Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Now I know I only block best8crap and top9bull kind of 'sites', and for years blocking them has improved my site's performance as well as my personal satisfaction with what my visitors are exposed to.
But in the last few day I am observing an unusual anomaly:
With every MFA batch that I add, my EPC drops a notch.
I know there are other explanations too, but I'm curious if there is anyone else here blocking only MFA, nothing else is changing on their sites and observing the same.
The other 10% of filtered sites included a large auction website and sites peddling an alternative to my niche topic.
In the interest of science I just removed all 50 sites from my list -- and I will be quite surprised if I see a bump in earnings. ;)
However, my case is an interesting one in that I don't filter MFA's or even on-topic competitors. There is one site among the althernative competitors that could increase my revenue. If revenue goes up, I'll add that site back to the filter.
[yes, I know that poorly worded searches could lead the jewelry buyers to my site, but a few sample searches and years of scanning my logs suggests otherwise.]
I have tried filtering competitive sites in the past few months, and it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference.
I'm now experimenting wth filtering MFA sites, although I don't expect that to help much either. I'm in the process of setting up affiliate affiliate accounts with my advertisers, and I'm going to replace my adsense blocks with those as an experiment.
[edited by: seoArt at 3:04 pm (utc) on April 13, 2007]
I have just pasted it back in again after a complete collapse in earning and clicks.
Maybe people won't click on Ads if they are complete crap?
[edited by: Chrispcritters at 3:51 pm (utc) on April 13, 2007]
Just out of curiosity, how many of you who are "MFA victims" use more than one ad unit on your pages? Isn't it possible that reducing the number of ad units to one would result in fewer undesirable ads?
M-hm... well Google not only advised to clear out the filter, but on a site of mine that had but a single ad unit per page, it warned that we might need to add more. ( Although if we did it'd outweigh the content, for this site is more or less an interface, but oh well. It was automated after all, why would it check the number of words or overall size of the page before advising such things... no way, too troublesome. )
Following the logic of the original idea for the thread, having but a single ad unit may again be something they don't want you to do.
Okay, on topic:
Competitive filer vs. eCPM fun
I've spent days in a row to check the advertisers' sites in the preview tool for every country it's popular in. I looked at them from a user and SEO perspective as well ( "Is it borderline? ) AdSense shows different ads in different regions, so even if only a few english speaking people arriving from France or Romania, I better know what we display for them.
...
I was shoked to say the least.
Some of the ads for certain regions - while stayed on topic - were more or less sites that were already banned from Google altogether! Banned, not from AdSense or AdWords, but the Google Index. Gone. Sometimes I tracked down their history, and most of them were either scam, MFA or offering virtual services which you can't prove to be illegal, but are sure as hell unethical.
I don't want people to judge our site by having clicked on an ad that installed spyware two clicks from the landing page either. If there's one in a hundred, we might be getting some bad reviews for this site, which is, honestly, 75% hype. Oh never worry, I DID find some sites that tried to install stuff. Banned from Google Index, alive and well in AdWords until their algo comes along to finish them off.
Once I added all such sites to the filter -- everything I considered "must not have" -- ( there were at least three times this many for another two batches ) eCPM slowly started to regain its glory.
Nowhere close to where it was two or three years ago, but, there was a rise of 30-50%.
Also, I saw a huge inital boost in CTR, which later calmed down, but even then it was 30% more than before. Some of the sites I blocked were in fact taking over all the ad space before. There is a strong base of returning visitors, and I figured, yes, perhaps I wouldn't click on an ad either if I saw it for the 50th time, and decided I wasn't interested after taking a peek when it first appeared.
Reason was, again, low quality. QUESTIONABLE businesses.
These ads werenot off-topic, just... from very low quality services.
Which woulnd't show just by looking at the ad, unless I did my research on them.
Where they get their revenue to run these campaigns I don't know, but their offers were rip-offs. Hence, no one clicked their very well phrased, on-topic ads more than once. Yet, ...or perhaps because this, the ads stayed there until I filtered them out. While a click must have worth a lot, there was 50% less than at any other time, thus their campaign ran even longer. In these cases another ad uint might have saved the day, but there's just no legitimate placing for two of them on this site.
...
I don't think filling up the filter gets you a penalty.
But I do feel that I should be keeping it more up to date.
Whenever I spend a day or two revisiting the sites that were a bit "shady" in my opinion, and refresh the list of URLs, eCPM slowly rises for a few weeks, then gets back to a slightly higher level than before.
This has to do with variety, which of course can be controlled by adding/removing stuff from the filter. But again, I'm not going to let cr@p show on the site just to make it interesting enough to be clicked on. For that works only for a short time, until people learn not to click at all. There's all too much of "too good to be true" NonSense that offers 100000% the results for 1% of the price or better yet, for free.
Its funny, we have a channel that has increased recently, seems to be a bidding war going on for that spot of adspace between the MFA and a legit advertiser who more than likely gets a lot of conversions from our site.
Reminded me of "When in hole stop digging"
How about I just give them the root password and they take it from there? IT DOES NOT WORK!
But soon it might become worth testing I guess ;-)
[edited by: Hobbs at 5:03 pm (utc) on April 13, 2007]
Yeah,
I got the "Placing more than one ad .. often generates more revenue" calendar quote.
I suppose that might be true in some cases, if it results in more clicks by tempting the reader with more ad headlines. (Going from a two-ad banner to a four-ad leaderboard certainly helped my CTR when I did it a couple of years ago.)
Of course, it could also mean that the reader is seeing more low-paying ads, resulting in a lower average earning per click.
On the downside (and it's a big downside for me), having multiple AdSense units can look cheesy and give the impression that the tail is wagging the dog. As a user, I tend to be skeptical of sites that have their limited content framed by AdSense units on all sides. Also, AdSense isn't the only game in town, and--to me--diversifying one's revenue streams is a lot smarter than placing all bets on AdSense.
Hi all -
I'll do my best to respond, particularly regarding the Inside AdSense post which I believe contains good advice for the majority of publishers. However, my perspective on filter lists is based on experience providing support to the overall publisher base, so these are general observations and may not apply to specific cases such as david_uk's.The reason AdSense offers filters to publishers is to give you more control over the ads appearing on your site. We know you work hard building the content and reputations of your sites. With this in mind, it sounds like david_uk is using filter lists exactly as they were intended:
1) He is judiciously blocking ads from *specific* advertisers that, for a variety of reasons, he does not want appearing on his site.
2) He has *tested* the results of his filters to ensure they are not negatively impacting his site's revenue potential. To quote Bryan from the Inside AdSense post:
This might not be true for all publishers, but you should test first so that you know the actual effects before unintentionally reducing your AdSense revenue.
So david_uk's experience is different from the one described in Inside AdSense. As an AdSense Support rep, I can assure you that I've worked with many publishers who overuse filters without performing any testing on revenue impact because they think they know what their users will click and which ads pay the most. By removing some of their filters, many of these publishers experienced revenue increases.
The important thing to remember is that the algorithm takes a wide array of information into account each time it selects ads to appear on a page of your site, and it's usually right about which ads will perform best. Of course, technology cannot fully replace the expertise each of you have acquired when it comes to your own users. This is why we provide filters.
Lastly, I want to reiterate that testing - and by this I mean testing over several weeks rather than on a day-by-day basis - is extremely important to filtering smartly.
-ASA
[webmasterworld.com...]
That was back then, hope the good old bad days info is still valid :-)
Just out of curiosity, how many of you who are "MFA victims" use more than one ad unit on your pages? Isn't it possible that reducing the number of ad units to one would result in fewer undesirable ads?
Yes. It can certainly happen, but some MFAs are bidding higher, because they've concluded they can still turn a tidy profit, and perhaps also because they know fewer ads units used to bump them off the sites back when they were only comfortable spending a penny.
Regarding the Adsense Advisor's advice to test an advertiser over weeks before canning it for good in your CAF, how on earth do you do that? How can you isolate it and read the data to draw any reasonable conclusion? Far too many variables at work. It would be like reading tea leaves.
What I want from Google is Ad Performance Monitoring. I get the data on every ad it serves. This is how you determine which ads to ban. Read data. Now tell me why doesn't Google provide this info? There's so much guessing in Adsense it's absurd. And, don't tell me. I know, I know, it can't give the data because it's run out of memory! :/
p/g whose CAF is at 200 like so many
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."--Bill Gates (1981)
What I want from Google is Ad Performance Monitoring. I get the data on every ad it servesYes, advertisers can monitor, so it's not beyond Google's capabilites to provide publishers with such tools. However we all know that Google has no interest in this, so the guessing game continues.
[edited by: Scurramunga at 10:26 pm (utc) on April 13, 2007]
Consider the following simplified situation:
Say the following are the MAX bids made by advertisers for your keyword:
Advertiser A: .05
Advertiser B: .25 (MFA/competitor)
Advertiser C: .35
As you know GAd is efficient and only charges the bidder 1 cent over the next lower bidder (total CPM being equal and smart-pricing notwithstanding). By putting Advertiser B on your competitve filter, his bid no longer get's counted which means that Advertiser C will have preference for your ad spot for a mere 6 cents! Once C has established a record of best CPM for your spot, removing Advertiser B from your filter still gives Advertiser C preference (although B may still get through OCCASIONALLY) but NOW for the much higher 26 cents! A 500% improvement and nothing much changes on your site! Naturally if Advertiser B has much better/misleading ad copy or relatedness and tends to get a higher CTR, you WILL see more B's Than C's, but theoretically this will make you a LOT more money as well, so THEN it becomes your choice of quality vs $ (i.e. DO you sell out your principles for REAL cash :).
Most MFAs are not usually the high bidders, but can make a big difference in determining the price. Thus, IF (and probably ONLY if) your site is already established and getting apparently GOOD looking Advertiser C type ads, then MFAs may play a very important role in getting higher bids without necessarily being seen.
I think, possibly, the drop-back effect many of you are seeing after the initial up-surge from 'cleaning the filter' is actually the high bidders backing off their max bids or dropping the keyword once the higher prices kick in, since they have gotten used to the former cheap results. Thus the solution might be to cut back the filters slowly and allow things to increase slowly so as to not scare the high bidders. (Or at least do it on a Friday ;-).
Just my two cents.
[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 10:40 pm (utc) on April 13, 2007]
With every MFA batch that I add, my EPC drops a notch.
Exact opposite here. I never look at our ads unless I see a drop in EPC for a few days. When that happens, I check, there's always a new MFA or 2, I add them to the filter, and our site is back to normal by the next day. Last time I wrote Adsense and mentioned that our filter was full, they replied that they are looking into expanding it beyond 200.
As an AdSense Support rep, I can assure you that I've worked with many publishers who overuse filters without performing any testing on revenue impact because they think they know what their users will click and which ads pay the most. By removing some of their filters, many of these publishers experienced revenue increases.
Maybe I'm missing some context here, but this sounds almost like the advice is based on the premise that the highest paying ads are the most important thing, higher priority than worrying about such things as frustrating site visitors.
Like a used car dealer telling his new salesman, "I know it's your grandmother, but if you can get her to buy the high mileage Chevy, you can earn more commission."
FarmBoy
Using Googles own system, surely if we get the highest paying adverts on our site then we don't NEED to filter out mfas, or low paying sites. It should be done automatically.
However last year I found a website that provides blacklists of mfa's and added that to my site. My ecpm immediatly rocketed up almost trebling my income.
However its been downhill since then with this week seeing the site back at its pre blocking days 8 months ago.
Be very careful of using these. I have looked at these over the years - and there is definately ulturistic motives going on in some of them. They don't just add mfas - there are genuine sites in there - and I guess people add their competitiors in these "blacklists" to try and force greater audiences.
Also, some add sites that are low payers for them. With smartpricing, and with diferent motives for different sites - this can result in you filtering out good paying, and genuine advertisers.
I feel it is better to create your own lists. IMHO
Consider the following simplified situation:
Say the following are the MAX bids made by advertisers for your keyword:Advertiser A: .05
Advertiser B: .25 (MFA/competitor)
Advertiser C: .35
The situation is probably more complex.
Your page does not consist of just "one keyword", and relevant factors may be bidding AND targeting.
If your page would be about "super specific red widgets buy them here not on ebay page copyright 2007 mike", how about this scenario:
Advertiser A: .05 for "find cheap widgets on ebay"
Advertiser B: .06 for "super specific red widgets" (MFA/competitor)
Advertiser C: .35 for "widgets"
Perhaps advertiser B's bid will win over C's, because it is better targeted, until you will put B in your filter list.
One trick seems to attract the broader targeted (= more competitive) ads.
It seems that many MFAs are often bottom fishing and don't bid that high because it seems to affect their arbitrage calculation.
So -- my own experience -- killing the MFAs *may* *sometimes* make room for less targeted and better paid ads.
Kind regards,
R.
Got my doubts:-)
Fired an e-mail off to G asking if I identified all of the domains in our filter that had spam landing pages, could they exclude them from our filter count.
[edited by: Scurramunga at 11:18 pm (utc) on April 16, 2007]
By the way, the empty filter for the first time in years is keeping EPC steady for 5 days and counting, before it only lasted for 24 hours or less, will keep on running the test to make sure, not happy with the results so far.
the empty filter for the first time in years is keeping EPC steady for 5 days and counting
Do you mean steady good, steady bad, or steady nothing special?
If you are asking if the EPC is good generally, no, year 2007 is 30% below historical average.
This 30% was usually recoverable and exceeded when blocking MFA, but if my hunch is correct, it might not work anymore, let's wait and see over a longer period.
...it might not work anymore, let's wait and see over a longer period...
You obviously have more courage than I.
After clearing out my filter, I can't stand the ads that show up on my site. It's not just the MFA ads, it's also the misleading ads. It makes me want to apologize to my visitors.
FarmBoy
At least the freefall seems to have stopped, but I am still below the levels of last month.
The biggest difference happened yesterday and today, with an increase to near 'normal' levels.
The reason, as far as I can see is that I hav ebeen working on the site building content, and tidying it up.
I seem to see a pattern where if I leave the site for a while - month or so of only a little new content per day - the ecpm dropps off, only to increase when new content is added.
Maybe the answer is to forget trying to second guess google, and just make new relevent content frequently.
EPC holding at a lower but acceptable rate, almost no fluctuation, before that it was going crazier than a compass on a magnet, and I do serve a ton of ad impressions so stability is expected and has been the norm in 2006, 2005..
You obviously have more courage than I
But there might still be hope for us in this battle even without Google's help.
Way back, a year or two, a valuable member of this forum called 21_blue (this place really missed a great person when he decided to stop posting) came up with a theory about combating MFA just by making your pages too expensive for them, i.e. Working on onpage factors that cause ads to be mistargeted and also factors that drop our EPC and make our pages reachable to those sharks.
And what do you know, I only see MFA on mistargeted pages, so perhaps this is the way to go from now on, should sort out many problems with one bullet, and even give earnings a quantum boost.
Targeting will be the next frontier in combating MFA.
If someone finds 21_blue's thread please post the link here.
