Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Obviously even junk pages take work to put up and most only do it for the money.
So have we defined junk pages?
Those filled with adsense and affiliate links?
Scrapped or non-original content?
A site with no value?
Even a quality page can have some duplicate content and the webmaster may try to monetize these quality pages.
But google wants a better web and so if broadly the above is the target some sites close to it will get hit.
My site recently dropped 10-15 places on a search term that no-one other than me seo for - its my brand name.
I have always been at the top no#1.
The change I made to the site was to add an adsense to every page.
So I guess in the google-bots eyes the site is now cheap and attempting to monetise and gets a penalty.
Of course I reversed this immediately and will wait and see. The effect overall is 70% decrease in traffic.
I can only imagine what would happen if google penalised adsense (like it seems to have done here), the web once again my be an intellectual, informative and original arena.
So my question is how can google operate adsense and search results without shooting itself in the foot?
What is the lesser of two evils?
if google penalised adsense (like it seems to have done here)
There wouldn't be any logic to such a move -- Adsense just can't work if publishers don't get traffic. The whole model would fall apart. However, you are a correct to think in terms of "signals of quality".
Of course I reversed this immediately and will wait and see. The effect overall is 70% decrease in traffic.
I'd had AdSense ads on my site for nearly two years when I lost 70-75% of my Google referrals in late March.
I left the ads in place, and my site recovered two months later during the next major Google update.
So maybe the best way to see your Google referrals come back is not to touch a thing.
Or maybe (and this is far more likely) the presence of AdSense ads on your pages and your drop in Google's rankings are nothing but coincidence.
