Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Suppose you see one of those "3 best sites for blue widgets" ads displayed on your site. Instead of complaining to AdSense as a publisher, what about complaining to AdWords as an unhappy visitor? Has anyone tried it? Was there a response?
FarmBoy
But you could also report off-topic keywords. E.g. people buying clicks at $0.03 for DVD and selling them on for pharmacy products on a pharmacy related site.
Or reporting ads for spyware infected products, ...
Cool idea, I like it!
But not from the point of generally complaining about the ads per se, but if you can cite a specific adwords TOS violation then they act to remove the ad fairly quickly.
I'd suggest having a bone-up on the adwords TOS. Redirects are against the adwords TOS, as are URL's that don't accurately represent where the ad will take you, and if the URL is too long to fit in the box it has to be the root domain they list. Many ads don't do this, and Google will act to remove these.
Cite a violation and say bye-bye! However that doesn't stop the scumbags rewriting the ad to comply and still advertising. But having said that, does make blocking more of them in one fell swoop a bit easier if you have just one domain to block.
Maybe it's off topic, maybe not but how about a thread of adwords violations (quick reference guide sort of thing) that we could refer to in order to see if an ad complied to make complaining easier.
I know it's not going to happen, but imagine if adwords support got snowed under with complaints - maybe adsense would have to act :) :)
The root problem of course is that Google won't stop serving ads to sites that violate the adsense TOS. If they didn't get served ads thay couldn't afford to advertise. Quick way of solving the problem.
I'd suggest having a bone-up on the adwords TOS.
Hmmm. I wonder if there is anything in the AdWords TOS that would prohibit the "3 best sites for blue widgets" type ads?
If I thought it might help to make a difference, I might spend some time at AdWords studying the terms.
FarmBoy
But it's possible that they use redirects and various other tricks that adwords don't like and can be removed on those grounds. I'm not sure that simnply being MFA garbage is enough reason. I agree, it SHOULD be, but there we go.
I've had more sucess getting adwords to remove misleading ads that violate the TOS than I ever have had with adsense support.
I think it's only compliant with the TOS if they actually have content that is the best 10 crapthings - just any old 10 crapthings won't do.
Historically I have seen spirited defence of mfas when an mfa bashing thread gets going.
Here is an mail from a person here I received when I had a go at complaining about them.
MFA sites are not bottom trawlers. It takes a lot of thought, planning, programming expertise, and monetary investment to create hundreds and thousands of these sites and get them all linked up and ranking profitably either organically or in PPC.They are way more professional than the average webmaster sitting at home in his underwear refreshing his AdSense stats.
MFA's are not only legitimate, some of them are highly researched designs that are an inch away from being works of art.
MFA's don't take money away from anyone but those who can't compete. And believe me, those who can't compete will have their clocks cleaned by someone else if MFA's didn't exist.
One mans trash is another mans treasure :)
Can I just note, that there appears to be mfa sympathisers on the board here, who may also be the publishers that people complain about :)
Oh let them, although they really ought to keep their stuff in adwords when I complain about them advertising on my site.
perhaps we need to go rough things up in their forum every so often.
BTW: I really do not like MFA as a term. I don't care what other publishers do, but I hate what advertisers are doing to my site.
Can I just note, that there appears to be mfa sympathisers on the board here, who may also be the publishers that people complain about
I'm sure there are, and I'd disagree entirely with the quote about how lovely MFA's are. Point is that they contribute peanuts in the way of adwords, and take loads out of the system. Smaller genuine advertisers (a large percentage of adwords) stop advertising on Google eventually because these sites do not convert into customers.
It doesn't take too much genious to realise that without genuine advertisers, Adsense as a concept cannot work. Shame Google haven't realised this though.
