Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Google reports this should only affect a "small number" of advertisers.
JenSense seems to think MFA type sites will be the first hit. Do MFA sites represent a small number of publishers?
Will you object to higher paying MFA ads even though they still have the potential to frustrate your visitors?
Has Google basically announced a decision to keep the MFA's around & charge them more instead of just giving them the boot? The long-standing AdSense program policies would tend to indicate they should get the boot.
Or is all this much ado about nothing and not at all an attempt by Google to address MFA's?
Can anyone make sense of it all?
FarmBoy
They still represent a poor user experience, so they will still be blocked on those grounds.
I hope this inititative makes things a bit easier for us. I'm not totally convinced it will stop the problem. We will wait and see. No doubt there will be some interesting threads here :)
Has Google basically announced a decision to keep the MFA's around & charge them more instead of just giving them the boot?
I think Google has effectively realized how much margin there is in MFA and are going to suck out what they can. Why do I think this? Because just a few days ago I saw another post in another forum here on WW where the poster openly admitted that he was running a MFA and getting a 300% ROI on the cost to drive traffic to his MFA. Sadly, based on the tone of his message, I got the impression that 300% ROI was on the *lower end* of what you could apparently make with a MFA.
...sigh...
I think Google knows this - they've got some smart folks out at the 'plex - and the easiest way to suck that 300%+ right out of the MFA's pockets, without actually admitting there is a problem with their system is to raise the advertiser's cost based on the landing page quality. Hopefully, this action on thier part will eventually make the MFA business model unprofitable and they'll move on to something else.
Unfortunately there was no discernible effect on MFA's and they continued to pay 1-3 cents and enjoy prime postions on the content network.
"Do MFA sites represent a small number of publishers? "
MFA's seem to be the Majority of advertisers who grab all the major spots. IMO Google is only testing a small sample. These updates hardly have an effect on the quality, quantity or type of MFA's.
or maybe in trying to balance out its "revenue consideration vs. customer/surfer experience", they tend to bend towards the shareholders. I guess, they really have little choice.
[edited by: martinibuster at 8:18 am (utc) on July 11, 2006]
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Or is all this much ado about nothing and not at all an attempt by Google to address MFA's?
It's probably an attempt to have their cake and eat it too. :-)
If you visit the AdWords forum, you'll see some teeth-gnashing from unhappy owners of MFA sites, not unlike the teeth-gnashing that occurred when owners of affiliate sites were told a while back that they could no longer redirect traffic to merchant sites. Does anyone here remember what effect the affiliate landing-page requirement had on ads for eBay and other affiliate merchants? Did most of the affiliates come up with adequate landing pages, or did they just become MFAs instead?
If you visit the AdWords forum, you'll see some teeth-gnashing from unhappy owners of MFA sites...
Hmmm. I visited the forum and read through a couple of threads on the topic. I didn't see anyone admit to having a MFA site.
Does that mean it's safe to assume that anyone gnashing teeth has a MFA site? I recognize at least one of the teeth gnashers as someone who has in the past acted as if he had something to hide.
FarmBoy
In fact, advertisers can have a disabled keyword (due to a bid that is less than the 'minimum') and it will still trigger ads on the content network. For this reason I don't delete my 'inactive' keywords in my account so I can still get action on them from the content network. Also, most advertisers bid seperately for search and content, and there are no minimum bids for content.
So you probably won't be getting more per click for the MFA sites anyway, unless their ad position on the content network is affected and they end up paying more per click to get more exposure.
But sites like tipace . com are real messes. Only ads.
Yes, it's true that some MFA's have enough content to get them out of the mire. But there is a problem with content for MFA providors - people look at it and don't necessarily click ads. In fact, based on the knowledge of my own site I'd suggest that the higher the quality of the content, the less likely a visitor is to click. Therefore having to put in content and tone down the wall of ads is possibly going to hit their CTR and reduce their profitability accordingly. So QS might work from that perspective as well as charging them more to appear.
BTW, you can't mention URL's here - it's against the WW TOS. But the first site you mention I blocked months ago as it's a scraper. And I wouldn't describe it's content as "Very good" either. I'd say it was about average for a scraper.
I wouldn't describe it's content as "Very good" either.
Absolutely agree on this. I would consider this site as almost "okay-ish". If I found them advertising on one of my sites, however, I'd block them right away.
It's funny how quality can be seen from different angles, isn't it?
Some MFA sites have very good content in the landing pages & thus google cann't remove them. eg. wisegeek . com
I checked the above out. (I had not ever seen this one before). Since they have content on each page even though you can clearly see it is written with AdSense in mind, it is ok with Google? I mean are they doing anything against the TOS that you can see? Just curious, because it does seem that this particular site at least gives some info rather than many I've seen that have nothing but ads.
So, would you say that MFA sites are ok with Google as long as there is some content? Made for AdSense or NOT?
Quite obviously the answer is YES.
Also we need to be careful about differentiating sites made only for adsense and sites made and designed keeping in mind revenue from adSense. The differentiation tends to blur sometimes. These days most of the sites, it seems are created and exist only because of adSense.
Just because some sites rank high on keywords, does not mean that they are not MFA's . MFA's exist in all forms and ways. The dream of every MFA, would be to be listed on the first page of search results and get organic traffic. I see many sites with almost useless content, listed on the first page of Google results and full of ads.
Food for thought.
MFA with content is good. Atleast they make an effort to be useful.
good, can we all get on with our lives then? ;)
According to some in that thread, all you have to do is keyword spam and you're good to go.
My case may be different than others in that thread. If you have a legitimate web page that actually ranks for the keyword terms, but has a low keyword density, your CPC may get raised. I believe that's what may have happened to me.
I rank #4 in Google for a 2-Word term that I'm also bidding on (with a decent CTR). My CPC went up by 400%. I attribute that to the fact that although the web page is algorithmically relevant for the phrase, maybe because AdWords is judging by a less rigorous measure than the organic algo, my CPC was raised. I suspect it's because I don't keyword spam the phrase on the page. The actual page is relevant for the term, enough that I rank #4 for it.
Explain to me how I can be algorithmically relevant enough for the organic search term to rank in the top 5, but for AdWords the CPC is raised.
Incidentally, I slashed my bid to ten cents (I was the only bidder) and AdWords accepted it and that's what I'm paying. It's troublesome (or buggy) to raise rates on a term nobody else is bidding on, and for a term I'm already relevant and ranking for in the organic search.
In my opinion, the AdWords algo used for determining landing page relevance needs tweaking, and this is said in a constructive manner. Hopefully this is just a bug and they'll work it out over time.
So where have google said that quality scores ONLY applies to search and not content?
I'm not sure if they haven't said this, but they do say in my Adwords account that my CTR on the content network does not affect my position or the quality score of my keywords/ads for search. And when a bid is considered too low for search (due a keyword they deem to be less relevent for my site), bids are never considered too low for the content network. And like I said, disabled keywords will still show on the content network.
To me this all indicates that they really, really want advertisers ads showing on the content network, seemingly regardless of relevency and bid. So I have to guess that this "rise in CPC for low quality score sites" is not going to affect adsense, unless it actually causes more MFAs to move to content - but don't expect them to be paying more there. Just my guess.
