Forum Moderators: martinibuster
From the Inside AdSense:Tip 2: Don't believe the myth about blocking 'low-paying advertisers'
Our auction system automatically selects the best performing ads for each page to help you earn the most possible money. This is especially true with our new expanded text ads. By filtering ads you think are low paying, you could actually be cutting out the most optimized ads and decreasing your revenue potential. Each ad that is filtered is one less bid in the auction, lowering the price for the winning ad on your site. You benefit most when there is a larger pool of advertisers competing for a place on your site. Additionally, when we calculate the auction, we take ad clickthrough rates (CTR) into account - an ad with a $0.25 cost-per-click (CPC) with a 5% CTR is more valuable than an ad with a $1.00 CPC but a 0.1% CTR.
From the AdWords Help "How are ads ranked": [adwords.google.com]
Keyword-targeted ads are ranked on search results and content pages based on their maximum cost-per-click (CPC) and Quality Score. (For the top positions above Google search results, we use the actual CPC.) The Quality Score is determined by the keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR), relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors.
Ad Rank = CPC X Quality Score
Having relevant keywords and ad text, a high CPC, and a strong CTR will result in a higher position for your ad. Because this ranking system rewards well-targeted, relevant ads, you cannot be locked out of the top position as you would be in a ranking system based solely on price.
Do the people who write this stuff live in the real world?
Google *should* be aware that blocking in fact DOES increase income for many of us, hence the official blurb is misleading, and innacurate.
It's interesting that they are admitting that they don't target ads based on bid price - something that has been said in this forum repeatedly. Many people believe that Google targets the highest bidding ads. Google don't seem in too much of a hurry to correct this misunderstanding.
The other point is that the data they use on ad performance is how the ads perform ON THE NETWORK AS A WHOLE and NOT how they perform on your site - a massive difference IMHO.
The difficulty that Google's targetting algorythm causes is that it often removes ads it thinks are low paying, and replaces them with ads it thinks are high paying. These decisions are based on performance on OTHER WEBSITES - not yours! If your website is about bright orange widgets with stripes, then logically ads trying to sell bright orange widgets with stripes would be the obvious choice. However, as they don't perform well elsewhere on the network the chances of you seeing them are lessened - despite the fact that they may perform very well on your site! And if you DO see them, the chances of them being removed and replaced by something irrelevant are high!
Many of us here have highly focussed websites, and many of us here are experienced webmasters that know where our traffic comes from, why they come and what ads might or might not appeal to our visitors.
We know that having ads that are highly irrelevant will not work for either advertisers or us. However, the target bot gets it spectacularly wrong quite often. For example, my website is aimed at middle aged family men, and Goole has been targetting acne cream adverts. Therefore we block wrongly targetted ads.
So what ads do Google replace the good payers that work on YOUR site with? Yup, you guessed it - scrapers mostly.
Scrapers do have a higher CTR than genuine advertisers selling goods and services, therefore they do well in the quality score. However, they are of no use to anyone because they don't pay well. They can't! What they are trying to achieve is siphon traffic off cheaply, and get visitors to click on more expensive ads on their site. Ever noticed that scrapers very often block other scrapers from appearing on their sites? Google's algorythm allows them to do this by placing their higher ctr ads instead of real advertisers selling goods and services.
They did it to me again yesterday. One of my regulars was removed and replaced with a site having an adsense block, an adwords block and another adsense block just to make sure! In addition, it had a big ebay ad offering new and used vasectomy reversals. Content? Scraped. These ads DO NOT pay well - remove them.
What Google aren't saying is what the long term effect of allowing their chosen placements of scrapers does. EPC will slide, and smartpricing will downgrade your site for the good payers too. Therefore, an advertiser that is willing to pay well for a quality lead THAT YOUR SITE IS PROVIDING THEM WITH only pays marginally above minimum.
By keeping scrapers off, my EPC has risen sixfold over the last two months since I have been blocking some of the stupid placements and all made for adsense sites. Bottom line income is up by 30% plus and rising. I'm seeing genuine advertisers, and although they don't have such a high CTR as the scrapers, they pay WAY more, and smartpricing now thinks my site is worth a lot more than it did when it was carrying the scrapers and junk adsense chose to place.
[edited by: Jenstar at 1:23 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2005]
I'll do my best to respond, particularly regarding the Inside AdSense post which I believe contains good advice for the majority of publishers. However, my perspective on filter lists is based on experience providing support to the overall publisher base, so these are general observations and may not apply to specific cases such as david_uk's.
The reason AdSense offers filters to publishers is to give you more control over the ads appearing on your site. We know you work hard building the content and reputations of your sites. With this in mind, it sounds like david_uk is using filter lists exactly as they were intended:
1) He is judiciously blocking ads from *specific* advertisers that, for a variety of reasons, he does not want appearing on his site.
2) He has *tested* the results of his filters to ensure they are not negatively impacting his site's revenue potential. To quote Bryan from the Inside AdSense post:
This might not be true for all publishers, but you should test first so that you know the actual effects before unintentionally reducing your AdSense revenue.
The important thing to remember is that the algorithm takes a wide array of information into account each time it selects ads to appear on a page of your site, and it's usually right about which ads will perform best. Of course, technology cannot fully replace the expertise each of you have acquired when it comes to your own users. This is why we provide filters.
Lastly, I want to reiterate that testing - and by this I mean testing over several weeks rather than on a day-by-day basis - is extremely important to filtering smartly.
-ASA
He is a competitor in a way, a very strong way. I left him though. He is paying dearly for that decision. We are getting $20-25 ppc on his ads.
I let his run with it? Why? Because he is doing more or less what I did several years ago, before my business evolved to a higher level. Unless he evolves, he will never really be a threat to me. Beside, I have the home field advantage, which he is unlikely to overcome. So... I let him pay me $20-25 ppc.
This is where thinking about who you block, thinking very seriously, can really pay off. You really have to do the math, before you add the blocked url. Don't just block them because they compete at some level. Unless you prefer Happy Meals to caviar.
If Google thinks about it for a minute, adsense is a product for the end consumer too. Consumers often want to see "similar sites" to the one they're on. They will "use" the adsense system if it provides the end consumer a service. If they keep finding fabulous urls from the ads, they will click the ads more frequently. If instead they keep finding variations on the MFA theme, they will hesitate more and more. Systemwide.
Junk is for short term hits. Quality is to build a lasting foundation. What does google really want here?
It seems to be the same with serps most here can understand G implementing new filters to try to stay ahead but as often as not as many genuine webmasters are hit as are the spammers
Should G honestly have a rethink on strategy re more manual intervention on adwords adsense and serps and accept that they may be many PHD's but PHD can be considered experts and we all know what "experts" really stands for
sorry for the rant
long time G supporter but more and more I see serps full of nothing more than addresses dominating results as it's easier to SEO a page of addresses than it is to SEO good old fashioned content
steve
Yes, the ads blocking is necessary, check the ads carefully especially those constantly appear on your website.
Filtering those scrapers and irrelevant ads help a lot on the revenues and the users.
I thought Google were keen to prevent webmasters from doing this, hence if you click on an Adsense advertiser - to genuinely check the site is suitable to advertise on your site - you get accused of fraud and lose all unpaid monies owed (according to the terms and conditions).
Matt
I thought Google were keen to prevent webmasters from doing this, hence if you click on an Adsense advertiser - to genuinely check the site is suitable to advertise on your site - you get accused of fraud and lose all unpaid monies owed (according to the terms and conditions).
Nooooooo - you DON'T click on the ads! Use the adsense preview tool! You can then click through to the ad without a click being recorded, and you can get the URL of where the ad goes to.
If you can't see the ad listed on the preview tool, right click on the ad and click "Copy Shortcut". Paste this into a new browser window and strip out all the extraneous crap to leave just the URL the ad goes to and then you can check the ad without a click being made.
