Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I understand people's intention to make extra $$ on the Internet. But it should be more clear guidelines and enforcement to meet these guidelines from Google. If this practice will continue, it will be less CTR and EPC for all publishers.
There is a longer discussion on this issue here. [webmasterworld.com]
And as for original (non-DMOZ-clone) directories, again there is nothing preventing publishers from putting AdSense on these pages (provided all pages with AdSense are not violating any other policies, such as placing adsense on a gambling directory for example.)
If you believe it stretches the boundaries of what a directory (such as it looks to be more a link farm than a directory), you can always contact the AdSense team to report the page/site.
To be honest with you, I don't understand what the big deal is. Adsense is a tool Google created that gives advertisers a chance to reach a huge number of potential customers. Since advertisers only pay when an ad is clicked, the more places the ads are shown the better (assuming a user isn't forced or tricked into clicking an ad).
I've ended up on these type of sites many times and found them quite useful. They gave me a list of sites that were very relevant to what I was searching for and I was ultimately able to find exactly what I was looking for.
These types of sites are giving advertisers extra exposure, they help users find relevant sites, they are making money for Google and for the owner of the site.
The only people who seem to be losing out here are those people who feel they are being "cheated" out of their position in the SERPs. All I can say to them is they need to do more SEO.
Additionally... after typing the term "mens shoes" and finding the directory page, the user may spot an adsense ad whose relevance matches the sites listed in the directory.
Think about this: If I were an advertiser selling men's golf shoes, I'd LOVE to get placement in a bottom-feeding directory about men's golf shoes.
I consider all what I saw, spam (maybe some aren't, but I didn't find them yet).
Those same spam sites may be a problem in the SERPs as well, but that is a much smaller problem imo, because a human visitor will spend 3sec for half the page to load and click on the next URL.
The problem of spam directory sites in Adsense, as I see it, is that it seems to ruin EPC for "similar" content, because it skews the supply / demand ratio.
And the problem with Adsense "smart pricing" is that its algo wasn't too smart, in my experience anyway.
Businesses who actually spent REAL MAN-HOURS, collecting data, writing, organising and validating data (sometimes translating), to produce REAL directories, shouldn't be the same as someone who downloads a copy of DMOZ database and puts Adsense ads next to it.
Or forums where $x.xx ads get triggered because someone put a high EPC keyword in his signature.
just a list of links in the middle of the page
Links to what? Relevant sites?
