URL filter now more important than ever?

Removing junk ads = higher EPC?

[JohnKelly]

With the new pricing scheme for AdSense which takes into account conversion rates, it would seem that filtering out junk ads (ebay, pricegrabber, etc.) would be more important than ever to obtain a higher EPC. Junk ads would convert less, which would cause Google to reduce your EPC over time.

Perhaps Google also takes into account the average site "conversion" when making EPC adjustments? For example, a well-converting site may get a higher EPC on a normally very low-converting junk ad than a site which normally gets a low conversion rate to begin with. In other words, dumping junk ads could possibly help increase EPC for *all* ads on your site, over time.

I may be stating the obvious here... but if Google is now cutting our revenue we can only return the favor and drop advertisers who can't convert for us :)

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I'm seeing a lot of search engine submission ads on my sites (not related to search engines), plus language study ads. Are these considering junk, or some kind of run-of-site ads?

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[Roomy]

Funny you should mention it but I have been using the url filter for the first time in 6 months, especially When I start seeing urls like "100thingsyoushouldknowabout..."

Interestingly I am seeing replacement ads that I have never seen before and they look quite good. Now having filtered out several suspect urls my CTR and CPC has improved. How about banning every url you see and slowly introducing them back and seeing which perform best. Like running adwords in reverse.

[JohnKelly]

Interesting concept, but my main site is a web directory so that would be an impossibly huge task. Smaller niche sites might do well with your idea.

If there are any known spammy ads like the ebay and pricegrabber examples that tend to pop up all over the place it would be good to know.

[Graham]

Lets also hope that Google increase the amount of URL's that you are allowed to filter (200 at present).

Having previously (Pre April Fools Day) not had too much need to use this, I am now constantly having to check and remove 'totally unrelated' ads.

[Sunflux]

I agree, if they insist on sending all these inappropriate ads my way since April Foogles day, they ought to up the limit - signifiantly. And, so make it so entries are NOT case sentitive, and so that something like *widget* matches "www.widget.com", "www.widget.ca" and "100thingsyouneedtoknowaboutwidgets.com".