How Can you Tell an Advertiser is an MFA... Without Clicking the Ad?

[Opera14]

I would like to filter MFAs, however, how do I determine which ads are MFAs if it is deemed fraudulent to click on my ads?

[Nikke]

Right click on the link.
Select the appropriate item from the meny: something like select link target.

Paste it into a text document. Remove all the tracking code and just leave the landing url.

Paste it into your browser.

Tedious stuff, but worth it.

[jikel morten]

Adsense preview tool:

[google.com...]

[Nitrous]

USING the tool.

Choose UK, US, Canada. Areas. Thats the majority of the advertisers/sites/money.

Go through every single page you have.

If you find an advertiser that has a site with any ads or aff. links at all then generally they are buying traffic from you and getting more in return from the SAME advertisers that are on your site. They represent an extra layer so ban them.

Plus... Legit genuine advertisers have a real tangible product or service to sell. And usually a telephone number prominently displayed. No number? Ban them. No product? Ban them.

This procedure has upped my income by over a third, while giving my visitors a better exoperience so they return, and given adsense a higher credibility at the same time meaning better future income and clicks as confidence returns!

And advertisers hate mfas too! So they bid less or switch off the content network because of them. So you do everyone a favour.

When you find one (and you will!) in the tool, do this:

Tick the "show url" box.
Use only the widget.com part.
Dont use www, or http, or anything after the .com bit!

Copy and paste this into the filter.
Once the filters full you are buggered! Email google, explain your problem. They will send you an email saying that they are looking at better tools or larger filter.

Think of it like this. If all your ads were mfa then where would the income be comming from?
Only advertisers that have a real product or service are adding money into the system. All other sites are taking this. Why allow mfas to ruin the publics confidence in adsense, and your own site, by allowing these sites to take the advertisers budget? REAL content sites should be doing that!

[Andrew Bassett]

Um, why not just read the URL and visit it in your browser? That's what I do.

[Nitrous]

Because this only shows you the ones shown in your locality. That amounts to about 1/5th of them. Mostly a waste of time.

[jatar_k]

Opera14 it is very important for you to understand what makes money for you and not to just

ban them
ban them
ban them
ban them
ban them

unless someone can give some reproducable case studies on why you need to do that.

take advice and use your common sense and intelligence to test what advice works for your situation

Nikke's suggestions on how to view ads is what you are looking for

[mzanzig]

Andrew, the URLs that are part of the ad do not always show you the real site you have to block. A good number of MFAs say "widget.com" in the ad, but the click goes to "widgetcampaigntracker.com" and re-directs to "widget.com". Thus, blocking "widget.com" achieves nothing (i.e. the ad will continue to show up). The domain you need to block is "widgetcampaigntracker.com". And this URL is only conveniently provided by the Preview Tool. By the way, most eBay ads seem to be constructed that way; apparently eBay themselves don't bother with advertising on Google content network.

Also, I recommend to keep track of the owners of a domain name. Many MFAs are using private domain registrations - they know why! And those who provide their names, be in for a surprise how many MFAs are actually run by the same persons/companies.

[Nitrous]

>>>ban them
ban them
ban them
ban them
ban them

unless someone can give some reproducable case studies on why you need to do that.

Err income up 35 percent? Reproducable almost instantly when the list is cleared and reinstated? And I am talking about over 15 real content sites that do around 4k dollars a month.

And for the future good of adsense. I suspect anyone that cannot see this may have a vested interest in the adwords/adsense model. Remember these sites are not adding money into the system, only taking it at the end of the day.