Adsense on photo / low content pages

[Rasputin]

As a general rule I don't have too many adsense ads on my main site because of wanting a positive user experience etc.

But I was just looking at a site very much like my own (and that doesn't appear to have been penalised) and instead of photos opening in a modal popup window when clicked every photo opened a bigger version in a completely new page with adsense above, to the side and below.

I have always ruled out this approach post-Panda because you end up with lots of thin content pages.

OK three ads is probably still too much but do you think it would it be OK to do this if the photo pages were:
1) treated as canonical versions of the main page
and / or
2) noindex/nofollow pages
and/or
3) blocked in robots.txt
and/or
4) on a completely different domain name which it wouldn't matter if G hit with panda?

This looked like quite a good way of increasing adsense earning without negatively impacting the user experience...

[netmeg]

Doesn't sound like a very good user experience to me. And as an advertiser, would I want my ads displaying that way? Nope.

[LifeinAsia]

This looked like quite a good way of increasing adsense earning without negatively impacting the user experience.

Throwing more ads at users hoping someone may click on something *may* increase your earnings. If you're getting $0 right now...

Without any content on the page, how do you expect Google to choose relevant ads? Without relevant ads, how do you expect many people to click on them?

If you feel you *must* throw up ads there, find some relevant affiliate programs and use their banners instead.

[Rasputin]

I'm getting the feeling you're not 100% in favour of the idea... :)

On reflection I tend to accept the idea that Netmeg suggests:

as an advertiser, would I want my ads displaying that way? Nope

also in the adsense guidelines they say things like

Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

and I guess pages only containing one photo would fail the quality test.

Ah well, more hard work it is then...thanks for your feedback.

[avalon37]

There are plenty of sites with an image/slideshow type of experience using AdSense in moderation.