Forum Moderators: martinibuster
You know, instead of playing this game of wack-a-mole, I know of an easy way to limit MFA sites on the network. Let webmasters dictate the minimum price per click for each of their sites. Just putting a $0.05 minimum would get rid of 90% of these detestable advertisers. Other sites with better advertising competition could even raise the bar to $0.10 or $0.15, practically eliminating all of them in just the click of a button.
Most of the MFA landing pages do not contain adsense, but many still do. The ones that carry adsense usually have scraped content or something similar. Obviously Google deems them worthy.
There was a short period in between where I emptied the filter, but the resulting ad quality was so bad that I quickly filled the filter again. Today, I could immediately filter another 150 to 200 sites.
I will soon reach my 200 limit on my filter list... what to do then?
I suggest to keep track of the filtered domains in a list, together with a rating (e.g. "ultimately bad", "very very bad", "very bad", "bad", and so on). When you hit the limit, you remove the least offending sites from your filter and replace them with the new entrants.
Also, you will want to check from time to time the Alexa ranking of the sites in your filter. Often, you can see from just looking at the Alexa chart whether the sites are still actively aquiring traffic.
That said, my earnings have increased nicely over the past couple of months while my clicks and CTR are down.
Old MFA sites targeting visitors from outside USA (say Singapore for example) are still alive and doing well.
I always look up their domain registration and usually they were registered no longer ago than a month or two.
Which is why Google could stop them if it wanted to. Domain age is one of the most effective ways to determine Adsense legitimacy. Every site on a new domain should make Google's spidey sense tingle and automatically call for a human review.
p/g
By no longer allowing someone to put primarly AdSense and little else on a page then advertise the page on AdWords (if indeed they are no longer allowing that), it seems Google has opened the door for contextual advertising start-ups to take the place of AdSense.
Google might have just shot themselves in the foot not just once, but three times.
1. By closing the practices of the big AdWords - AdSense arbitrage players, they lost revenue.
2. They haven't cleaned up AdWords, thus those of us publishers concerned about user experience/quality of ads are no better off.
3. Competitors are taking revenue previously destined for AdSense
FarmBoy
For those who are noticing new "MFA" sites, are you seeing contextual ads served by Nixxie?
From where I sit, I do not see MFA sites serving Nixxie ads. I'd say the distribution on sites in my filter is, like,
30% parked domains, monetized through the parking provider (?)
30% Thin-content/no content MFOs (Made-For-Overture)
30% Thin-content MFAs (Made-For-Adsense)
10% bad targetting, E-Mail-Harvesters, Get-rich-quick-schemes, MFx
With parked domains demanding a bigger share lately.
I think, Google have definitely not shot themselves in the foot. They should have acted earlier, and they should even further clean-up their system. Get rid of all the parked sites, the arbitrage sites, the mail harvesters, the get-rich-quick schemes, the thin-content sites, and the Made-For-Whatever sites.
Advertisers who spend their money with Adsense competitors (who allow junk sites) will soon quit doing this because they will see no ROI. Google should aim to become the PREMIUM online ad provider. Then they can start charging top $$$ to their top clients. This has a future.
