Cleaned my filter!

In preparation for June 1st

[zett]

Yes, I cleaned my filter list, and yes, I am a few hours early, but then again, I know that Google probably needs some time to process my changes.

Now I will closely monitor what happens with the advertisers, with the ad targeting and their landing pages, and EPC, eCPM, and CTR.

I am excited.

[greatstart]

I will wait a week or so before I purge the 150+ URLs in my filter.

[Khensu]

I'll be going one site at a time tomorrow looking for the ads.

Takes me about 2 hours to go through all 200 but well worth it not to let the survivors in. With up to a 72 hour window to get rid of them again I have learned to be careful.

[zett]

Google took responsibility for the MFA problem and cleaned up their system. I give Google the benefit of the doubt. Now they can show how well they listened to us, and how well they actually have been cleaning the system.

If after a week I still see the same old MFAs then these will go straight back into the filter, and we are all back to square one. But I doubt it. Google may be greedy, but they certainly are no fools. So, I'll be watching closely.

Ah - an interesting week this will be.

[Scurramunga]

I am going to take it slowly over the next week. Whilst I looking foward to seeing how it all pans out, I can't say that I am overly optimistic.

[jomaxx]

Well we're into June 1 and I am still seeing arbitrage sites if I go looking for them. No AdSense ones, but a variety that show lists of sponsored results that (I guess) come from Yahoo.

[Scurramunga]

I going through my list of MFAs and so far all the sites I visit have adsense on them.

[chikung]

I too emptied my filter bag. Let us see.......

[Scurramunga]

I've now actually found a couple that have been switched off. I think that this is a sign of things to come; mfa's dissapearing here and there, but not enough being removed to overcome this enourmous problem.

[zett]

Uuuuuh.

Opened the first site that was previously on my filter. They typically just have a search bar and when you enter a search, all you get is

1) a logo
2) two Adsense blocks
3) one Adlinks section

Hello? GOOGLE? Anyone at home?

I would have expected that these guys are gone by now (i.e. since midnight).

Probably Scurramunga is right - we will see a few MFAs disappearing here and there, but some of the most blatant offenders will remain.

*sigh*

Under these circumstances I won't wait a week until the filter list is back in. (Having said that, I wonder what the next optimization tip will be? Probably "You are still blocking too many advertisers.")

[Scurramunga]

Under these circumstances I won't wait a week until the filter list is back in.

Don't clear your filters just yet! Many Mfa's seem to have survived this purge so far.
In addition to the surviving MFA's (made for Adsense) my filter is also full of MFA's (made for ad's]

By made for ad's I mean those sites which use the Adsense content network to take your visitor to their YPN (Or some other ad scheme} So unless Adwords purges these advertisers from their network we have these to contend with as usual.

[potentialgeek]

This is why we need human flagging to catch what the algo misses. Google should let us report the offenders. What's the harm in doing that? We can flag offending messages in WW, and on all kinds of sites, so why can't we flag offending MFA sites, too? Is it a really complicated programming technique?

p/g

[Scurramunga]

so why can't we flag offending MFA sites, too? Is it a really complicated programming technique?

Whilst I agree with you, the problem at the moment is that we do not really actually know what criteria Google is using to evaluate these sites. Our views on what sites may consitute unfit business models for Adsense will all vary from each other and may not be anywhere near Google's.

[Content_ed]

Our filter is full, and I don't see any reason to empty it. If I see some new, super low quality advertiser spamming our pages, I'll pick a domain to delete to make room for it. Sure, some of the sites in the filter list may have been dropped in the June 1st purge, but we don't want any of them back if we can avoid it.

[DXL]

Can someone please explain all this to me? I haven't been active on the forums for a while, and I can't seem to figure out what exactly is going on. I would really appreciate any answers that can be spared.

Am I supposed to delete all the sites in my filter? Why?

[zett]

DXL - the theory (aka "hope") was that with the June 1st banning of arbitrage sites* the filters could be released. A first assessment tells us that I was wrong in this respect. Most of the blatant offenders are still displaying Adsense ads. That's why I now am using the filter again.

* and/or MFA sites, WW members could never agree on a scope of this banning

[zett]

A quick check on the sites in my filter reveals that Google went clearly after the most blatant offenders ONLY. About 5 of 200 sites in my filter were axed. That is 2.5% of the previously filtered sites. This is in line with the silence we had on this issue here. (I remember that in the past, there was a real uproar by anyone banned.)

I still see a lot of ultra thin content sites and/or sites with heavy blending.

For the record: I am disappointed, and I feel that the system is still far from "clean" right now. It was a beginning, nothing more.