Forum Moderators: martinibuster
What is your opinion of these ads? Do you think they are given higher priority because of the volume they represent to AdSense?
I'm wondering if blocking them would allow more targeted advertising to be displayed. What do you think?
THESE ADS ARE FROM EBAY AFFILIATES.... NOT EBAY!I think you should give up on the theory that these are affiliates. It aint happening, affiliates cannot do what ebay ads do without getting wacked. Also the volume of them is very high. There may be *some* ads under high paying keywords that are affiliates, but the global word blankets (like dead cats) are not affiliates.
All the "dead cats" for Ebay are gone now, but I looked at them before they disappeared. Most said "aff" and went through CJ links. They were definitely affiliates.
I've looked at other similar keywords and most are obviously affiliate links. The only one I'm not sure about goes through adfarm.mediaplex.com then redirects to search.ebay.com. That might be Ebay. But all the rest of them are all affiliates.
Why do people think it's so inconceivable that affiliates are doing this?
All the "dead cats" for Ebay are gone now
Affliates doing this don't last long. Just because the affliates do it too does not rule out ebay doing this type of thing. Obviously somebody at ebay read this (or google) and are taking steps to stop this sort of thing.
My search of "dead cats" turned up a yahoo account, and viewing source did not seem to be an affiliate...
It always makes me smile to read "Compare prices on Dead Cats" lol
;)
Try this:
used tampons
in google and read the sponsors. You are right on this mark btw, these say aff.
I still think ebay does this enmass, but this one was too funny not to share.
;)
Yes, I did. After Rytis' enlightening comments a few days ago on the second page of this thread, I started eliminating not only the mentioned biggies, and MANY of those labled affiliates (after reviewing the destination page), but also another group which I like to call "Traffic Suckers" (TS). They're easy to spot because they are usually long domain names (or generic domains like "adsense-traffic-central.com/#*$!/yyy/zzz",) the title of the ads are very specific to your site or title and they go to obviously "made-for-adsense" pages usually deep within a domain structure and invariably have only one paragraph of text highly targeted to the most profitable term in the category (i.e. top-of-the-line blue widgets vs. just plain widgets). I would have swore the ads were written to target certain of our high traffic pages specifically, as they don't show up on lesser trafficked inside pages. Just from the construct it is obvious they aren't making money other than via Adsense clicks, so they obviously are also paying only the bare minimum bids.
Our PPC has been in a steady slow decline as more of these have popped up all over our site over the last month. In the last two days since I started deleting them, (a constant job, since more seem to pop up from where they came from) our pay per click shot up literally 50%! I really don't know that I want to put them back to test the reverse part of the theory. Maybe on a low traffic day for just one day.
Anyone try the experiment I asked about above? Before and after?
I tried blocking about 20 sites, but I just kept finding more and more junk ads. I was hoping that I could "peel back" this layer to reveal some good targetted ads, but my site must be a magnet for this kind of spamming. Now I guess I'll just see what affect the new AdWords policy has on my earnings.
I stongly feel that the new AdWords policy shows that Google's decision to allow this kind of generic spamming backfired on them in a huge way. I bet they got tons of complaints. When I pointed out my massive drop in revenue and they suggested that I change my ad colors, etc. But now I know it's because my site was spammed with generic junk ads that no one in their right mind would ever click on.
Well, that was an intersting learning curve for all of us.
It looks like Google took down Sponsored Ads for "dead pets". None appeared here at least.
The still offer affiliate sites if you Google for Dead Cats though. 3 of them go to the same site:
" Free Dead Cats
Take $250 for Dead Cats
& more, completely free. Aff.
www.consumer#*$!xpromotions.com "
I clicked on each one to make sure. Is that OK?
- (somebody else)
Search for nothing now!
Nothing for sale.
Nothing at Amazon.ca
Nothing on eBay.
Google should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this. Let's hope it's over soon.
I clicked on each one to make sure. Is that OK?
Step 1:
Ok say it with me "I will never, ever, ever again click an adsense ad."
Step 2:
Repeat step 1 20 thousand times.
Strangely, all but one bodily function slang I typed in brought up an -aff add, mostly offers to sell them on eBay.
In our case they were getting PLENTY of click traffic, because they were well (enticingly) written and very targeted to our pages, but A. They were obviously paying only the bare minimum bid. B. They were pushing out many much higher paying, albeit not as well written, ads. C. They often did NOT have what they advertised (or occasionally listed just affiliate ads, or "compare widgets at these sources") and were simply "written for adsense" pages with a dozen high-bidding adsense links. So THEY were getting the readers and high-paying click thrus while we were getting squat for sending them there! Meanwhile our ex-readers, are clicking on ad (on our page) after ad (on someone elses page), and still not actually FINDING what they are looking for. I experimented following this path (by clicking adsense preview tool links of ads on the pages I arrived at) and ended up visiting 5 or 6 sites before finding a site that actually sold the item the first one advertised!
I think GAd allowing both selling and bidding on clicks is their worst idea to date. They should ban pages like this, that do nothing but list other adsense ads, from bidding on adwords.
And yes, we have to browse through almost once a day and see what new ones have sprung up, especially on the most highly trafficed pages,lthough we are lazy and usually just wait until we see the daily channel reports showing a marked drop in avg PPC. But it's well worth the effort, when you see the average PPC on that page/channel quadruple the very next day and the CPM jump, with only a very minor drop in CTR! I thought GAd's algorithm was supposed to take this into account and only put up lesser paying ads, if the CTRxPPC was better... or maybe it DOES. If we were getting 4x the CTR it would be a different decision, but that isn't happening on OUR site... but perhaps they are advantageous for Adsense over all...?
LOL, that's extremely entertaining to search! Although the best ones were conspicuously missing as of today (e.g. "F-rt" and "stinky F-rts") but sp-t is still good while it's rhyming partner sh-- is barely worth a twitter. (b-rf) on the other hand brought up mostly dogfood ads for some reason?
I also found over a dozen offers to buy the "Brooklyn Bridge", (and even some for "republicans", although more for used "democrats", and way too many "politicians" for sale to count!), a couple for "human organs" and "dirty underware" which I thought was dis-allowed on ebay now anyway, but only two for the "London Bridge" :(, and even, amusingly, one for 'Sexy "Swampland" Singles', but none to buy "swampland".
