Adsensen Earning Can Missing

Question:
On the weekends I check my account more often than I should, my wife say I am too obsessive, anyway I've been getting adsense revenue a couple of years now and in all that time have never seen my "today" total go backwards from one time checking it to the next, untill today. In fifteen -twenty minutes time my total went backwards. It was just a few dollars but made me concerned my account may not be secure somehow. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this common in other accounts? Should I be concerned about the security of this account? Or as my wife says "Lighten up it will adjust itself,they are probably working on something" Thanks for any insight!

Answer:
It may depend on how obsessively you've checked the stats. I think if you refresh the home page / performace reports page very frequently, as in every few minutes, then sometimes the older information gets displayed, rather than the most up-to-date. I don't know how it works, but I certainly seen that happen in Analytics a few times, and once with AdSense (when I had an inexplicable spike in traffic, so I was keeping an eye out for both stats every few minutes). Check the impression figures, as well as the earnings, and see if they also oscillate.

Otherwise, another plausible explanation is that Google has deemed some of the clicks invalid, and has deducted the amount. To be honest, I don't know how quickly AdSense does that adjustment, but it's a possibility.

I think your wife's got it right, and it's best to listen to her advice. Unless there is something drastically wrong, then I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Other Answer:
Sometimes they do determine that a click or clicks were invalid after they were already recorded in Adsense (it's why they use estimated earnings & don't finalize them until after the month is over) but it also states in the terms & conditions that if an adwords advertiser defaults on their payment Google has the right to take back those earnings that they din't get paid for. A variation of the old everybody"s favorite contract phrase of "Paid if Paid".