Newbie vs MFA

[PowerUp]

Hi, I've read in almost every thread there's this thing called MFA. And judging by the tone, MFA is a bad thing. So how do I block MFA? Do I have to visit those ads and note down their URL and block them one by one? Or is there a keyword that I can use to block all these MFA ads without putting the URL one by one.

Also, how do you identify which site is an MFA and which is not?

[Khensu]

Easy,

When the ads outweigh the content or the content looks canned and just there to support the ads, it is a MFA.

[fearlessrick]

PowerUp, MFA stands for "Made For Adsense." In other words, a site which has but one purpose: to display Adsense ads and derive revenue from them. To some degree, we are all MFA, but the real culprits are easy to spot. They have little content, loads of ad space. Some so-called directories are MFAs.

Most professionals around here will tell you to write good content, do good SEO and play by the rules. That's how to beat the MFAs.

[treeline]

Hey PowerUp,

MFA means Made For Adsense. As in, the site wouldn't exist if adsense didn't because it has no intrinsic value and nobody would bother. Since these spammy sites can attract some search engine traffic, and there's nothing to click but ads, (and Google obligingly sells the ads for them) they unfortunately make some money. This just encourages them.

If you're buying ads, it may be that some appear on sites like this and that you're helping to finance the whole spamming mess. What you can do is limited. If you figure out that one of these sites is carrying your ads, I think you can restrict a certain number of sites, but probably not enough to solve the problem. If there were an easy way to block them all, such as a keyword, the sites wouldn't still be around.

I'm not using adsense - someone else have the process for blocking a site? How many can you block?

[milanmk]

You can block MFA by Competitive Ad Filters [google.com] and as far as i know it has a limit of 200 url's.

Milan

[Green_Grass]

"Do I have to visit those ads and note down their URL and block them one by one? "

You got it... Just don't click on the ads.

If the site is www.xyz.com/ddd put xyz.com in the competitive ad filter to block all ads from this MFA.

The effect of this filtering is felt after a few hours so have patience..

Sometimes if you block all MFA's and have too many ad blocks on your pages , you will get PSA's ... This is worse for revenue so strike a balance and donot go over board.

[david_uk]

By blocking, you will see different ads appearing in a few hours but don't expect immediate financial improvement. It may take smart pricing a while to put a different value on your site. The immediate effect for me was that the ctr lowered by well over half, but the higher value of the new ads made up for that, so my earnings didn't drop. Then the epc gradually rose and so did my earnings. It took a couple of months to fully recover from the low point when I started blocking MFA's, but my EPC has been stable for a few months now. OK - some spectacular daily ups and downs but the monthly figure is generally pretty stable, and considerably better than the low point. There is a theory here (one I subscribe to) that one of the long term effects of raising your smart pricing status by blocking is that this effecively prices most MFA's off of your site. I stress that it is unproven, but in my case I spend very little time blocking these days.

There is another theory that by having multiple ad blocks on a page, or ad blocks that don't perform you are going to get a lot more MFA's showing, and that will in turn lower your site's value and make blocking more difficult. By having less ad space available you are more likely to show just the top payers after blocking. Removing ad blocks that don't work is pretty much accepted as a way to increase earnings, but as ever people's mileage varies depending on site, visitors etc.

My tip for effective blocking is to only block the MFA's you see on your site, as the filter clogs up very soon. Some here advocate blocking using the preview tool, and that may indeed help. IMHO it might help to clog the filter quickly, but not effectively. The preview tool shows ads "Based on standard targeting", so may show ads that will never get selected for your site, and I have seen ads show in it that have been blocked for months. It frequently doesn't show ads I can see on my site with the correct geotargeting selected. However, it's very useful for getting the url to block.

As well as ads that appear on the site, I tend to look at what ads show up on Google search pages for my keywords and block them. It's a fair bet that they might get selected.

The other tip is don't be in a rush to block all and every ad. Some of them only ever appear the once, so I tend to wait and see if they are seen again. Be conservative with blocking, and go through the list regularly to remove the sites that are no longer online, or no longer serving ads.

Obviously choosing the ads to block is the difficult bit. It's something you have to develop a gut instinct for. I block if they don't have products or services to sell, or are a genuine information site. If they have been set up purely to engage in arbitrage (some have good content, some have none) then they go.

Just block slowly, and sensibly and see how it goes.