Forum Moderators: martinibuster
There are those on the other hand who have said in the past not to use the filter excessively, as it might reduce earnings. This, FWIW, is also Google's position.
Has anyone who has completely emptied their URL filter seen their earnings go up for a stable period of time afterwards? (assuming all other metrics stayed stable)
Anyone totally empty it? How did it work out?
Mike
from own experience, I would not recommend to empty the filter list, for two reasons:
- It had a desastrous effect when I did this in the past, based upon forum reports that for other forum members it had helped. For me, it did not! EPC went down significantly and zillions of MFAs and other questionable advertisers were back within short time.
- The user experience from "bad ads" is damaging the overall credibility of your site and especially the Adsense program. Users who are researching stuff on your site will refrain from clicking Adsense ads in the future, once they have clicked one or two MFA ads. One advertiser, for example, advertises sites that -if used as intended, i.e. searching for widgets on the landing page- opens the result page in full screen mode and takes away all browser navigation elements. There is absolutely NO WAY OUT for users except for Ctrl-Alt-Del and shooting down that window manually! How likely is it that such a user (a) remembers your site at all after having done so, and (b) remembers the experience of clicking an ad as a positive experience? (Interestingly enough, these guys are still around, happily advertising on Adsense.)
No, we still need bigger and better filters.
I would agree - but until then I'm not going to bother trying to manage something so vast as the junk ad problem using the competitive filter - those ads unfortunately are just part of the AdSense package these days.
[edited by: Play_Bach at 3:02 pm (utc) on Oct. 16, 2006]
I think it does make sense to filter out competitive ads for major affiliate partners whose ads might appear on a lot of different pages. But playing Whack-a-Mole with a zillion low-quality advertisers strikes me as being a no-win game, if only because the process is so time-consuming (especially with a network like AdSense that uses geotargeting). Ditto for off-topic ads: If I block an ad for Li'l Orbits Mini-Donuts on the "orbiting bodies" page of an astronomy site, it'll probably be replaced by an ad for the Orbits Gold Panning Company or BudsBuffBodies.com.
Disclaimer: In no way am I advocating giving deceptive or otherwise scummy advertisers a free pass. (When I tried AdSense on a freelance-writing site and got mostly ads for vanity presses, questionable "poetry contests," and such, I pulled AdSense from the site. For some topics, AdSense just doesn't work unless your own standards are as low as Google's.)
you are right about playing whack-a-mole. It's not fun to do that, and I admit that I am just checking the pages with the highest traffic (how can anyone possibly check 3,000+ pages?). That's why we need a "block by advertiser" feature. Have seen one ad from a company you don't want to deal with - block 'em all with one click! Whether they run ElboniaHotelInfo.com or ElbonianRiverCruises.info - they won't appear on my site.
Ah - how nice that would be.
But, heck, how many times did we request that feature here?
The user experience from "bad ads" is damaging the overall credibility of your site...
That's a very important point and it can't be measured by simply looking at your AdSense earnings reports. If you just throw up a site about some topic to earn money from AdSense you might not care. But if you care about the topic/site regardless of AdSense, you probably need to be more careful.
FarmBoy
[edited by: Play_Bach at 5:20 pm (utc) on Oct. 16, 2006]
That's why we need a "block by advertiser" feature
Preferably a "block by site" as well - (by which I mean my site). Using EFV's example, if I don't want L'il Orbits Donuts appearing on my astronomy site, they won't appear on my donuts recipes site either. A blanket ban isn't always a good thing when an advertiser is well suited to one site but totally inappropriate to another.
FWIW, I emptied the filter a couple of months back, and earnings went up initially. After a few weeks the trashy MFA ads came back and earnings took a nose dive. Smart-pricing may be a factor too, but the filter's slowly filling up again :(
The effect of blocking is not going to be instant. It's not a simple matter of block a few ads and ten minutes later the epc jumps. It may well take a few smartpricing cycles before you see a change. Similarly, each time I've ceased blocking the epc remains good for a week or so then starts declining.
But like others here, I would not empty the filter completely. I have a core list of worst offenders I know would need blocking pretty much straight away.
I would say that though I'm a long term blocker, I would suggest care is taken with blocking. Firstly, I wouldn't block an MFA on first site. Sometimes Google will show an ad only a couple of times. I personally block persistant ones.
Secondly, I don't use the preview tool for seeing what ads may show. The tool shows ads based on standard targeting and there is no guarantee that the ads shown have ever, or will ever appear on your site. I don't see the point of filling up the filter with ads I haven't seen on the site. How does this work in countries other than yours? Well, my theory is that whereas real advertisers will target where their markets are, MFA's probably don't bother with targeting at all. Therefore MFA's are likely to be seen wherever you are. Blocking ads that aren't seen on the site isn't going to change the earnings, but will fill up the filter to no effect.
I will occasionally block ads that show on my search terms on Google's search pages on the grounds that they often will show on the site, however that's fairly rare.
Blocking ads to raise income is not a new idea. It's a well established technique that seems to work well for a lot of people provided you block sensibly. There may be reasons it doesn't work on a particular site. If you aren't seeing any result from blocking, it may be that you haven't left enough time for smartpricing to catch up with the better quality ads shown. It may be because you are blocking ads willy-nilly that have only been shown a couple of times (or never). There is another conclusion in that it may be that ultimately that's what the site is worth to Google.
Still, Malachite has drawn attention to one big shortcoming of the filter: What's competitive (or inappropriate) on one of a publisher's sites may be desirable on another. As Malachite suggests, it would be nice if a publisher could have a separate filter list for each of his or her domains.
[edited by: europeforvisitors at 7:58 pm (utc) on Oct. 16, 2006]
I get ads I want to block because they are the SAME ads that appear on both sites. On one its perfectly targeted. But on the other its just not gona get a click or if it does it wont convert because the subject is not at all relevant due to sutbtle site differences. And in some places this happens on 3 or 4 sites, all with mistargeted ads. Its as if the algo takes more notice of external links than the content.
Problem is that it still wouldnt be any use with only 200 places. I need many more already! But if they were interested in helping us help ourselves they would have done something a long while back. I think if they do anything it will be algos!
[edited by: Genuine1 at 8:03 pm (utc) on Oct. 16, 2006]
Maybe MFA filtering is merely giving us a false sense of security b/c of geotargeting. (the preview tool is pretty useless to address this problem, IMO)
Maybe MFA filtering is merely giving us a false sense of security b/c of geotargeting.
I'd guess that it depends on how local or international your audience is. (On the other hand, David_UK has speculated that MFAs don't bother with geotargeting. One way to find out, or at least to make an educated guess, would be for members to pair off and exchange info by StickyMail about what they're seeing on each other's sites.)
Still, Malachite has drawn attention to one big shortcoming of the filter: What's competitive (or inappropriate) on one of a publisher's sites may be desirable on another. As Malachite suggests, it would be nice if a publisher could have a separate filter list for each of his or her domains.
I agree that the list has shortcomings - big ones. It would be nice if each of our domains had the facility to block ads independantly as suggested. This may be because as EFV suggests that what is suitable for one site in terms of competing ads may be acceptable on another. It may also be the case that certain MFA's simply don't show on our other domains.
One suggestion I have made many times here is that we have the list categorised into genuinely competing ads, or ones that are innapropriate for the site but still genuine ads nonetheless, and a "Spam bucket" of ads we consider to to be assorted junk. Google could then look through everyones spam bucket and automatically flag up the worst offenders for further monitoring or investigation. Because people mark an ad as junk, that doesn't mean it is, as junk is in the eye of the beholder and no doubt some would stuff all ads they didn't like in the junk filter - genuine or not. Hence the idea of flagging up for review as opposed to any form of automatic disconnection
I'd guess that it depends on how local or international your audience is. (On the other hand, David_UK has speculated that MFAs don't bother with geotargeting.
Yes, it's speculation that MFA's don't geotarget, but I think there may be some merit in the idea. But that wasn't really my main point. My main point is that filling up the filter with ads you haven't seen on your site may well clog up the filter and have no effect. People tend to think that because and ad shows in the preview tool it's showing in the selected country. That may well not be the case.
