europeforvisitors - 4:13 pm on Jul 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

They are also very interested in Adsense/Adwords revenue... much more so than search results I would expect. Makes me wonder what their shareholders might see in their next earnings report if this dropped site thing is as big as I think it is.

Why would dropped directory or scraper sites have a negative effect on AdSense/AdWords revenues?

If mysite.com drops in the SERPs, yoursite.com or anothersite.com will move up to take its place. And if Google is correct in its assumption that yoursite.com or anothersite.com is more relevant to the user than mysite.com was, then its AdSense clicks will probably convert better and will yield more revenue for Google because of smaller "smart pricing" discounts to advertisers.

Now, it's possible that some of the dropped sites that have been discussed here are high-quality sites that don't have duplicate content, don't use automated page-generation or link-submission scripts, and will be missed by users if they aren't in the SERPs. If that's the case, and if the problem is widespread enough to be noticed by users, then presumably Google will identify the collateral damage and try to fix it (just as it's done with other types of sites in other updates). But the process may take time: Google doesn't move at breakneck speed, and a number of us watched our sites or individual pages go missing for months.