Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Instead of looking at it only from our own points of view, let's try and figure out why Google hasn't given it to us yet. I have a few ideas that might explain part of the problem.
- It's an engineering problem. The current system might not be designed so that the whitelist can easily fit in. Remember a few years ago when google made the huge change to the guts of the search algo, and how painful that was as they rolled in the changes? Can they afford something that painful when it comes to their revenue generation.
There isn't much of a solution to this one other than keep up the pressure.
- They don't want to lose ad revenue due to clueless publishers. Let's face it, some people with no understanding of the system will turn on their whitelist and not populate it fully. They might forget that they have a site and not add it to the list. They might add the adsense code to a new site and not add the site to their whitelist. They might blame Google for something that is their own fault.
I have a solution to this, but most publishers would still complain. Make it an option that has to be turned on. To stay on it must be reviewed at least once a month. Every domain that has served ads using that publisher ID is automatically entered and must be manually deleted.
It would also need the "new sites", that tried to serve ads but failed, to be listed. These would have to be OKed or blocked within a month or the whitelist turns off.
- They just don't believe the rank and file AdSenser would use it.
- Dealing with whitelist issues will add a large manpower requirement. Both hunting down infringing sites and helping the clueless webmasters.
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Those are the possible reasons that I came up with. Can you think of any others or possible solutions *from Google's point of view*?
Processing power: That's very little.
Think about the complex algos they implement now (keyword targeting, ads ranking, fraud filtering etc.) and the triviality of this problem (referrer domain in list).
Also, it could be done not in real-ime, i.e. at the end of the months my clicks get discounted of all the clicks coming from non-allowed domains
Actually, the problem is not so simple. Should the whitelist be literal, e.g. should it accept www.example.com but NOT example.com? Or should it assume that if example.com is in the list then *.example.com should be included (where * can have multiple labels, not just one such as 'www')?
That's a good idea. If I'm understanding you correctly fredw, establishing a paired key/pub-id relationship with Google using a file on your server would establish what domains you had authorized for your account. Any domains not having that pairing you would not receive credit for - either good or bad. BTW, isn't this idea of a hidden code file tied to a script similar to a security strategy some cgi scripts use to prevent the running of bogus forms from outside of the server?
[edited by: Play_Bach at 3:58 am (utc) on Jan. 8, 2007]
my id has been many times hhijacked.
well here is a simple solution.
the same way google varify your domain when you wanna submite "sitemap" you have to upload an html file which has a random code to your server.
thats way we " Publishers " will make our whitelist and varify each domain.
So that ads show only on those domains that has been varified.
I don't think its too diffuclt to do as google has already implemented such system in its "sitemap" section..
What if someone else whitelists your domain name before you do? How does Google know who the domain name belongs to? Will they assume that the first person to add it to a whitelist is the true owner? Do they conduct WHOIS queries to lookup technical contact info? How would they determine that you're the true domain owner when 3 months later, you try to add it to your own whitelist?
Why does this point keep resurfacing? Frox had it spot-on right ... this is a non-scenario.
What's being proposed with the whitelist is kind of a "twin key" or "adjoining hotel room doors" scenario. BOTH criteria must be met, at all times, for revenue to flow from advertiser to publisher. Turn off either one of the keys, or shut one of the doors, and the process flow stops (or gets diverted into Google's coffers).
So - it would not ever matter if someone else put your domain in their whitelist. Why? Because it's your domain, which presumably would mean it's your pages, which should mean -- your pub-ID is on them. That's where the revenue is directed - always - as it is today. To the proper pub-ID.
Unless someone hacked your server to put their pub-ID on your pages, it's a non-issue. But then again, that problem exists today.
Might make more sense if I write it out as an if-then statement with two conditions and an AND clause between them ... :-)
I agree with much of the commentary, though ... this is probably a non-problem in Google's opinion. Plus, we AdSense publishers are the Accounts Payable side of the books ... so I'd think we're a lot less likely to get attention than the Accounts Receivable side of the books (you know who they are).
The verify server doesn't work for the same reason that I explained before. It does not work on revenue sharing sites like blogger.
Then again simple solution.
We can use "pre ads" varification system.
google provide us with a javascript code.
we put the code in our ads places.
after that WE login to google ADSENSE and press the varification bottun, and it varify and add automaticaly the web site to our whitelist.
even Bloger web site can be varified
But if there is no problem, then this tool would not be useful to the rank and file, the rank and file may not be interested in it, and the tool may backfire by alarming the rank and file.
Are the people who wouldn't be smart enough to implement a whitelist making Google a lot of money?
I'd like a filter to block domains with certain words, like, oh, I dunno, maybe, "top" or "best." :/ I'd also like to block sites that have AdWords on them! That would be a nifty little filter, wouldn't it? Most of us would not need all 200 'competitive ad' filters!
Or I'd like the option of: IF advertiser A has Adwords AND the domain includes "top" OR "best"... AND has less than 100 pages... AND is not a reg'd business...
Does anyone have any stats on how many Adsensers there are? How many accounts does Google have to police (with its 'force' of 36 or whatever)?
p/g
I can think of some filters that I'd like, too, but I'd guess that meeting the needs of Google's paying customers (advertisers) is a higher priority than checking off items on publishers' wishlists.
Which puts Google equal to other similar companies whose main target is a short term profit chasing.
And this was not what made Google of today.
Many affiliate networks lost their credibility by not protecting publishers at all, while the later being prone to code/cookie stealing or even, often fraudulent merchants.
This issue with Adsense is a few years old, so even if we talking about "higher priorities", they should have solved lower prorities too, up to now.
Tying Pub ID to domains has been a must from the very beginning. Putting competitior's ID on any page and making a clicking bot is too easy, not to mention the real bad news: spyware&stealware rewriting the ID on users pc's (being on my site) and crediting and rewarding criminals.
Which puts Google equal to other similar companies whose main target is a short term profit chasing.
How does putting the paying customers first translate into "short-term profit chasing"?
Just because you or I might think publisher ID spoofing is a widespread problem doesn't necessarily mean that it is. (Google has more data than we do.) Also, if Google or any other CPC network has to set priorities for dealing with crooks, I'd imagine that click fraud would be higher on the "to do" list than spoofing of John Doe's and Jane Buck's publisher IDs. (Which isn't to say that the latter is a good thing; it obviously isn't, whether it happens to 1 out of every 100 publishers or 1 in 100,000.)
How does putting the paying customers first translate into "short-term profit chasing"?
Setting priorities is understandable, completely ignoring "lower" ones is recklessness.
Besides, 40% of their total revenues comes from content network, which equals the importance of advertisers and publishers for that part.
Protecting publishers should be a business model, not just a priority on the list.
I suspect that they do a lot to protect publishers that none of us have ever asked for, or even realized that they do.
Also, G should be monitoring sites who are violating the TOS and they should punish them by redistributing their earnings and then putting on a control that only serves them .01 cent ads. That would certainly change the dynamic for dupe content and MFAs.
1. Content scraped and stolen from websites by the billions then puked out in countless ways.
2. Obvious lack of content on page with zero links out besides the advert.
3. Content below the fold with 2-3 block units being the only content above the fold.
4. Images next to ads with scraped content 3 folds down
I mean we can go on and on. If I can sit down right now and with the help of a few custom scripts and find millions of pages right now like this then most certainly Google can. They DO NOT WANT TO.
Please do not tell me smartpricing is here to solve this, these scumbag spammers are producing more now then ever and I believe are a large part of why advertisers have such a negative view of the content network.
When asking my network engineer once why spammers email spam, he said because it works or they wouldnt. Same goes here, this stuff is basically adsense spam.
I think if they did implement a whitelist the available inventory of the content network vs good traffic in the whitelist would plummet and that is not a good option in Googles eyes.
Maybe Google just needs to have stricter controls on who gets to be a publisher in the first place and monitor any additional domains.
Any such controls would be interpreted as unfair, punishing the little guy, etc. These controls should have been in place from the very beginning of AdSense. Now it's just a tragedy of the commons.
Maybe Google just needs to have stricter controls on who gets to be a publisher in the first place and monitor any additional domains.
The last couple of posts in this thread haven't had much (if anything) to do with whitelisting, but what the heck:
1) Having stricter controls on who gets to enroll in AdSense is like locking the proverbial barn door after the animals have escaped. It isn't a bad idea, but it isn't a panacea, eithre.
2) Monitoring additional domains wouldn't accomplish much (if anything), because there's nothing to keep opportunists from simply creating their new made-for-AdSense pages within an approved domain.
I think that, in the long run, economic forces and alogrithms will solve a lot of the problems that we often complain about. Smart pricing, for example, makes it harder to get rich with pages that work poorly for advertisers. Filters, "TrustRank," and other Google Search improvements will make it harder for junk sites to get the traffic that's needed to earn AdSense revenue. And future AdSense improvements (quality scoring, site-targeted CPC ads, etc.) could force bottom feeders to subsist on leaner diets.
Dealing with whitelist issues will add a large manpower requirement. Both hunting down infringing sites and helping the clueless webmasters.
Your logic is flawed in that the whitelist doesn't add manpower hunting down infringers, it simply eliminates the problem altogether. Since the site isn't whitelisted, it simply doesn't display ads.
What you glossed over is the fact that anyone with their referrer disabled or forged, which is trivial, completely defeats the whitelist entirely as Google has no other means to identify which site the script was loaded from.
Now the clueless webmaster point is incorrectly categorized as it applies not only to your entire post but all topics on WebmasterWorld in it's entirety and the web in general, not just that specific issue.
1. Is hijacking of your ID really a big problem? Maybe not so much. What's the worry, that someone will try to get you kicked out of the program? It probably doesn't happen all that often, considering how hard it is to get kicked out these days. And when it does happen, the publisher probably deserves it 100X over no matter how much they profess their honesty. As heard on scrubs. If I can't trust you, then how can I trust you when you say that I can trust you?
It's easy for google to tell if the adsenser has quality sites or not. Quality people tend not to spam. If someone with quality has a track record and suddenly a domain shows up that looks like spam, Google will probably ban the new domain before assuming that the guy with the track record should be banned. I'd say there aren't too many bans anyway and when there's a ban, it's for a good reason. From G's POV, they would rather reduce revenue on a domain level than ban on an account level. So it's solving something that's not a problem.
2. People only complain when their domain is banned. So while it may be on the wishlist of publishers, this is only to ease our fear of getting banned. Nothing wrong with a bit of fear from G's POV.
3. Cost of implementation. Not only would the new feature require resources to build, worse it will cost resources to manage. Suddenly everyone will start threads complaining about how the feature was implemented. People will ask questions. More support emails from newbies wanting to understand why the feature is there. Worse yet, newbies will get into a panic. Why is my code on a spam site. They'll have to hire people just to answer all the questions this panic will generate. Why create a panic to solve a non problem.
4. Information is power. Why give publishers more information? They aren't interested in giving us more data to analyze stuff. And SEOs will analyze the crap out of every piece of data they get. Nah, G wants to keep it close to the vest.
So yes, totally understandable from their point of view. It probably would not be a good feature for them to implement. And it will probably never happen as a result...
EDIT TO ADD:
My comments refer to the idea of a report of domains my code appeared on where I can disable bad domains w/in a month.
A straight out whitelist? Actually, Google might like it because they can still display the ads but they won't have to pay the owner unless he remembered to put it in his whitelist... They should gain a few percent more revenue from that... of course everyone asking for that feature will then scream about how it was implemented.
[edited by: Clark at 7:34 am (utc) on Jan. 12, 2007]
what Google needs to do now is bring more advertisers into the fold and get them to pay more money by offering them better products and choices.
Some quality advertisers would certainly prefer to see something like a Whitelist with trusted advertisers. Or perhaps called Premium sites that have to meet certain requirements such as age, regular updates, decent placement of the adsense code and quality content, that is rich enough to compete with the very best sites for popular keywords.
Google could easily start something like "keyword managers" ...
Slightly similar to ODP and about but with a more professional touch ...
For users: Google could offer with each search result a link to a page with only the keyword manager's selected quality results.
I would expect, that most users would meanwhile prefer to go to
that page!
For advertisers Advertisers will certainly try out a premium option that will put their ads only on selected quality sites. Those who will find it beneficial and more profitable will pay a little bit more for real targeted traffic and quality branding.
Inside their adwords panel could be a button leading to "premium adwords" which is: regular adsense price + highest bid for being placed on the keyword manager's 2 top listing pages with his best selection.
For keyword managers The keyword managers generate additional
revenues that can be shared between them and Google.
Of course each keyword manager will be keen on presenting the very best
pages in order to make people come back to his selection which should in
fact be the "most valuable source on the Internet".
For publishers Any competitive publisher would appreciate a "submit to keyword manager" page with a form that could question: age, updates, google id, images, videos etc.
For Google Google would make the very best results constantly available what would certainly improve the current offering by far.
A premium offer would generate new advertisers, more revenues and improve the user and publisher experience which had both been suffering badly from all the faulty algo updates and data "refreshes" that had kicked out loads of prime sites whilst outdated and spammy urls were shoved to the top.
Indeed a system from which the core strength could benefit as well as also the "directory" market ( the new Wiki search attack ... ) will be covered and converted into additional earnings.
I doubt it would be too difficult to implement a 'whitelist' to work off the url channel system.
Perhaps amending the Adsense TOS to state something along the following lines:
"For each domain/subdomain a google adsense publisher wishes to display ads by Google, a URL channel MUST be created in the adsense control panel in order to help authenicate the ownership or approve the association between the publisher and the domain/subdomain as a legitimate association whereby the publisher acknowledges their desire to have ads appearing on such domain/subdomains"
Google could programme it so that unless a url channel existed in the adsense panel for a domain/subdomain, then ads would not be displayed (other than public service ads).
It would be a one-time check when first initiated and would therefore have no impact on pageload.
A message could be displayed in the adsense control panel that showed urls that have no channel associated with them thereby alerting webmasters about the situation.
Any procedural changes to AdSense need to work for all publishers, not just for those who pay attention, because dropping ads from inattentive publishers' pages would result in lost revenue for those publishers and--more important--for Google.
