Forum Moderators: martinibuster
These people are hurting honest publishers in:
- Taking away visitors for pennies
- Paying pennies where you could make more
- Reducing our CTR and income
- Affecting visitors' trust in your sites
- Wasting everyone's time (visitors and publishers)
You can argue that Google provided the means to block those, but its like G opening the window and arming you with a tiny fly swatter, given the sheer number of pages you can have on your site and multiply that with the number of countries available for Geo Targeting, the task is almost impossible.
You can argue that they do generate some income, but 3 to 10 cents a click is about the maximum they can give, and if you think your content and time is not worth more than that, think again.
These people will target your site, and use every trick in the TOS to lower their pay, while honest retailers whose ads are 100 times more relevant to your content are being shouldered out!
The point for this long post is to ask:
- Why in the world is Google not finding them fast
- Why is Google allowing them in the first place
Their pattern is very easy to identify, the media partners bot does scan their pages right?
- What happens when you click the "Ads by Goooogle" link and report them?
- How come they are making money in the first place, if they are "exploiting a market inefficiency" as some here put it, why isn't big G analyzing those inefficiencies and sending more money our way and theirs?
- What is stopping Google from giving us an opt out option for ads that lead into pages containing AdSense?
- Does Google really stand to make more money if they seriously combat MFA?
Want to hear your views on this.
Part A
Google does in fact ban (some) MFA sites
Part B
There are companies that have thousands of expired domains with no content and display Google ads and Google does not ban them
What has happenned is that as soon as I see Adsense on a page I immediately get a negative impression of the page. I am sure this is happening to alot of people and this is definitely not going to help with Google's long term success with Adsense.
...and I get very annoyed at the fact that I often have to go 3-4 pages deep in a search to find any sites relating to my search terms that are not MFA's or at best have so little quality content that it's easier to just keep looking that to try to wade through the ads.
Which is exactly why I keep saying that anyone earning a significant portion of their income from AdSense and/or earning a significant portion of their income from "free" search engine traffic should make diversification their number one priority.
Stop putting so many of your eggs in one basket, especially considering the basket has suspect structural characterisitcs.
farmboy
I could actually provide you with real TE site URLs that got dumped, but that would require some time. Plus, if you are an experienced webmaster you probably already know that Google instantly recognized TE pages.
Would WordPress story and TE story provide enough evidence that Google shuts down at least some MFA sites, or are you looking for something else?
You see, here is the trick. I know that drugs are being sold in LA. In fact I know the exact streets where you can buy crack in LA (not that I need to smack some crack right now). I can probably call LAPD hotline and report the exact house where crack is sold and it's still going to be sold there for quite some time. But it does not mean LAPD does not care about drugs, or that it does not catches dope dealers. Same with Google
* Don't click your own ads
I have been saying this ever since AdSense launched. It is amazing how many people don't realize this is a problem even if they are "truly interested" in what is being advertised.
* Don’t ask others to click on Google ads
Again, you'd think this was obvious, but not the the publisher I saw a few months ago with a huge 250x500 pixel image reminding visitors to click at least three ads a day, or else their free access to the site might be gone the following day.
* Don’t employ pop-up prompts or automatic software installations
Sneaky pop-ups containing AdSense or reminders to click the ads have been hitting the radar recently.
* Be aware of how your site is promoted
This seems to be reminding those publishers who are utlizing spyware to promote their site with AdSense ads as being against the AdSense terms and policies.
* Don’t place Google ads on sites that contain prohibited content
I still see AdSense showing up on adult or gambling sites these days.
* Respect Google trademarks
Reminding publishers who are utlizing Google logos etc about their brand guidelines.
* Don’t tamper with the AdSense code
It is always amazing how frequently people change the javascript yet don't realize it is against the AdSense terms.
* Provide a positive user experience
Someone should remind the publisher who bombaded me with eight popups, a full complement of Google ads and about two sentences of keyword spam content on the page.
* Provide a good environment for advertisers
About creating pages advertisers would be happy to see their ads appearing on.
* Be responsive
If Google emails you with an account or policy issue, respond ASAP :)
I would have expected to hear hundreds of stories like that, but at least a few are out there.
Two points:
1. Weren't those all TE related sites?
2. Sometimes the accounts were shut down and sometimes a warning was issued. If anything, this shows there is not a "zero tolerance" policy in effect.
farmboy
Some will answer that they must be lynched, gassed or whatever because they are evil and are destroying the economy for the rest of us.
But I tell you, the answer is deeper than that. The answer is at the heart of this thread.
You should all stop reporting because that's where I am heading next month
I may join you if for nothing else other than learning how those pages perform. But I don't think I'll wait until next month.
farmboy
This analogy is totally flawed David, it is well within Google's means to come down hard on MFA's and close them in a short period and with minimum effort as outlined in this thread (so I will not repeat), this does not compare or even come close to the drugs problem. It is not in any Police's means to (as) easily identify and close down drug operations, this is exactly why it is surprising and annoying webmasters, when you are as big and as respected as Google and you set TOS, you are expected to either abide and live by them or change them.
martinibuster: Really intrested to learn more, please?
[edited by: Hobbs at 8:43 pm (utc) on Nov. 14, 2005]
Now, there is a misdirection of business energy. In the amount of time you took to do that, you could have done something productive on your own site, to increase revenue.
There are thousands of sites that get banned daily.
Could you be more specific?
Are there thousands of sites banned daily from Google search listings or are you saying thousands of sites are banned daily from AdSense?
If the latter, does that mean the entire account/account-holder is banned from AdSense, including other sites in the account?
And with all due respect, how do you know this? Is someone inside AdSense leaking this information, are they issuing press releases, is this an assumption based on anecdotal stories? I do my fair share of reading about various aspects of online business and I certainly don't remember reading many such news stories with specifics.
Thousands a day, assuming the low end of 2 thousand a day means 60,000 per month minimum or almost 3/4 of a million sites annually. That's a lot of activity for so few corresponding credible reports.
farmboy
Thousands a day, assuming the low end of 2 thousand a day means 60,000 per month minimum or almost 3/4 of a million sites annually. That's a lot of activity for so few corresponding credible reports.
To find thousands a day worthy of banning, AdSense employees would have to be reviewing many more than that every day to find those thousands.
If this information is accurate, at some point, you'd think they would just devote all those resources to reviewing all sites for adequate content before AdSense goes active on those sites.
farmboy
Now, there is a misdirection of business energy. In the amount of time you took to do that, you could have done something productive on your own site, to increase revenue.
Or maybe it was a good use of energy over the long run.
Suppose you have a good authoratative sites on widgets and I have a MFA site on widgets with the absolute minimum content.
Advertisers are getting good qualified leads from your AdSense displays and they are encouraged about continuing with AdWords but they are getting a lot of tire kickers from me and thus becoming suspicious of AdWords.
You report me, AdSense closes me down, the advertisers get better results and increase or extend their advertising campaign thus providing you a larger inventory of ads to display.
On the other hand, if you're saying it was a waste of energy because AdSense is not going to respond, I tend to agree with you.
farmboy
Do you or did you once work for Yahoo?
Personally I feel a crusade against spammers is in a different category than a crusade against a race. I'm just not clear if you're tying the two together or have a different point?
Made for AdSense pages (MFA) are very easy to identify with a simple algorithm:
1- Mostly one or less than 5 pages per domain
2- Content % is very low
3- Usually mimic a search results page
4- One account must have many many many of those domains
5- Very common to find several ad units in the same page
6- Will not be updated often
7- Must be associated with an Adwords account in addition to the AdSense account, one is always and only linking to another
8- They mostly have close to zero PR as they run too many domains and getting good incoming links is almost impossible.
And I am sure you can add a few characteristics yourself here...
1. they get traffic from having many pages targeted for lots of keywords, 100's – 1000’s of pages
2. Sometimes gibberish, but still plenty of content
3. true, but so do lots of legit sites
5. not all, most i see have one high paying ad block at the top pushing content down
6. lots use rss or renewable caches and update often.
8. expired domains, auto submitting software, feeder sites, auto generated blogs - probably more PR than many legit sites
Needs a manual review
whenever AdSense does ban one of these, they create 20 more then next day on another account.
whenever AdSense does ban one of these, they create 20 more then next day on another account.
Yes, and then they come here to complain when their EPC drops to a fraction of a penny. :-)
My question still stands:
With the assumption of best intentions, why not give us a bigger fly swatter (previously written squatter :) ) and allow us to opt out of sending traffic to sites containing adsense, the prophets of "better user experience" and "do no harm" are expected to take a little short term pinch for high long term profits and "the greater good", or am I totally off track in the way I see and expect Google to act?
My last employer was DadeBehring Microscan in West Sacramento
What a small world, I worked there a couple of times as well :)
MFAs are not necessary a bad thing. In many ways they help the searcher to a site by refining the search. There are so many unsavy users out there that really need the help to find what they are searching / shopping for.
SmartP is weeding out the non delivering sites anyway, MFA or not.
why not give us a bigger fly swatter and allow us to opt out of sending traffic to sites containing adsense?
hmmm.....
In actual fact, that might just work for some publishers. Looking at my site just now, none of the ads in the main block that earns me virtually all of my income have a single adsense block, and all the sites I block invariably have loads.
However, there are lots of excellent sites that also have adsense that I would not want to automatically block. So I think it needs to be a bit smarter than just zapping all sites that have adsense on.
They have algorythms capable of detecting spam, maybe what they need to do is develop an algorythm that detects MFA's and give publishers the option of using it or not during ad selection.
That would probably eliminate most of the problem, leaving the odd one to zap. But it would most certainly be a HUGE improvement.
I think Google algorythms suck, but that's one I'd REALLY like to see introduced!
SmartP is weeding out the non delivering sites anyway, MFA or not.
I wouldn't say that it's weeding them out. It's reducing their profit margins, but low profit margin x high volume can still be a winning formula for those who lack the skills or the inclination to create real sites.
BTW, smart pricing may be only one reason why the MFA crowd are seeing a reduction in earnings. Google's compensation formula may come into play, too. After all, if a site has no intrinsic value to users and is relying on Google search for nearly all of its traffic, why shouldn't Google keep a bigger percentage of its AdSense revenues?
