Forum Moderators: martinibuster
What's going on with this?
On a totally unrealted note: I even found a MFA with a misspelling of my website's domain name! There's success for you.
Paul Green
(MFA if you don't know, I didn't, are "Made for Adsense" they aren't really websites just pages of Adsense ads).
I say ban them simply because they try to poach high-value traffic for the least possible click price. I can't fathom how that could be beneficial to me.
P.S. Forget about the 200 domain limit until you actually hit your head on it. You may never get there.
I am one of those banging my head on a limit...
If I remove them all from the filter my incom goes from 3.9 to 2.5k monthly!
Every time it drops I find yet more crappy mfa ads. Or fake search engines, aff ads, form filling crap, yahoo ads, etc.
Ban everything that does not directly sell a product or service. That way even if income does not go up, the masses will not despise adsense ads and click back everytime they find an adsense ad... Its only time! And why would you share the advertisers limited budget with a mfa (no content) site?
my observation is, that when blocking at least the big fish (e.g. ebay affiliates), my ctr drops consistently about 30-40%(!)
that doesn't provide me more overall earnings, rather less, since epc climbs only slightly afterwards.
i am very surprised that people click so often on crap ads. of course, that is part of their success.
gives me an insight on wich kind of users actually react on ads at all: people, who are misdirected to my site and find no useful information.
if they click they seem to be absolutely inattentive and random in what they click. quality ads are mostly more specialized and therefore overall more unattractive for click-and-exit-happy users. so they click on the catchy crap that is offering anything and nothing.
There was a recent post somewhere where they we talking about how internet users make instantaneous decisions - and these misleading ads just attract more attention because they promise you EXACTLY what you are looking for and all the have is one line of text with ADS to either more LIES or some actual advertisers who are selling products or services or provide valuable information.
Now if you ask me how Google can figure out what is valuable content and what is not. A simple answer to that is remove pages with one line content with Google / Yahoo ads. It is very very easy to distinguish between an MFA and a good website and Google will do well if they remove this non-sense which will surely ensure they longevity of the program and the internet content business.
The only thing that will stop MFAs is something that will make it not profitable for them to exist.
The only thing that will stop MFAs is something that will make it not profitable for them to exist.
Yes. By legit publishers starting adwords accounts and playing MFAs at their own game.
The reason MFA ads have a higher ctr has been touched on in this thread already, and it's something I have been saying for a while now. The people that write the ads are very good at writing sexy ad copy. If you see their ads in a block with 3 boring ones, theirs is the one they will click. I've tried this myself as an advertiser. When I've deliberately written copy to attract clicks, then I've got them!
The reasons I say the algo is seriously flawed is that in placing the ads, it takes no notice of historical data on YOUR site - what ads work, and what ads don't. If it did, it would realise that the ads I allow to stay are the ones that will provide the best payout - not the MFA's the adsense bot continually replaces my good payers with.
I started blocking MFA's last July, and have never looked back. I've yet to reach the ceiling of 200. I do go through the list occasionally and remove sites that no longer exist, or have been booted out.
I think Google should realise that people use the block list to correct their stupid algorithm and provide us with better tools to manage what ads we show. What I'd like to see is:-
1, the limit increased to 500 or whatever we asked them to set the limit at.
2, a screen that shows all of our block list along with an indication of if the domain is still live and if Google still serves ads to it. That way we can manage our lists a lot easier than we can now.
3, the facility to "Block all ads from this advertiser" facility just like Fastclick have.
I'd like to see the facility of a list of all ads that have been shown on our site worldwide. It's impossible to know this currently, but I guess they will never give us this.
What a horrible idea!
Great point.
Smart pricing has shifted too much over in favour of advertisers in my opinion. Google seem to be rewarding advertisers who can crank out misleading ad copy with a high ctr, while advertisers with good budgets but bland (honest) copy seem to be penalised.
EXACTLY! today i stumbled across this gem, take a look at their "terms of service" page:
"By accessing blahblah dot com, you also certify and attest that you are not affiliated with any local, state or federal law enforcement agency. If you are, you are not permitted to proceed past this page and must leave immediately."
not an mfa, but does that sound legit to you?... the problem is that the adwords people don't appear to ever check out the advertisers, so it's left up to the publishers to police the scum from adsense.
