Forum Moderators: martinibuster
But what does google mean when they say
"Is your account filter list working a little too well? Consider reducing the number of filtered ads. While filtering is a quick and easy way to prevent unwanted ads from being displayed, keep in mind that filtering decreases the number of ads that can appear, thereby decreasing your potential earnings as well. In order to increase the variety of ads served to your pages and to make the most of every opportunity for additional revenue, try removing URLs from your filter list. Also, instead of filtering out the top-level domain of an ad (which will prevent any ad from that domain from appearing), filter just the exact destination URL"
No No No.... one of my sites earns almost .02 per click no matter what I do. I tried to pick off low paying ads, no they werent fleas just 2cent ads. Checked this by advertising in adwords for my own keywords never came up for 2cents but did for 3. And beat out the competition. But can someone please clarify Googles statement here it does not spell sense to earn more......!
If you are in a market that is has a lot of ads available blocking some may not make much difference.
But if you are in a market that does not have a big inventory of ads to choose from it can make a noticable difference in how much you earn.
I disagree with the idea of blocking specific ad urls. I block the top level (example.com) or not at all.
[edited by: ken_b at 5:00 am (utc) on Dec. 15, 2006]
Ken sorry but honestly, if I could block all the ads that pay 3cents I would. If I had 100 ads all paying $1.00 then I would prefer that. It makes the difference between +100 clicks a day = $11.00 or $100.00
This is driving me up the wall. Google is wrong.....BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK.
D-FENSE is the name of the game here where as some one moves from your website they leave you with a 1cent parting gift. NO. Google cant spout this until they find a way to bag Made For Adsense Sites.
Ive been fighting the fleas for so long now.... they never bothered me until Ann made me aware of them in one of her posts and now they are biting me all over.
Ever wondered why Google cant add...they show 1 click at 3AM EST and $0.00 in earnings. This means that the click valued $0.005 or 1/2 of 1 cent. I know its true and everyone here has seen that odd 1 cent in there daily earnings.
Kill the fleas i say BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK
Who is with me!
My favourite site is in a low click market, I use adsense mainly to cover costs.
Just accept the small clicks, if your not getting small clicks you wont get bigger ones. It's that simple. But here are some tips..
If you block ads that pay one cent, the better ads arn't forced to pay more, instead you earn 1c for the good ads also. You must let the lame ads push up the cost of the goods ads! Repeat: Never block ads, even if they are off target. (My advice)
Are you displaying too many ads per impression? If you over advertise, say 3 wide-skys, there are alot of cheap ads on your page.
Off target ads gradually correct themselves, as noone clicks them, so they earn less. The google system is designed to make you the most money, so let it go to work.
Leave your ad formats unchanged for at least a month and at least several hundred clicks! Statistics take time. I'm not certain, but it seems new pages, and changes in ad layout can trigger google to reset the statistics for that page.
Don't trick users, or place ads right in there face, you may get clicks, but they wont convert for the advertiser and you get smart-priced.
As most people will tell you, if you have a young site the best thing you can do is improve and add the content on your site. Your users need to love your site so they view, and read, multiple pages. If you have great content you will earn good money on ads at the very bottom of the page.
Happy googling!
Kill the fleas i say BLOCK BLOCK BLOCKWho is with me!
I am with you 100%
If you block ads that pay one cent, the better ads arn't forced to pay more, instead you earn 1c for the good ads also
I am not sure how you arrived at this conclusion.
You must let the lame ads push up the cost of the goods ads! Repeat: Never block ads, even if they are off target. (My advice)
I disagree with the above statement for the following reason:
We do know that the adwords network doesn't operate on bidding price alone, because ctr is also another factor that helps an advertiser climb to the top of the ladder. This has been mentioned and discussed on this forum on many occasions.
It is said that savvy MFA'ers climb to the top of the ad block heap and pay peanuts for their ads because their marketing skills enable them to target well and write catchy ads. Many a publisher has been frustrated and is all too familiar with the scenario of good well paying advertisers being displaced with trashy MFA's or slick marketers paying peanuts.
Therefore isn't it logical that allowing the MFA's and other low paying ads the opportunity to be clicked on our sites will increase their ctr, thus further aiding their chances of success and achieving a lower bid price?
[edited by: Scurramunga at 7:20 am (utc) on Dec. 15, 2006]
I limit my filter to a few obvious low life MFAs, ebay.various and my own site.
Never block ads, even if they are off target. (My advice)
This is probably the worst advice I have seen on this board for a long time.
Blocking does make a difference, especially if you stop low-quality ads from showing, and this obviously includes MFAs, eBay, etc etc. Just imagine if your visitors click on one of the ads, get to a pure MFA site, wonder "what the heck?" and hit the back button. A few page views down the line they click again on a well written, promising ad, and again, they are taken to a MFA-type site. What do you think, how many ads will this user click on your site again? Not too many, I guess. This is the obvious difference: the perceived ad quality will go up noticably for your visitors.
The not-so-obvious difference is the EPC. I saw a tremendous increase when I started blocking back in December 2005, my EPC went up big time, and it stayed that way with a few dips then and now. Even today I won't complain about EPC. Your CTR may go down, but that's because the legit advertisers do not always know how to write good copy (i.e. how to lie to viewers). But it's okay for me, the CTR reduction is more than compensated by the EPC gain.
So please, if any new Adsense publishers stumbles across this thread, please take blocking seriously into consideration. Many have reported success with blocking, and I do recommend it too.
Better use of your time to develop strong content.
Blocking works and I dont want to lift the 50 sites that I have blocked and get blasted with MFA's.
I had been said Google shows the lowest paying ads first.
I spend a lot of money monthly on adwords. I am fortunate that some of my sites, in highly competitive niches, are performing well. Adwords rewards sites that fit their "algo's" by reducing the cost per click that you are paying. For example, I may be bidding $2 a click, but am only being charged 0.25c. By taking out ALL low paying clicks you will not necessarily remove the fleas, and may end up removing a lot of good sites. This, IMHO, could result in you being smart-priced.
I would suggest you spend a little time researching how adwords works - and perhaps visit the adwords forum here, to get a greater understanding.
if you are running the max number of blocks in a small sector, you better think about keeping ebay around... it pays more than a site-targeted ad, and it's a legit business, not an mfa.
also, you might get rid of most of the ri*****e advertisers, but keep one of 'em around to fill up all those ad blocks... unless your site is about cell phones, that is.
I've been going back and forth on blocking sites for nearly 3 years.
I binge and purge... I'm settled now on purging.
The more ads you block the less chances you have of getting some decent EPC clicks.
You'd be much better off tweaking and adding to content than spending those minutes investigating who is advertising.
Note that it is the content on your page that is attracting the low EPC ads.
If you have an MFA site then you'll get hit twice because the Advertisers will also block your site.
Blocking works and I dont want to lift the 50 sites that I have blocked and get blasted with MFA's.The facts of the matter are that that blocking works for you and in my case I know its blocking work for me also.
My market is strongest in the USA and as a result I do see far few less MFA's in this sector, however if I was to unblock my filter, the odd MFA or two will appear. With only one adblock per page (on less than 25 % of my entire site) all I need are one or two MFA's displaying as single or double ads to ruin my day. In my case, regions outside the USA, UK and Australia tend to show more MFA's because the demand and advertisers' inventory for my product is weaker. Yet I don't really want to see MFA's display here either if I can help it.
As the MFA's displaying in India, Indonesia, Bulgaria or even Spain are the exactly same culprits that that would otherwise appear within any geographical region given the chance, why should I help these weeds thrive by contribute to their increase in ctr whilst ruining my site's credibility in the process? I'd rather forgoe the pittance that they pay.
"Is your account filter list working a little too well? Consider reducing the number of filtered ads."
newborn:
WHY IS GOOGLE TELLING US TO LIMIT THE AMOUNT OF ADS WE BLOCK
Sure you're not overreacting here? The bottom line is that filtering appears to help some sites and not others. If you want to filter ads you don't like, go ahead. Nobody's saying you can't.
I personally believe it can help high-value sites plagued by MFA's, but there's no way an intrinsically low-value site can bootstrap its way to high earnings by blocking all the low bidders. You'll just get PSA's.
From my own experience. I know that in the past, high ranking mfas have displaced well paying advertisers
[edited by: Scurramunga at 5:40 pm (utc) on Dec. 15, 2006]
But guys look... the real question is WHY IS GOOGLE TELLING US TO LIMIT THE AMOUNT OF ADS WE BLOCK" Mmmm, what is going on here, thats why I am asking about this. Is there something that we dont know is happening.
Google has been telling us that since they introduced the filter--which was what? Two and a half years ago? (Correct me if I'm wrong on that, anyone.)
They don't want people being overzealous in blocking, because it will hurt revenue.
I know that blocking MFAs and a few mega-sleazoids has worked just fine for my site, in my niche. I'm going to keep doing it.
BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK
The only solution is to allow us to set a minimum bid before ads are shown at all. The long tail is made up of very scammy to extremely scammy ads. I'd rather show PSA (or better yet alternate ads) than most of what's in there.
Other easy to do things like making sure display URLs match with the real URL where it links to, to prevent links to redirecting pages, to allow us to get rid of keywords like "ebay", "free", "no spyware", ... in the ad copy, ...
Have been suggested dozens of times, noticed by eg. ASA but ignored so far.
So that leaves with what they are doing, and that's slowly improving the quality. Way too slow for my taste, but I can understand the need to go slow when there is a stock quote to care about.
Still if advertisers get to set a maximum, It's only fair to let us have a minimum.
Blocking for low earnings on clicks does not make sense.
[edited by: Huntster at 2:31 pm (utc) on Dec. 16, 2006]
The only solution is to allow us to set a minimum bid before ads are shown at all.
Why would Google want to allow that? Letting publishers set minimums would be problematic because:
1) It would reduce publisher ad inventory (let's face it--Google needs to display ads for all advertisers, not just higher-paying ones); and...
2) Many publishers have unrealistic ideas about the value of their traffic to advertisers.
In short, being able to set minimums might be appealing to publishers, but when you look at the bigger picture, it's easy to see why such a policy isn't likely to happen (at least until such time as Google has serious competitors who offer that option to publishers).
that is exactly right... it's the google whored-out adwords pricing that has created this mfa situation, and they are making money off of it.
ever notice how there are very few made-for-ypn sites out there? funny how the reputation of the publisher website has to suffer because of google mfa's.
last i heard, overture has a minimum bid of $.10, but not adwords!
I removed my url from the blocked list.
Hopefully I'm not bidding high enough on adwords to show on my own site but I should be adding competition and maybe increasing bids by 5-15 cents.
Next step is to actually target my site and have a phone number in the ad. People call and I'll have zero ad costs for that lead.
Perhaps I should slow down on the eggnog.
Why would Google want to allow that? Letting publishers set minimums would be problematic because:2) Many publishers have unrealistic ideas about the value of their traffic to advertisers.
This may be so, however if a publisher isn't making money because he/she has outpriced themselves, market forces will exclude that publisher.
