Do you block your competitors?

To block or not to block, that is the question

[silverbytes]

I notice that when I track my sites for competitors that may capture sales in my area (direct competition) I block as many as I can. As a result I have a 70 and growing blocked advertising.

I wonder if wouldn't be better just to clean that list and forget about it. After all you put adsense in your site to get revenue from it.

The problem is that you can't really know how much do you loose because of visitors not buying you due to your competition (actually advertising in your site) and how much you get from those ads.

How do you handle the situation?

[Lame_Wolf]

I do not block the competition. I want more related (which would be competition, yes ?) adverts on the site, not less.

If your product is the best, then let the customer see the other sites have to offer, and then return to yours and purchase.

Others will have different opinions.

[koan]

if you have an e-commerce site, the best way not to lose customers to other sites is to avoid putting ads.

[jetteroheller]

I see myself as a series of technical magazines.
So far I see no ompetition on my sites.

I block only
MLM multi level marketing quick money,
MFA mad for adsense
fraudulent ads (trying to sell instruction books against the law of physics)

[acac]

I would like to block. I wish there was a automated way to block MFA's.

Wait, shouldn't Google do it?

[honestman]

I wish there was an easier way to do as jetteroheller suggests in terms of blocking sites. It is a rather tedious process currently. It would be nice to be able to block by categories or keywords.

I agree acac. There should, at a minimum, be a way of red-flagging MFA sites. They usually have absolutely no content, nor links to them from reputable sites. I wonder how much the plethora of MFA sites has contributed to losses in income for all of us legit publishers. I am sure that you, like I, have seen MFA sites which exist only for those who fail to type in your site name correctly!

[purplecape]

I take a similar approach to jetteroheller's--my site is an informational site. If my competitors, sites providing similar information, actually advertise on AdWords (which I wouldn't do if I were them), I don't see any reason to block.

[jmccormac]

One of my sites is a directory and I regularly see some of my competitors advertising in Adsense. Most are well targeted and there is no reason to block them. However two of them seem to hammer the site, targeting almost every keyword. Those, I block.

Regards...jmcc

[acac]

@honestman Frankly I wonder why Google isn't harder on MFA's and lets them be a viable business after all these years. Not only they make honest publishers suffer, they drastically reduce the quality of content and reduces advertiser values. It is a lose-lose situation in the long run for Google, Advertisers as well as the publishers.

[rash]

The logic according to me is don't block anything unless the target site provides no value to your visitors like MFAs as others have suggested.

After all Adsense is for earning revenue and people can visit competitor sites anyway if they are in the SERPs along with yours, so blocking them would only reduce your revenues.

You can use the Google preview tool to check for target URLs.

[OntarioBucsFan]

Bid on my brand name and you're blocked. Otherwise you're good to go as you're related ads for my users.

I'd also like to add I hope they have an affiliate program too as I'll run that. Good targetted traffic.

[edited by: OntarioBucsFan at 7:55 am (utc) on April 19, 2009]

[maximillianos]

I block competitor sites only if they are cheap knock offs of our site... which there are plenty. Seems like a new one pops up each month. Their ads are worded to drive folks away from our site to their site.

They can keep their 10 cents, we'll keep the visitors. ;-)

[signor_john]

I have an information site, so I don't get too many ads from direct competitors, but I do block ads for affiliate partners who use AdSense to promote their own Web sites.

[jhood]

I don't see the necessity for information sites to block competitors' ads, and we don't generally do it. If my competitors want to subsidize me, I'm happy to let them do so. I wish them well and hope they feel the same about me.

But it puzzles me to find ads on e-merchant sites, especially for what is essentially the same product. The other day, I was looking for a particular piece of audio gear and found it on a site that carried ads for other sites selling the same piece of equipment.

This is like Radio Shack renting out space to Best Buy, isn't it? It really strikes me as odd and when I see competing ads on a retail product site, I usually go elsewhere, as I did in the above instance.

I guess it makes sense to say that if you are selling tires, you might want to have ads for wheels. But if you've ever sat in front of a potential client and tried to separate him from his money, I don't think you'd agree that it's the right time to shower him with information about other products and vendors.

Just my humble opinion, for what it's worth.

[Meenakshi Mosaic]

This is little subjective...
I think we should take call on the basis of User's point of view. If it adds value to the visitor we should have such ads so that they keep visiting our site on regular basis.

[silverbytes]

I can understand that informative sites don't want to block anything but crappy. But what about good sites that actually are competitors in your niche. The other widgets vendors. I love those ads who complement services we sell, but (sadly or not) there are many other web portals and commerces selling same services as we do and advertising on my sites. Since earnings drop of last year (30% down) I wonder if blocking all of them isn't better way to go, since perhaps money loss in sales due to visitor going to them are probably much higher than income coming from those ads.