What are the Pros & Cons of Being an AdSense Case Study?

If Asked, Would You Let Your Site be an AdSense Case Study?

[martinibuster]

My first reaction is hell no, I wouldn't want that kind of attention put on myself and one of my sites, particularly to have competitors crawling all over my site.

On the other hand it's a good opportunity to pick up a first class accolade for your link building efforts. Being selected by Google as an Official Google Website Case Study is more or less equal to a Google Seal of Good Housekeeping, instant validation. It's practically a license to make link money.

What are the pros and cons of becoming an AdSense Case Study?

[netmeg]

I can only think of cons, really.

I mean there's kind of an ego stroke as a pro, but I dunno that that will make you any bank.

For cons -

- It lets your competition know what you're doing.

- It inspires a bunch of new competition from people who think "Oh, I can do that" and decide to copy or even scrape your business model and your site, with varying degrees of success (but it's still a nuisance)

- it invites a lot of people (like ... from here) to pick your site apart and expose weaknesses in public forums.

- it brings a lot of traffic that likely doesn't convert, while people are picking your site apart.

- it makes you the open target of envy, and from that, mayhem can ensue. Might as well paint a target on your back for botnets and hack attempts and DDOS.

- You're probably used to friends and family asking you for advice, now you'll get requests from people you never heard of, wanting to "pick your brain" or get your opinion on their crappy site.

- if Google turns around and Pandalyzes or Penguins you in a very public way, it adds an extra layer of humiliation on top of all the other stuff you're dealing with trying to save your site (I didn't like the builder site layout either, but I felt bad for him being thrown under the bus like that in such a public fashion)

Man the more I think of it, the worse it gets.

[Leosghost]

Everything netmeg said..

[ember]

No way.

[Lame_Wolf]

My first reaction is hell no

Yep, me too, and it is also my final reaction.

[SevenCubed]

Everything netmeg said..

Man the more I think of it, the worse it gets.

...plus everything she was thinking and didn't say.

No way x 7³

[Play_Bach]

+1 netmeg

Even though I'm making peanuts compared to a few years ago, I'm still in the habit of not talking about AdSense to friends and family. Mum's the word.

[JCKline]

Absolutely NO WAY in "H E double hockey sticks".

[engine]

In a special and successful niche I'd be reluctant, too. It's a similar thing to a successful affiliate showing less successful operators how to jump on the bandwagon.

I have also known of featured sited get booted from the organic SERPs, so it's no guarantee.

However, on the up-side, linkbait and the accolade of being classed as a quality site would be a positive benefit.

[netmeg]

True, but I'm of the "first rule of fight club is don't talk about fight club" mindset.

[Swanny007]

Oh this is timely, I was asked last week by my rep about "sharing my site and story with the marketing team for potential future marketing campaigns". I politely declined, I've seen how webmasters "critique" such sites and wannabes copy sites... ;-)

What really sealed the deal for me was looking at the case studies on Google's site. They were hard to find for one, and didn't even have a click-able link to the actual site. No thanks.

But I *so* agree with netmeg:

"first rule of fight club is don't talk about fight club"

I've been in this biz now for 13 years and I have a recipe that works. Unlike a regular (food) recipe I'm not too willing to just share the whole thing with the world ;-)

[jpch]

No way, my ego doesn't need the boost and netmeg's list pretty much sums up why not to do this.

[swa66]

I've a site that's been featured a number of times in a number of places. One of them was being nominated for a webby award. But it's also been featured on TV, radio, magazines, newspaper articles etc. I've always collaborated with those I considered to be genuine.

But if Google's Adsense were to ask this, I'd decline. It's calling undue attention to the ads.

And having ads is counterproductive to a lot of things in itself, adding attention to the ads can only make it worse.

[IanCP]

Advantages? None

Disadvantages? Many

In another thread here "AdSense Case Study Website Teardown!", I see another site I personally regard as "unremarkable" receiving attention.

Long time readers of Amazon Associates forums will have literally seen thousands of similar sites.