Forum Moderators: martinibuster
But I am quite interested in hearing what general information you gather on the sites in your filter, and how? Are there any noticable trends to be seen? Also considering the June 1st crackdown?
Here are my observations:
I am using an Excel sheet to track my filter. The list is still 100% full (i.e. 200 of 200 slots used), and looking at those 500+ URLs I have unblocked over time, I can safely say that a bigger filter would definitely help. In this case, I would re-insert the unblocked URLs to the filter again, just to be on the safe side.
Over the past four or five weeks, I have seen a strong increase of parked domains being advertised (now approaching 40% of my filter). This seems to have come to a halt this week, though. Summer? Google further cracking down? Have I filtered everyone in my niche? Who knows.
The TLD split looks as follows:
.com 47,5%
.info 15,0%
.net 12,5%
.biz 4,5%
.org 6,5%
other 14,0%
As for the origin countries:
USA 25%
private registration 24%
UK 17%
Canada 13%
Rest of World 21%
What do I filter and why?
- Any "parked" domain I come across
- Any scam or e-mail-harvesting scheme
- Any utterly wrong targeting (e.g. red widgets on a site about green carpets)
- eBay, Blogger, Ask
So, what is your filtering experience?
All arb or parked domains as well as badly targeted. I do this for every page in uk, us, canada with the tool.
Every time I clear the filter (monthly) to capture the new ones by refilling it from scratch my ecpm falls by about half. 2 days later after wasting about eight hours per day refilling it we are back to a sensible ecpm.
I've got more productive and/or fun things to do
Meanwhile, income is up.
[edited by: Genuine1 at 7:13 pm (utc) on July 27, 2007]
"Get rich" schemes
MFA's
Basic competitors although when I really get busy during the winter season I add them back in as I am usually fully booked.
Real Estate scammers - big problem in our area.
My filter is full
Most of my 200 are .com or .biz anyway.
you are right about "not all .info domains are spam", but from looking at my filtered list (and my "waiting list"), I'd just block .info completely if I was given the chance. I don't care if there are three or five or ten genuine advertisers that might show up in my niche on a .info domain. Better get rid of the 1000s of spam .info domains in one go...
I think that 95%-99% of .info domains are spam and spam alone (or parked domains).
P.S.: And while we're at it, I'd put .biz into the same bag. My take is - if you don't want to look like you are running a spam domain, don't get a .info or .biz TLD. (As I said: my take!)
[edited by: zett at 3:52 pm (utc) on July 29, 2007]
200 limit of filter is definitely insufficient, it there a way to enlarge it?
200 is definitely too small, and there is an easy way to enlarge the filter. It probably is just an entry in the main Adsense control panel. Unfortunately, the change can only be made by a Google engineer. ;-)
OK, that was a just cruel joke. Of course, WE do not have any influence on the filter size. All we can do is to complain about the current implementation of the filter and raise the awareness of Google staff. Maybe, some day they will react.
earnings are about the same if not a bit higher, but factor in time saved and its much higher.
I think if you are going to editorilze your ads in the name of better user experience, and not just use the competetive filter as a competetive filter, you need to do it all the way, including ecomm shops with poor/bad customer service, bad products etc. As this will make visotrs more mad than hitting an arb/MFA site. Also you better check and make sure the site owner(s) aren't up to stuff offline your vistors may find questionable. Don't forget about geo-targeting, so you need to visit your site thru proxies simulating every country and region and city adwords offers.(they have a list in adwords). Since adverrtisers can also bid on certain times, you will need to check every hour or half. Google may also be using behavorial targetting so you will also need to browse your site as each different user as well. Plus some users love to trade their email or zipcode for a chance at a free {fill in your hot product here}. So they want to see those ads. Oops 5 minutes have passed and there are now 1000 more campaigns started on the adwords side injected into the system to check.
A bit tounge in cheek, but you get the idea,to me trying to keep up on it all is an exercise in futility. I and my visitors are better served by me working on content, or researching/developing new features than worrying about what ads are showing. Back when click trackers still worked, i could occasionlly figure out which ad was a high dollar bid (low traffic channels of course) and i would never see the actual ad when i browsed the site. so sometimes what i see on that site is different than what my visitors see. Makes sense too, G knows my log-in ip,any cookies etc., so if(owner_account_logged_ip == visitor_ip){show different ads} is possible.
But with adsense the only thing the same account to account is the adsense log-in page and the don't click on your ads mantra, differences in topics, traffic levels, visitors, smart pricing etc, and the whole dynamic system make comparisions almost impossible. A site that gets 1000 uniques a day gets $xx a day, perhaps someone rips the site and throws up an exact copy and gets a 1000 uniques as well only earns $x or maybe $#*$!. i guess a better example would be if you geo-targeted your site sending each country to its own section even if traffic was the exact same, money levels would be wildly different on the same basic content.
Another thing to keep in mind, Adwords rewards well performing ads by lowering prices, so todays big bidding ad is tomorrows low bidding one and the circle continues.
Google does show different ads to visitors based on what they know about their surfing habits, and I check out lots of suspected MFA sites that show up in the adsense on my site. Then, does Google display more MFA sites to me when I visit my site ... because it thinks I'm interested in them?
Mostly .info sites are blocked. I wish there was a way of blocking all of those spammy looking sites simply by adding a line like *.info to the filter, instead of having to enter each one at a time.
You must have a really weird niche, because out of the 175 or so I've got blocked, only about half a dozen or so are .infos.
Probably around 125 or so are .coms, followed by .nets and and then others bringing up the rear (I have more .us's and other country-specific domains blocked than .infos and .orgs).
My niche is a high-profile heavy traffic tech-related type of niche, so maybe .com MFAs/arbitrage sites carry more weight in it, who knows.
I am going to be looking at my filter, now that they started kicking out arbitrage/MFAers, I might be able to clean up my filter a bit (then again, I should probably wait until it's full before worrying about it).
I think the more important issue than breakdown of TLD is the impact that Google's kicking out of the arbitrage sites is having. Since they started doing that, my earnings, etc. are up (I've seen a few bumps due to some tradeshows, but those are easy enough to track and remove out of the equation).
I wished they had kicked those sites out sooner, I might not have 175 or so sites sitting in my filter, but hey, at least they did it.
I check out lots of suspected MFA sites that show up in the adsense on my site. Then, does Google display more MFA sites to me when I visit my site ... because it thinks I'm interested in them?
Nah. I'd hope for Google to have a routine like this: If the publisher has checked a site with the preview tool AND the site ends up in the filter later THEN assign low quality to ad. After all, a human actually has seen the ad and decided that a specific site should be blocked.
the impact that Google's kicking out of the arbitrage sites is having. Since they started doing that, my earnings, etc. are up
Now, if only The Plex would start to clamp down on parked domains and Adwords>Other arb folks as well...!
And a better experience for the user and better credibility for your site and the adsense program. As far as income goes even if your site earns the same as before - as long as it does not earn less - then obviously its still better to block them.
jason207 experience may be innacurate as there are other changes such as referal reports etc that have improved incom quite drastically for some sites and he may be one of them! But wont know it.
[edited by: Genuine1 at 9:17 am (utc) on July 30, 2007]
Spammers see domains as disposable commodities so, naturally, they choose the cheapest TLD - the one always "on sale". Too bad for the .Info registry. Their efforts to promote the TLD are undermined by those who see it as an opportunity to churn and burn .Info domains.
I would suggest a blanket ban.
If Google is listening . . err . . reading, I'd suggest that having the ability to block "with exceptions" the .Info gTLD would likely be the best route. Truly there is a good deal of churn and burn within the .Info gTLD but there's also some gems in the .Info tailings and waste pile.
As far as income goes even if your site earns the same as before - as long as it does not earn less - then obviously its still better to block them.
If one accepts the premise that successful MFA's thrive because of their high adwords ctr, then why not deprive them of exposure on the content network.
some sites will have results like mine some will have results the exact opposite, there's no silver bullet in adsense. you have to test everything, just because it works for site a it may not for site b, and right now for my sites, my time is better spent creating than chasing down ads that could be gone by the time i go thru the hassle of looking for them, finding the right domain, checking and deciding if its good enough and then typing it into the filter.
I used to clear out the filter everytime EPC dropped thinking i was reducing competition too much but Saturday was the highest EPC in over 12 months and was 110% above average. Today sux - go figure.
I'm leaving the filter as is for now.
If you were not wrong there would not be a repeatable pattern every time I clear the filter for a few days while finding all the latest ones...
But also what about the damage to your visitors perception of your site? Or the damage done to the visitors likelyhood of clicking ads by google again?
[edited by: Genuine1 at 12:41 am (utc) on July 31, 2007]
Googles serves the highest paying ads right?
Not always, with highly targeted keywords and/or a high CTR (due to deceptive and appealing ad copy), low-paying arbitrageur and MFA ads can displace less highly targeted but much higher-paying ads from actual retailers.
When I block these arbitrageur/MFA ads, my CTR goes down a little bit, but my eCPM goes way up. I'd also rather not have these junky, deceptive ads lurking on my sites just waiting to disappoint and annoy any of my visitors who happen to click on them.
Competitors of ours also have the same problem and the same inventory going all the way up the food chain to 2 million visits per day sites. If they dont block them we arent going to either :)
FarmBoy
I encourage anyone who is a direct competitor of mine to just leave the filter clean.
If they click on your link and I get paid for it, then you are not a competitor. If your site adds value to my visitor's experience, then I don't really see this as a competition. I get alot of repeat visitors. If they go to another site, that's OK. They'll be back.
[edited by: timwestla at 3:15 am (utc) on July 31, 2007]
