benchmarks, the target ranges from 28,531 to 452,489. These are scenarios from 123 broker-checked display businesses, not an AdSense earnings forecast.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"Raptive’s pageview minimum is only the first check.","href":"/notes/raptive-requirements-25000-pageviews/","answer":"Raptive lists a 25,000-pageview monthly minimum, but its smaller-site band also needs a 50% audience share from five named countries. The published share falls to 40% at 100,000 pageviews. Clearing the pageview number alone does not establish eligibility.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"A $12 session RPM can equal an $8 page RPM.","href":"/notes/session-rpm-vs-page-rpm/","answer":"In a worked example with $600 of revenue, 50,000 sessions and 75,000 pageviews, session RPM is $12 and page RPM is $8. The 50% difference comes entirely from the traffic unit; earnings do not change.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"Your ads.txt lists a seller. Can the seller confirm you?","href":"/notes/ads-txt-that-cannot-be-confirmed/","answer":"Ad networks publish lists of the sites they sell for. Publishers publish a file called ads.txt naming who may sell their ads. Both are public, so the two can be checked against each other. Across 462 publisher-to-network pairings, 36 could not be confirmed from the publisher's own file: 20 serve no ads.txt at all, 6 name no ad network, 5 name a different one, 4 return a web page where a text file should be, and one declares an account we could not match in the provider’s roster. The rate is not the same everywhere. Mediavine sites failed to confirm 11.1% of the time against Raptive's 3.1% — a 3.6-fold difference on the same test.","checked":"2026-09-03"},{"title":"Blocking Google-Extended will not remove you from AI Overviews.","href":"/notes/google-extended-does-not-do-what-publishers-think/","answer":"In our historical sample of 1,020 publisher robots.txt files, 89 blocked Google-Extended. That token controls specified Gemini training and grounding uses. Google says it does not control inclusion or ranking in Google Search, including AI Overviews. The files do not tell us why publishers chose those rules.","checked":"2026-10-21"},{"title":"Your AI crawler list may still contain outdated names.","href":"/notes/publishers-block-ai-crawler-names-no-vendor-publishes/","answer":"In the historical 1,020-file sample, 244 files named AI crawlers and 167 of those also carried names classified as legacy in our crawler registry: 68.4%. Naming is not blocking: 216 files blocked at least one evaluated crawler at the site root, while 28 named crawlers without blocking any there. These files do not reveal owner intent, actual crawler compliance or lost traffic.","checked":"2026-09-03"},{"title":"High RPM. Higher website price? Check the evidence.","href":"/notes/what-a-site-earns-does-not-predict-what-it-sells-for/","answer":"Across the 11 niche pairs shown here, historical page-RPM medians and listing-multiple medians have a tie-aware Spearman correlation of about 0.073. The rankings differ, but this small sample does not establish no relationship, identify causes or predict a site’s final sale price. The earlier 0.036 figure did not reproduce from the published table.","checked":"2026-09-03"},{"title":"Journey counts sessions. Mediavine counts revenue. Don’t mix them.","href":"/notes/what-it-takes-to-graduate-from-mediavine-journey/","answer":"Journey’s entry requirement counts qualifying sessions; Mediavine Official’s counts annual advertising revenue. At a historical sample median of $15.21 page RPM, a hypothetical steady year would need 27,395 pageviews per month to reach $5,000. That calculation is an income scenario, not a Mediavine traffic requirement or eligibility result.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"Your AI crawler rules may block a visitor you wanted.","href":"/notes/ai-crawler-policy-is-a-vendor-default/","answer":"In our historical sample of 1,020 readable publisher robots.txt files, 11.9% contained a root-level disallow rule for ChatGPT-User and 0.4% for OAI-SearchBot. These are declared rules, not measured blocked requests or lost referrals. Supplier-like wording appeared in 29.9% of the files, but that cannot establish whether the owner knowingly chose it. Current provider documentation distinguishes search indexing, user-triggered fetching and model-training controls.","checked":"2026-09-02"},{"title":"Amazon affiliate sites lost share in this broker’s records.","href":"/notes/amazon-affiliate-exits-went-to-near-zero/","answer":"The historical broker analysis reported Amazon-affiliate labels on 45% of its 2020 sold-status records and 4% of its incomplete 2026 records. That is a change in the observed category mix, not a like-for-like full-year sales-volume decline or proof that search traffic caused it.","checked":"2026-08-31"},{"title":"AdSense says low value. What does your tool page actually do?","href":"/notes/adsense-low-value-content-on-tool-sites/","answer":"A working calculator and a large article count do not establish content quality. A useful tool page explains the task, checks its inputs, interprets the result and shows the limits of its evidence. Google reviews the site and makes the approval decision.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"Website listing multiples fell across several business models.","href":"/notes/multiple-compression-is-market-wide/","answer":"In the historical sold-status snapshot, display listing multiples were 43x monthly SDE in the 2021–22 listing cohorts and 29–31x in the 2025–26 cohorts. Similar changes appeared in two comparison groups. These are listing fields grouped by listing year; 2026 is incomplete and final closing prices are not verified.","checked":"2026-08-30"},{"title":"Newsletter ad prices stayed flat. The available slots did not.","href":"/notes/newsletter-rate-cards-frozen-while-inventory-was-cut/","answer":"The saved Cooper Press rate-card series keeps seven main-slot asking prices at their Q1 2025 levels through the Q4 2026 card. The endpoint cards show a 5.5% lower combined listed subscriber count. Historical issue-layout observations separately show fewer paid-style placements in two titles. These are not booked-revenue, fill-rate or publisher-intent measurements.","checked":"2026-08-30"},{"title":"December earned more per pageview, despite less traffic.","href":"/notes/q4-is-an-ad-rate-effect-not-a-traffic-effect/","answer":"Across 99 display-only businesses, December earns 1.34x what January earns on each pageview, while getting only 0.95x the pageviews. These are rate and traffic associations in the selected sample, not direct evidence of auction causes. The traffic curve is quietly working against it. Each business is compared only against its own twelve months, to reduce the influence of growth; the detrending assumptions still matter.","checked":"2026-08-30"},{"title":"Which ad network can you join? Count the right traffic.","href":"/notes/ad-network-entry-thresholds-2026/","answer":"Mediavine Official lists $5,000 annual ad revenue; Journey specifies 1,000 qualifying sessions in 30 days; Raptive starts at 25,000 monthly pageviews with traffic-share conditions; Ezoic generally requires 250,000 monthly active users, with documented exceptions. These are different gates, not one traffic ladder.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"Ready for AdSense? Check the site and the account separately.","href":"/notes/adsense-requirements-what-google-actually-says/","answer":"AdSense site verification, content review, account setup and advertising consent are separate checks. Google documents several ownership-verification methods and reviews the whole site. Public-page checks cannot establish private account completion or approval.","checked":"2026-10-24"},{"title":"AI Overview rates change with the questions you count.","href":"/notes/ai-overviews-by-query-intent/","answer":"Ahrefs reported AI Overviews on 57.9% of question queries and 0.9% of navigational queries in its September 2025 desktop dataset. These historical keyword-sample rates are not current probabilities for every Google search, and a result-page feature rate does not measure traffic lost by an individual publisher.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"Do calculator pages earn less? Ad slots alone cannot tell you.","href":"/notes/calculator-pages-carry-a-sixth-of-the-ad-slots/","answer":"The historical examples showed fewer in-content ad slots on short calculator pages than on long articles, but their earnings figures came from one business each. Neither a universal ad-slot ceiling nor a format-wide revenue penalty follows from those observations.","checked":"2026-08-27"},{"title":"An ad-blocking survey is not your website’s lost revenue.","href":"/notes/developer-ad-block-rate-measured-not-surveyed/","answer":"Read the Docs publishes a 32% ad-blocker figure for its audience. Comparing that with a developer survey does not establish that the same people exaggerate their behavior: the populations, units and methods differ. Our earlier 2.3-times behavioral-gap claim was not supported.","checked":"2026-10-19"},{"title":"Fewer ad-funded sites sold. Compare full years first.","href":"/notes/display-advertising-site-sales-collapsed/","answer":"Our August 2026 broker snapshot reported 138 display-advertising records for 2022 and 31 for 2025, a 77.5% decrease between complete years. The 2026 figure was year-to-date, so the previous 93% headline compared unequal periods. These records do not establish that search changes caused the decline.","checked":"2026-08-29"},{"title":"What does your niche earn per 1,000 pageviews?","href":"/notes/rpm-by-niche-from-verified-sales/","answer":"Money from ads is quoted per thousand pageviews, and the trade calls that figure RPM. Across 123 businesses funded by display advertising and nothing else, the middle one earns $15.21 per thousand pageviews. Finance sites earn $29.73, home sites $25.43, information sites $8.41, gaming sites $6.48. The spread is enormous: the bottom tenth earn $2.21 and the top tenth $35.05, a 15.8x range.","checked":"2026-08-29"}]