6 Ways That Google Can Improve Adsense

[Lame_Wolf]

1: If it is your first site, then it has to be fully online for 1 year.
2: Has to have at least 1500 visitors a day.
3: If you add your account to another site, that site has to be reviewed by the Adsense team before adverts are displayed (failure to do so will automatically prevent adverts showing).
4: Stop blogs having accounts. A lot (that I see) hotlink images from other sites, take content that is not theirs, or regurgitate other work.
5: Quicker response times when sites are reported for breaking TOS.
6: Better customer service.

[Lame_Wolf]

They're already plenty strict

Really?
I can give you a list of 100's of MFA sites. No original content, scraped, hotlinked (without permission)

Maybe I am on a different WWW than you are.

[netmeg]

Microsoft's ad platform actually has to approve every site; they're still in beta after all these years. Will be interesting to see if they keep to it if and when they ever open it up to the world.

[cien]

I'd like to be able to ban sites in the competitive ad filter by using wildcards.

Example *insurance*, *college*, *university*, *edu*, *quote*, etc. 

That will help immensely with targeting on product based sites.

Nope, it won't happen. What was I thinking...

[Lame_Wolf]

cien, my ideas are hardly likely to happen. They are just thoughts like yours were.

[Rockyou]

I am really Happy with adsense seems to have heard us all, I really love Panda update, Good bye MFA, Excessive Advertising, Low Quality content. Now i feel Google is aheading in right direction.

[GreenDog18]

I wish Adsense would develop something to help protect the publisher. I do everything I can to provide the best possible website for google to place ads on but I am always paranoid someone will click bomb my ads and before I catch it google will ban my account.

My suggestion would be to allow us the option to stop displaying ads after someone clicks on more than 2 or 3 ads. (I am not sure if this would stop click bots)

I intergrated my adsense account with my analytics account so I could monitor analytics for click bombing but half my clicks don't even show up in google analytics. I could have 100 for the day and only 50 will show. I also tried to use statcounter and its pretty much the same.

I really wish I could focus on just adsense as a main income source but you always here about people losing their account and can't figure out why.

I go as far to only show ads to search engine visitors to try and help protect my account. I just wish google could help in some kind of way. I know they don't owe us anything but I think it would be beneficial for everyone involved if there was some kind of safety net.

[HuskyPup]

Good bye MFA, Excessive Advertising, Low Quality content.

Can you point me to your Google since I am certainly not experiencing the same as you, loads and loads of garbage still rank for my widgets.

[MsHuggys]

1. Get rid of interest-based ads. They are a ctr killer. If they worked, the would be shown on google.com, and they are NOT.

[GodLikeLotus]

1: If it is your first site, then it has to be fully online for 1 year.

Pointless and would prove what, other than the site is year old.

2: Has to have at least 1500 visitors a day.

Would be a great way of reducing revenue for Google, less publishers = less advertisers getting clicks.

3: If you add your account to another site, that site has to be reviewed by the Adsense team before adverts are displayed (failure to do so will automatically prevent adverts showing).

Seems a strange thing to create your first site to get approved and create garbage after that, so pretty much a waste of time.

4: Stop blogs having accounts. A lot (that I see) hotlink images from other sites, take content that is not theirs, or regurgitate other work.

Seems like another good way of reducing revenue for Google.

5: Quicker response times when sites are reported for breaking TOS.

Don't see how this would be a benefit to publishers.

6: Better customer service.

Do they actually have Customer Service, unless of course you have 5 million daily impressions?

1. Get rid of interest-based ads. They are a ctr killer. If they worked, the would be shown on google.com, and they are NOT. MsHuggys

Could not agree more, we SHOULD be able to opt out of this.

[MsHuggys]

We have begun disabling image ads across two networks of websites. It reduced the interest-based ads by as much as 80% on the page and increases ctr. If you don't give us the ability to disable interest-based ads, cpm ads are going to have less places to be seen, as they get caught in the current publisher image opt-out correction.

[MsHuggys]

I found it. Under the Advanced tab in Adsense allow and block ads, disable interest based ads.

[Leosghost]

I found it. Under the Advanced tab in Adsense allow and block ads, disable interest based ads.

All that does is stops the adsense sites that the visitor visits after being on your site from showing adsense ads that based upon the content of your site..

ie if you are selling something on your site and also running an adwords campaign either on "search" or "content network" or "both" ..choosing this "disable interest based ads" will mean that the visitor to your site will not be shown your ads ( if you have opted to have them shown on the "content network") on any site running adsense that they subsequently visit..

It will not stop your site showing interest based adsense if the visitor has previously visited a site that uses adwords unless it has opted out of showing ads via adsense to the visitor when they visit other sites using adsense.

The previous ASA confirmed to me in fora that it did indeed work this way..the wording in Google's help files is IMO deliberately "ambiguous" so I asked for clarification ..took about 5 posts by ASA "beating around the bush" before they finally confirmed ..site owners cannot opt out of displaying personalised adsense based on previous visitor interaction with an advertiser

Btw ..even if the visitor has personalised search switched off ..and is signed out of all the google accounts they will still see personalised ads on sites which use adsense based on their previous "interactions" "interactions" with advertisers..

I always "log out" of Google accounts ( adsense or gmail etc) when I'm done with them ..I still get followed around by ads ..latest version is an ad for a logo design site ..the someone spammed WebmasterWorld with a link to it ..I visited the site ..saw it was spam ..signaled it to an admin ..it is now on every single site that I visit that runs adsense and has image ads enabled..this has been going on for a month.

Case before that was.. I bought some photo "retouch" software .via the software companies site after clicking on an adwords ad ..the image ads for it followed me around for 2 months on sites that ran adsense and had image ads "enabled"..I still see image ads for it sometimes now ..just less intensively than before.

Google have been less than honest about how personalised ads work ..in reality you cannot as a visitor "opt out" of seeing personalised adsense on sites ..only of getting personalised adwords on searches ..but the searches themselves are personalised.

Don't forget ..because you don't see evidence of personalised ads running this way .on your own sites or others doesn't mean it is not happening .

All serps are now personalised to a variable degree ..as is all serving of adsense ..none of us ever see exactly the same serps ..nor exactly the same adsense ..not even for the same searches or on the same sites ..viewed from the same town or district ..every one of us has unique cookies on our machines ..and unique IP addresses ..the combination of those factors decides what we are served ..either serps or ads or adsense.

The improvement would be if the "disable interest based ads" ..actually did what we are all supposed to think it does ..advertisers would gain too ..I don't need to buy the same retouch product once I already have it.

[Lame_Wolf]

The ability to turn off / disable adverts at certain times of the day. Either by account, or by site.

[Karma]

Would be nice if the Adsense colour scheme inputs were 7 length and stripped any # that was entered!

[Karma]

Oh, and if stats are stuck or there are known problems with reporting - why not display a simple message.

[GodLikeLotus]

Would be very interested in a response from Google about "interest based ads".

I have been asking friends and family about their experiences with ads following them around. When I explained how this works, most where very surprised to hear that this is being done deliberately by Google. Here are few comments I was given about this.

1. I was in Seattle and searched for a local Aveda hair salon. Since then I keep seeing ads for hair products on many different sites.

2. Searched for hotel reviews for a quick stay in Las Vegas, and am now plagued with ads for all the major hotels and resorts there.

3. Wanted to find out which airlines fly to Europe from Cancun. Am now constantly seeing ads on many sites for 5 Star resorts in Cancun and Playa del Carmen.

Overall consensus is that these ads are "HISTORY" and that Google is trying to be too self-clever, when in fact they are making themselves look rather foolish.

From our metrics, these "interest based ads" are taking up space that the on-topic ads would be much better suited.

Come on Google, just give us the option to opt out of this.

[HuskyPup]

Come on Google, just give us the option to opt out of this.

Yep, I agree. Normally I surf using Opera without cookies however the other day I needed to purchase some rail tickets and used Firefox, did it and then damned rail companies started following me about...had to flush my cookies etc but that's an unnecessary hassle created by Google, I bet 90+% of Joe Public users have no idea how to do this and really wonder why they are being followed.

Very big brotherish looking over the shoulder.

[kevinashby]

Yep, maybe if we all shout loud enough the big G will listen.

Please ASA allow us the option to disable IBAs.

[Leosghost]

ASA is not at the level inside Google that gets to decide "policy"..and so can't give you the option.

[Rockyou]

Dear ASA,
I have a request to you, Please look into it, I have a travel website which is ranking on SERP for several single city keyword, I get great traffic but i can't use adsense on them because i am a vegetarian & Animal lover & majority of ads or hotels promote non vegetarian food & use of leather etc which i don't like at all, If you can bring a category like "Cruelty free ads" will help people like me to put Adsense back on site. Please do something in this step, I will be very grateful to you forever.

[ember]

We don't get anywhere near 1,500 visitors a day and do quite well. Quality, not quantity matters. In content, in navigation and in visitors.

And on a separate note, as long as even ugly, low-traffic sites make a little money for Google, they will not exclude them. Google looks at the whole; they couldn't care less how individual publishers are doing as long as the whole is making money.

[alika]

2: Has to have at least 1500 visitors a day.

Even bottomfeeders like BurstMedia has requirements in terms of the number of visitors.

3: If you add your account to another site, that site has to be reviewed by the Adsense team before adverts are displayed (failure to do so will automatically prevent adverts showing).

Chitika now has a system in place where you have to submit your other domains for approval first before you can show the ads on the site. They even have a tier system as to the features that are available for your sites depending on their perceived quality.

With IBAs, I personally am not a fan of them. I went to check out Prada shoes one time and now all the leaderboards I see on my site are about Prada shoes showing the model that is no longer available.

But I can't argue with my stats. Since Jan 1 this year

CTR:
Contextual = X%
Placement = 2.5X%
Interest based = 2X%

RPM:
Contextual = X%
Placement = 6X%
Interest based = 5X%

Interest based ads on my site gets twice as much click through rate, with a RPM rate that's 5 times the contextual ads.

If anything, I want more of interest based ads, not less. We may not like them, but they seem to be working.