Forum Moderators: martinibuster
- EPC as it should be
- eCPM holding
- Earnings as expected
Historically, doing this takes all 3 metrics into a nose dive, been testing for years, but being always hopeful, I am testing to see if Google is finally getting its act together, and freeing me to work on my site.
Will monitor over few days and see if it holds, ideally my earnings should see a positive jump (or continue the normal wave), crossing my fingers but not holding my breath.
Just don't want my visitors being directed to those type sites.
Free (keyword) ringtones!
Just give us your information to sell!
Find lowest prices on (keyword)!
Not really, but click here anyway!
Looking for (keyword) in (city)?
We might have an advertiser that matches!
This keyword is mis-matched, but click here anyway!
We just want your email address so we can spam you endlessly!
Is (keyword) going to make the planet explode?
Click here now to find out!
Whew!
One thing you won't be able to guage is the long term effect of smart pricing unless you keep the list open for a while, so I'd beware of any short term indications either way.
I prefer to visit the urls individually on a slow weekend like this and see if they are still in operation rather that shoot the whole breeze at once, it only takes an hour tops.
FYI Some of the shopping (and other) sites are registering .net now as well as .com in an attempt to get around the filter.
long term effect of smart pricing
Almost 2 days now with an empty filter, earnings are down only in proportion with a seasonal drop in traffic, so nothing to report, except maybe a slight drop in CTR.
I am really hoping that one of the many maintenances has taken care of the problem.
I hate not being able to do clean A/B testing, there is never any stability to change only one variable and watch it's effect over a period.
Been 24 hours so far, things appear normal:
- EPC as it should be
- eCPM holding
- Earnings as expected
How do you measure the number of people who are visiting your site and clicking on a MFA ad then deciding to not return to your site and/or don't recommend your site to others?
FarmBoy
Either you want your site to have a bit of class, or you don't.
Here's an analogy about sites that are run by people who don't bother to filter out the MFA ads: they're like walking into an upscale restaurant, and being greeted at the door by the owner, who then introduces you to a con man.
Even if there is no long term problem with MFA's (ha ha ha), like others, I'd really not want my site to look cheap and tacky so I'd block anyway. I did run a tracker for a while, and interestingly enough many of the people that clicked out via an ad had the highest number of page views per visit, so clearly they clicked back in again. I wouldn't want to lose those visitors to a ringtone or Ebay dead cat ad.
Please keep us posted with how it's going!
eCPM now lower (not by much only 10-15%)
CTR is lower by around 13%
EPC amazingly stable
Earnings around normal (if there is ever such a thing)
David,
The one week cycle has been very solid, I intend to keep running the test for weeks as long as it won't crash, intend to pull up on the first nose dive right before it does.
Car_Guy & FarmBoy,
I have been (and still am) religious about blocking MFA, and do care about where my visitors land, but once in a while one needs to open the window and see what 'creeps' in, I was in the slump side of the wave when I started the test, and did it to shake things up.
How do I know my visitors are happy?
a) I daily monitor the daily 'add to favorites' before any other metric
b) Search engine traffic compared to type in's is at a healthy ratio that I also monitor, all search engines can have a power failure tomorrow and I would still be in business, earning less, yes, but still floating.
It's the lost growth opportunities that I cannot quantify.
- Will I loose those visitors that clicked on the MFA?
Maybe, maybe not, like David said, they could come back, it is a factor of many things, most importantly is how authorative is your site, Google serves trash sometimes on top if its serps, and people still come back.
I am hoping (but not certain yet it can work) for a compromise where I am more free and earning well, during the test I expect my visitors factor in and balance the importance of my site against an unavoidable broken link or MFA once in a while, if all links are broken or all ads are MFA, that's something else.
It's a temporary bet on Google's common sense, business sense, and their 'dear & precious' algo, how else can I find out without testing every once in a while, I honestly don't know where it will go, today I had ok earnings, but could I have made more if I blocked? Did I do ok because I am not blocking? Hopefully time will answer that.
Hopefully time will answer that.
I don't know the topic or intended audience of your site, but keep in mind this entire thread has developed in the middle of a somewhat extended holiday period in the U.S. Not only is this a time when many people go on vacation, with the holiday on a Tuesday, there is a very long weekend to factor in also.
If your audience is in the U.S. or if any of your advertisers are in the U.S., keep in mind that this is not a "normal" period of time. It will probably be after Monday, July 10 before "normalcy" returns.
FarmBoy
btw Third day looks normal, I am a bit surprised.
I decided to repopulate my filter at the start if June and noticed positive changes starting to occur within 2-3 days. As far as I am concerned these things (MFA's) are a scurge and the sooner Google decides to take charge of advertiser quality control the better (for us)
I am going to empty the filter list as well and see how it is going. Past experience indicated that MFA will come at once within hours.
All metrics are normal including earnings.
Only difference is a slight drop in CTR
I ask this because when I did the experiment, the MFA's came back very quickly and displaced well paying ads. The sector my main site is in for some reason is viewed as a high earning keyword and attracts a lot of the MFA crowd. Conrast this with my fledgeling tourist info site about my region. The ads are on my wife's account and there is no block list at all, but there are also no MFA's that I've seen to date.
So I wonder if your site isn't particularly prone to MFA's, hence the metrics are holding up well.
As for the current status of MFA, I am observing much less MFA right now, some of the domains that I historically blocked are back, but not all of them. The lower CTR is really my measure of the amount of MFA on my site, so the slight drop tells me that around 15% of the MFA are back.
A better quick measure of the infestation would be low EPC too, which is still holding steady.
My site is too huge to check each and every page, but I go through main sections and I am noticing a decrease compared to a couple of months ago when I last tested.
But (and this is a huge but) I am hesitant to confirm anything before 1 or 2 weeks have passed, I need to see how it will endure a SmartPricing cycle or two.
The ads I tend to block are the sites that are obviously targetting a site. Even I get fed up of seeing the same, and even variations of the same ads.
I have found this helps, ECPM and CTR. Then again there are so many variables within AS everything could just be a coincidence.
After a while (week or two) I let them come back and we start all over again.
I emptied my list recently; I do that from time to time when it gets full up, so as to make room for new ones and weed out old ones who might not be around anymore.
I sure wish Google could update on THEIR end a little faster; when I add someone to my filter, it's always hours and sometimes DAYS before their ads actually stop showing up.
Normal earnings
Slightly Improved EPC
Good eCPM
Entering my first SmartPricing cycle.
cpc campaign, no way of telling
Let your visitors tell you who to block.
Have a "Dissatisfied with our Advertisers? Please record their URL and click here" link. You may use the forward button to go back to the offending advertiser's site to record their URL. Complicated I know, any suggestions?
Then you have a page where your visitor may submit the URL to you! Now your visitors are involved, and better yet interactive! Perhaps you ask for their email address so you may followup with them.
Three days later you send an email:
Thanks for your concern, we have prevented this advertiser, example.com, from advertising on our site. Are there any other Advertisers you feel are inappropriate? Please list their URL's
Complicated yes! What's the downside? You may still have to verify the advertisers truly are bad.
Anyway just brainstorming, anybody have any scripts?
None except your loosing your account so fast, you won't be able to login and enter the new sites to be blocked!
This is called "calling undue attention to ads" also called "encouraging your visitors to click" even with good intentions, your account will go 'POOF'.
How can they be addressed? If the visitor did click a second time on the same ad, this must be the most fundamental filter Adsense would have; granted not a good stat to have build up though.
It might be deemed drawing attention to the ads, HMM. Actually it might discourage clicks on the ads in the first place. My intent would be to distance this link from all Google ads, and actually it would be an appropriate capability for all ads(Adsense or not).
Basically Google does it now with "Dissatisfied? Help us improve" which is not "ads" specific.
I'll have to query Adsense, wording the question very carefully, so it won't be missunderstood and a canned response issued. (Always a challenge!)
Anyway just brainstorming and wondering if anyone has already actually investigated this?
What's the downside?
Visitors telling you they don't like ads that are perfectly legitimate.
Visitors telling you they don't like a particular ad without revealing it is their competitor's ad.
FarmBoy
