Forum Moderators: martinibuster
These people are hurting honest publishers in:
- Taking away visitors for pennies
- Paying pennies where you could make more
- Reducing our CTR and income
- Affecting visitors' trust in your sites
- Wasting everyone's time (visitors and publishers)
You can argue that Google provided the means to block those, but its like G opening the window and arming you with a tiny fly swatter, given the sheer number of pages you can have on your site and multiply that with the number of countries available for Geo Targeting, the task is almost impossible.
You can argue that they do generate some income, but 3 to 10 cents a click is about the maximum they can give, and if you think your content and time is not worth more than that, think again.
These people will target your site, and use every trick in the TOS to lower their pay, while honest retailers whose ads are 100 times more relevant to your content are being shouldered out!
The point for this long post is to ask:
- Why in the world is Google not finding them fast
- Why is Google allowing them in the first place
Their pattern is very easy to identify, the media partners bot does scan their pages right?
- What happens when you click the "Ads by Goooogle" link and report them?
- How come they are making money in the first place, if they are "exploiting a market inefficiency" as some here put it, why isn't big G analyzing those inefficiencies and sending more money our way and theirs?
- What is stopping Google from giving us an opt out option for ads that lead into pages containing AdSense?
- Does Google really stand to make more money if they seriously combat MFA?
Want to hear your views on this.
- Why in the world is Google not finding them fast
- Why is Google allowing them in the first place
Their pattern is very easy to identify, the media partners bot does scan their pages right?
Because it's money for Google. We might not like them, Google makes money out of that.
- What happens when you click the "Ads by Goooogle" link and report them?
You hear a little "click". Absolutely nothing else
- How come they are making money in the first place, if they are "exploiting a market inefficiency" as some here put it, why isn't big G analyzing those inefficiencies and sending more money our way and theirs?
It takes manual optimization of keywords.
You could do that if you had time, and knowledge.
Perhaps, you prefer to spend your time putting up good contents. That's G's reward for this.
- What is stopping Google from giving us an opt out option for ads that lead into pages containing AdSense?
Opting out? why should they give YOU more control?
- Does Google really stand to make more money if they seriously combat MFA?
No, MFAs are smart enough to lucrate on different keywords.
Let's say I have a MFA mesothelioma site.
I am getting nice, high-paying ads but no taffic.
Can I put adwords for "mesothelioma" and make money of that? certainly not, I am going to pay my clicks too much.
But if I put adwords on keywords like "shortness of breath", pay 2-3 cents a click and get a CTR of 10% then I am making money.
Google profits of this too so - for as much we might hate this - this is going to go on..
Want to hear your views on this.
Must be associated with an Adwords account in addition to the AdSense account, one is always and only linking to another
Many on our sites are Overture / Yahoo listings.
My table of content pages all look similar to search result pages. How else should a table of content page look like?
6- Will not be updated often
Some domains like my main domain from 1997
and the conversion of my book to a web site had been not updated for years.
You see, 2 of Your 8 points are found on my sites also. Combating MFA only based on computer algortihm is very difficult.
I would compare it with bombing only military targets in a city only based on satellite pictures. With some unluck, You hit right the chinese embassy. (This happened already to the US in Beograd some years ago)
I was going to ask this question in another thread, but since you brought it up:
- Did any publisher here experience income boost by blocking sites that are full of affiliate links for overture, ebay, travelovity, tripadvisor..?
frox:
>Let's say I have a MFA mesothelioma site.
>I am getting nice, high-paying ads but no taffic
If they are so good in building content & optimizing isn't the system broke if the next logical thing for them is to game it rather than go the extra mile of making their sites useful with good incoming links and earn rather than buy traffic?
What do they know that I don't that gets them those "high-paying ads"? Skill knowledge and time? I doubt it, I build authority sites, optimized and useful,I do not have to buy any traffic.
I hear a lot in this forum people saying it is impossible to know how much individual advertisers are paying, Google tells you not to block many as some could be your best payers, buy obviously those MFA owners know better, they know exactly how much is paid and where.
9- Blocked by too many authority sites
10- Long URL or deep landing pages
11- Many .ws domains ;)
12- Many limited to specific industries:
Insurance, Travel, Hotels, Drugs, Recruiting, Calling Cards, Loans, Mortgage...
Put a weight on each of those points and any site reaching a threshold warrants a manual investigation, it that too much?
They will probably continue to not care unless the bad press associated with the issue starts to cost them more negative plublicity than it is worth.
Also it would not hard to mix RSS feeds, shopping offers, and do other stuff like that to create self generating dynamic always changing type for AdSense sites.
I think there are algorithms to detect non content for profit sites, but I also think Google's techniques are probably better than the competitions.
I bet there are many sites that are banned in Google organic that still have AdSense on them. Banned sites can use AdWords.
Are drugs illegal in the United States?
Yes.
Does government arrest people for selling drugs?
Yes.
Why does not government entirely stop drugs?
?
Do you see the point? Google has TOS and they enforce it, may be not as strictly as some would want. Some people would say they don't enforce TOS at all, but we know they do because people complain about sites that have word "gun" being banned even though they aren't about guns.
How people selling drugs in the United States or other country prevent me from making money and leaving healthy? I don't do drugs and I am fine.
Do you seriously think that MFAs can be stopped? And if they can't be stopped or, more appropriately it's not very likely that all MFAs will be shut down, why spend your time on this issue? MFAs don't really prevent you from making more money. I am yet to hear from a successful AdSense publisher of high caliber (like Joel Comm or Darren Rowse) that the fact that MFAs are out there somehow prevent them from making money with AdSense. I simply don't see the point about asking the question "Why does not Google stop MFAs?" It's like asking "Why does US Government allow illegal immigrants come from Mexico?" If it happens, it happens.
Because Google profits from the MFAs. As a result, they not only allow them to flourish. They are creating their reason for exsitence. These sites are spam. They are polluting the Internet.
Oh the irony. Google became popular because they beat AltaVista at detecting spammy pages and finding relevant pages. Only to turn around and find a way to profit from and by default create the worst spam problem in the history of communication.
What I am trying to suggest is to look inside and forget about "them". Think "me". What can I do?
DZCap, I have very strange feeling what you misunderstand some concepts. I truely believe that diversification is the only way to go. Diversification means that you'd invest some money in stocks, some in bonds, some in junk bonds, some in options, some in REITs, some in tax sheltered annuities, etc.
If you invest in 100 different junk bonds or 100 different meat packer companies, it does not mean you are diversified. If you start several sites a week and still get 1 cent a click, it means that you misunderstand what diversification is. If you believe that Google is punishing you, look for income sources beyond Google. Trying to find a person responsible for your misfortune (some evil Google employee who smartpriced you), won't do any good.
- Did any publisher here experience income boost by blocking sites that are full of affiliate links for overture, ebay, travelovity, tripadvisor..?
Every time our EPC goes down I check to see which pages (through channels) are giving the lowest EPC and do checks with the Preview tool. I immediately block any MFA or MFO/Y sites. Within hours the EPC starts to rise.
I blocked a bunch last week and this weekend we have had great numbers.
We do not block Tripadvisor as they are very active in our market and will bid quite high. We definately block eBay affiliates.
Relatively speaking, the US spends a ton of money fighting crime while Google does nothing against MFA's. In fact, Google's system helps MFA's flourish.
Taco Bell, although not your "fine restaurant", provides an amazing service for the price.
I'd like to think most agree that in the end, it is in Google's best interest to minimize the effect that MFA's have in Adsense and the SERPS.
Bottom Line
MFA's steal. MFA's waste time. MFA's have no value.
1) They make AdSense less sttractive to advertisers, users, and publishers;
2) Like their predecessors (boilerplate affiliate sites), they threaten the quality of Google's search results.
But purging the search index and the AdSense network of MFA sites isn't our job--it's Google's.
Haven't you ever seen any quality MFAs? I have many.
What can I say? The world is gray.
Cheers
Haven't you ever seen any quality MFAs? I have many.
I haven't- none!
farmboy
We have sent a follow-up and have identified ourselves as both advertisers and publishers.
We'll see what happens.
Yes, MFA accounts do get shut down after a while..
Did the people who came here and reported their accounts were closed because of MFA provide any details - what was on their page, did AdSense specify the reason the account was closed, etc?
farmboy
I reported a large site on Oct. 7 that has no content - just AdSense. On checking it is still exactly the same 5 weeks later...
I've found (and reported) several of those by following ads that have appeared on my sites. One really bad site I first reported about 8 months ago and reported again several times since. I'm usually not a self-appointed police officer but I thought reporting these type things were the right thing to do for the integrity of the system.
After noticing that nothing happened to the site and reading numerous reports of other people making similar reports with no response, I essentially became discouraged and no longer report such sites. What's the point?
farmboy
I see you on my content, I will knock that dzcap off your dzhead :)
Thanks Tropical Island for the tip on other affiliate links.
I don't think you work for Google. But I do think you're making excuses for them assuming they are taking care of things they aren't.
EFV, I finally agree with you on something about this topic :)
