Forum Moderators: martinibuster
a)They are doing their best to cash in and earn.
b) They do not have enough subject knowledge/patience/skill or whatever is needed for a good / real site that viewers and people, including advertisers, and search engines like.
Good honest sites (and I mean good!) convert very well. Crappy sites that are just another site about "x" subject that are not offering anything real, interesting and genuine simply dont. There are obviously some in the centre.
But smart pricing sees the difference. Search engines see the difference. People see the difference. Good sites simply earn more. Crap ones with millions of pages are starting to lose out in both smart pricing, natural visitors via links from blogs, real directories, newsgroups, forums and related sites. And now lately search engines as well. As it should be. MFAs and scrapers and simply bad or boring sites will just lose traffic.
But just because account wide smart pricing is used does not mean its bad. EG you have say one genuine interesting site. One scraper / mfa. The traffic say is 50 50.
The pay per click ranges from say 10 cents to 2 dollars. On AVERAGE you will earn 95c per click now on both sites! It all averages out. aND THE ADVERTISER wins too because he gets to pay on average less if his ads are mainly on scrapers, more if they are on real sites.
And it will get worse for mfa/scraper sites as google try to dump the garbage due to the new competition from msn/yahoo. So expect the difference between low price per click and top price to get larger. I hope.
I can easily correlate the income because I used to split this out by channel rather than by account. The total income is different. CPC is up by 65% on the split out accounts.
Splitting out accounts is definitely worthwhile because any one tiny account getting smart priced hurts your bigger accounts that are not smart priced. I doubt very much this savings is passed onto advertisers.
Basically Google is looking for any excuse to smart price and hold onto the income.
Reply> Because if their ad gets displayed on say 100 sites then on average (and thats the important part)they are charged accordingly. Say your high epc site (real content publisher) gets this ad displayed then the advertiser gets charged more, the publisher gets paid more, google makes more etc. If it gets displayed primarily on the sort of publishers site that does not convert like mfa sites, it costs less. Its about averages and large numbers of sites and clicks.
I can easily correlate the income because I used to split this out by channel rather than by account. The total income is different. CPC is up by 65% on the split out accounts.
reply> But without knowing all the details, site stats, number of hits etc (sample size) as well as how the epc would have naturally changed at this time that sort of info isnt really reliable. And nobody said smart pricing was perfect! Just better than paying the same price for all clicks for the advertiser. Otherwise Pages full of ads with no content would be king. I tried it, they are not! EPC far too low!
Splitting out accounts is definitely worthwhile because any one tiny account getting smart priced hurts your bigger accounts that are not smart priced.
Reply> wel without a representative sample size of a few hundred publishers and control groups etc we cant really say that. Plus if your small site represents say 10 percent of your visitors then theoretically it should only effect smart pricing by ten percent. And you will be getting more clicks so I wouldnt think it would make a difference. I suspect its a bit more complicated though.
reply> I once got thousands of extra visitors on one site (out of 12to15) and page views and clicks doubled on that one site. It earned more. (not double) all the other sites earned less! Same clicks. End result same income plus say 5 percent!
I doubt very much this savings is passed onto advertisers.
Reply> Google declare the in/out and the percentage stays the same. So they simply improve the systems efficiency for both the advertiser and the publisher, and in the process make more for themselves. More total money spent/split/earned. Smart pricing gives advertisers better roi. So they spend more! So the good sites earn more and so does google.
If you're suffering from smart pricing build a better site for your visitors! If you are not capable then you need a different job! Not everybody can make money writing magazine articles for example. Those that can earn from it, the others don't. Adsense is not a free money machine it rewards good targeted traffic. You generally find that by having a good targetted well written site that is the best in your particular field.
Basically Google is looking for any excuse to smart price and hold onto the income.
Reply> Google is a business, thats their job! Its all a balance between Income, outgoing, efficiency of conversion, and the split percentagewise that appears to remain the same according to the official figures releasd. If you expect good money for bad traffic you will be dissapointed.
[edited by: Nitrous at 7:35 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2005]
And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I honestly don't understand why anyone would knowingly work with a company that he or she thinks is crooked when the contract allows the partner (in this case, Google) to be fired at any time.
To put it another way, why not be proactive instead of reactive? Why allow yourself to be bullied by The Man when you don't have to?
I'm with EFV: if you hate brand X and don't have to use it and think that brand X is ripping you off, then switch to brand Y!
Rgds
Damon
Don't have the time to respond to all that. I've looked into it and disagree with your assessment 100%. I used to be involved technically in the search engine business so I find algos fascinating. Even if I retire tomorrow I'll still be following this stuff closely.
I didn't use a simple method to come to these conclusions. I've looked at it quite intently. And I've run tests. And from the tests I've run, my conclusion is that MFAs are rewarded by smart pricing, not punished. They do need to use a trick or two, but the MFA crowd are pros, so it isn't much of a challenge for them.
Run some tests yourself and you will see. Open a new account, put up a few pages in the style of an MFA and see if the clicks are a penny or 50 cents or a dollar. You may be quite shocked. (and if you try it, please remove the site when you're done. MFAs are evil.)
When you assume I need to build a better site, you're totally off track. My sites are working great. Getting more visitors every day. More income from all sources except Adsense.
Someone here speculated on how the SP algo works and I'm convinced that it's happening the way he described. It perfectly explains what happens with each change you make. And it ain't pretty for publishers or advertisers. It only works on behalf of MFAs and Google.
EFV, as I told you before, I've reduced my Adsense business considerably. There are still places where Adsense is the best alternative. Of course I'm going to leave those pages up. Not doing so would be dumb. Are you implying I should give Google a break just because there are places where Adsense is still viable?
Even if I didn't use adsense on a single page I'd be saying the same thing. I hate spammers. And Google could do something and they aren't. I could come up with many technical schemes to fix the MFA problem for 90% overnight. They have tons of money and tons of top talent. If they aren't solving the problem it's because they are making money from it.
You want to believe their PR, go right ahead. It's behavior like yours that unwittingly enable companies like Google to give spammers the room to hurt everyone who uses the Internet. You should be fed up. Instead you're giving Google excuses to keep the spamming alive while lining their pockets.
Someone here speculated on how the SP algo works and I'm convinced that it's happening the way he described. It perfectly explains what happens with each change you make. And it ain't pretty for publishers or advertisers. It only works on behalf of MFAs and Google.
That's simply untrue. Never assume that your own experience is universal.
EFV, as I told you before, I've reduced my Adsense business considerably. There are still places where Adsense is the best alternative. Of course I'm going to leave those pages up. Not doing so would be dumb. Are you implying I should give Google a break just because there are places where Adsense is still viable?
No, I'm saying that if you think the people at Google are crooks, it's irresponsible and ultimately self-defeating to do business with them. (There's nothing dumb about disassociating yourself from crooks.)
> viable
It's an especially impressive achievement when you consider that, in your worldview, Google are stealing from both publishers and advertisers.
As for viable, ok choose a better word. I'm getting old and the "right" word doesn't pop up as readily as it used to.
You want to believe their PR, go right ahead. It's behavior like yours that unwittingly enable companies like Google to give spammers the room to hurt everyone who uses the Internet. You should be fed up. Instead you're giving Google excuses to keep the spamming alive while lining their pockets.
100% agree! business is business but BS should be exposed not hidden under the carpet!.....so the young may learn a thing or two.
Company X would like to think that their BS can go unnoticed......no, not at all. We see it all and it ain't looking too good.
