Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Almost none of these sites offers any user-value and few have any chance whatsoever of surfacing in serps based on pagerank, anchortext, or any other seo variable. Which leads me to suspect that the majority of clicks being generated by these sites are suspect at the very least.
It astounds me that google continues to let this crap go on. Who suffers? Presently advertisers and publishers (advertisers lowering bids due to smaller ROI). But, at some point, how can this not affect google? This is a branding problem that yahoo/overture are not indulging in themselves.
The solution, to some extent at least, would be to manually review all sites. Makes me wonder if the google posting on craigslist for a quality reviewer had something to do with this.
The source of traffic is extremely important in qualifying leads. That's why Seabourn Cruises advertises its $700-a-day cruises in CONDE NAST TRAVELER and not the travel section of the PODUNK POST or in a chain of weekly shoppers.
Here we go again.
To compare this with Adsense conversion rates we have to understand some distinction between traffic and conversion rates in general.
Simply the rich&famous places guarantee the high level of targeted traffic which by itself generates the high probability of a sale.
Conversion from pop-ups, pop-unders or redirecting traffic sites, even if targeted cannot be compared to an user who willingly clicks on something.
A click on an Adsense ad (if legitimate) is already highly targeted regardless of its origin.
The natural consequence should be that high quality site sends more clicks/traffic and should have higher impressions/clicks (CTR) ratio.
In comparision I am talking here about regular adsense "low quality" site, not using any tricks.
So, I am very convinced that 100,000 visitors lured by the same ad on both sites will have the very same sales conversion.
The only difference is that collecting 100,000 regular visitors from "crappy" site will take substantially more time.
That's why I am strongly against Google's discrimination and different rewarding of EPC for the same ad.
Surely enough, the Google's smart Adwords pricing should have been a right move (regarding Adsense) to reward the sites with higher conversion rates and discount the ones performing badly.
Unfortunately, the (btw optional) system is prone to abuse from the advertisers' side and I highly doubt it can be used as the model for proper pricing.
So, I am very convinced that 100,000 visitors lured by the same ad on both sites will have the very same sales conversion.
OK, let's say you're a travel agent who represents Platinum Cruises. The typical Platinum Cruises itinerary costs about $700 a day per person, or $7,000 for a 10-day cruise.
Your AdSense ad for Platinum Cruises is displayed on two pages:
1) A scraper site's page for the keyphrase "Mediterranean cruises."
2) A cruising or travel site's review of a Platinum cruise in the Mediterranean.
The prospects who get referred from the two pages are likely to be quite different:
The scraper site's visitor may be someone who searched Google for "Mediterranean cruises," found her way to the scraper page, and now sees three large borderless rectangle ads above the fold (designed to blend in with the page's background). She think the ads are search results, and she clicks on one. Even if she knows the ad is an ad, she probably doesn't know that a Platinum cruise costs $700 per day and is well beyond her budget. She's searching for information, and she's using your ad to find it.
The review site's visitor may be someone who was referred to the site by a Google search for "Mediterranean cruises," but she may also be a regular reader of the site's cruise reviews. And unlike the scraper site's user, she has access to a wealth of information before she clicks. Assuming that she read or at least skimmed the review, she knows that Platinum Cruises offers a luxury experience, costs $700 per person per day, has Gentlemen Hosts to dance with single female travelers, can accommodate her diabetic diet, and so on. If she clicks on your travel-agency ad, the odds are reasonably good that she's been presold and prequalified by the review. In short, she's a much hotter prospect than the clueless searcher who clicked your ad from a scraper page or even from Google's own SERPs.
There's nothing terribly mysterious about this; it's why enthusiast and trade magazines exist, and why advertisers use them. Put quite simply, the informed prospect with a demonstrated interest in a topic is more likely to become a buyer.
1) A scraper site's page for the keyphrase "Mediterranean cruises."2) A cruising or travel site's review of a Platinum cruise in the Mediterranean.
Which only means that advertiser made a bad ad, which will waste many of his advertising $$$.
I have a site having ads for a service that costs about $4,500 in average.
ALL of the best performing ads have the price included in the ad, for the same reason.
This could be against the classical marketing logic, but obviously CPC is something else.
Which only means that advertiser made a bad ad, which will waste many of his advertising $$$.
Media placement has an impact on lead quality and conversion rates whether or not the advertiser "made a bad ad."
Obviously, an advertiser will always want to use "good ads," whether in an "Ads by Google" block, on a billboard, or in a magazine. But experienced advertisers, ad agencies, and direct-marketing firms know what where the ad appears is equally important.
But experienced advertisers, ad agencies, and direct-marketing firms know what where the ad appears is equally important.
Sure. Then forget Adwords - go directly.
The highest class don't use Adsense anyway.
Sure. Then forget Adwords - go directly.
You've forgotten one of the most important services offered by AdSense and other ad networks: the aggregation of impressions from many different sites. If I'm a travel agent selling Platinum Cruises, I may not be able to buy enough targeted impressions from millionaire-travelers.com or cruises-for-rich-people.com to justify advertising on those sites directly. What I want (and what AdSense can give me) is the ability to advertise on many different cruising sites, cruising articles at general travel sites, etc. with a single media purchase.
The highest class don't use Adsense anyway.
Depends on what you mean by "the highest class." On my site, I regularly see advertisers who have been running ads in THE NEW YORKER for years. I also see ads for major airlines, tour companies, and cruise lines. The number of mainstream advertisers that use AdSense will grow when Google is able to improved advertiser controls and higher standards of quality.
I may not be able to buy enough targeted impressions from millionaire-travelers.com or cruises-for-rich-people.com to justify advertising on those sites directly.
Exactly what I'm trying to say.
Adwords or PPC in general have its advantages, but an advertiser have to play according to slightly different rules.
Pay per click should require carefully designed ad to get maximum out of paid clicks from the broader public in order to make them highly targeted.
It is much different than placing an ad on extremly targeted place directly.
It is not that advertising medium (such as Google Adwords program) should determine if advertiser's visitor is qualified to become a lead and to pay publisher accordingly.
Let's say that advertiser sells very rare and expensive "esotheric widgets". His ad for the keyword "widgets" will be shown on most pages dealing with widgets.
Google will discount most of the clicks coming from the places that do not convert well because users didn't know what was it exactly about, altough some of them will even buy the expensive widgets.
Of course, the most converting sites will be the ones covering esoteric widgets.
In this way even poor written and misleading ads will have advantage at publisher's cost.
Depends on what you mean by "the highest class." On my site, I regularly see advertisers who have been running ads in THE NEW YORKER for years.
I refered to publishers not advertisers.
E.g. Forbes do not run adsense on their site, instead they have its own PPC program.
Pay per click should require carefully designed ad to get maximum out of paid clicks from the broader public in order to make them highly targeted.
It is much different than placing an ad on extremly targeted place directly.
Only because AdWords/AdSense doesn't yet offer a way to qualify audiences by means other than keywords. That shortcoming is unlikely to persist, because Google knows that if it doesn't offer more ways to slice and dice audiences, other companies will step in to fill the void.
I refered to publishers not advertisers.
E.g. Forbes do not run adsense on their site, instead they have its own PPC program.
NewYorkTimes.com and WashingtonPost.com are Google AdSense "premium partners." Guardian.co.uk uses Overture. I think it's fair to say that most leading media companies with contextual ads on their pages are using Google, Overture, or other third-party PPC networks.
Just out of curiosity I went and looked, it was crappy, but looked like someone was hand building it, and much to my surprise there were no ads all over the place. I found one page with a few affiliate links, but the rest of the site was void of any ads.
Why would a scraper not scrape?
Perhaps he's trying to build links, SERPs and traffic THEN scrape, dunno.
I left confused and bewildered.
Speaking of "Scrapers and Crap directories", I think that was the topic before it got hijacked on a PPC tangent...
Why would a scraper not scrape?
You should start a new topic about this.
Do scrappers and/or crap sites convert well or not is the question.
Well, that's why I'm asking - this site looked like a scraper, smelled like a scraper, just lacked blatant scraping at this time. I was just curious if they are leaving off the ads now so they don't appear to google as a scraper until after they get SERPs. Possibly a new thread but it seemed to fit the subject matter as would a hand reviews of sites, as ownerrim suggested, be done for site submission in general or just adsense submission?
If it's AdSense submission reviewing only, it still wouldn't help if sites like these are still in Google clogging up the results and they could be using AdBrite. AdSonar or anything else, people still wouldn't get to your site with AdSense unless Google actually ranks AdSense sites higher.
If it's reviewing all new sites submitted to Google that becomes the solution, that's a whole different bottleneck that could lead to paid inclusion like Yahoo, which is a new thread for sure.
It is about <snip>, EFV please check this. It is a nice opportunity too as the only ad costs about $0,30 PC.
Do a search for "<snip>".
:-0 :-)
[edited by: Jenstar at 7:50 am (utc) on Mar. 3, 2005]
[edit reason] No specifics, as per tos [/edit]
But since it is not in the TOS, it leads me to believe that google stands to lose a great deal of advertising revenue by doing away will ALL sites of this nature.
I have seen many types of auto generated sites, many of which were useless, but I also found many very attractive and useful sites. The pages were autogenerated and had information from a varity of sources. SE listings, news feeds, article feeds, ect.... Every thing I could have been looking for all over the web for that topic was found on this one page.... It was useful to me....
I noticed a click from an odd domain name and went to have a look. The site was an autogenerated domain parker that generated ads from the domain name. I wrote to Google to say 1) my ads were appearing on a domain parking site, 2) the format of the ads had been tampered with and 3) there were other "lookalike" ads on the same page and 4) the site contained no content other than ads. Four breaches of TOS and I was not happy with paying for clicks from this site.
First response - by signing up to AdWords I was agreeing to my ads being placed here.
I wrote again.
Second response - the only thing wrong was the format of the ads had been changed and an investigation was in progress.
Two months later - the offending page looks identical.
Am I getting good service from Google?
For example, Sedo is a clear parking service partnered with Google by using Adsense and having a huge amount of traffic.
I would like to know if their traffic converts well for advertisers.
Do you or anyone else have some hits from them?
If Google partner with such sites, as you and their email to me suggest, then are the TOS selective? I mean there must be more than one contract available if you have enough marketing clout.
The site was an autogenerated domain parker that generated ads from the domain name.
Doesn't Google have an Adsense program specifically for domain parkers?
Doesn't Google have an Adsense program specifically for domain parkers?
Yes, it's called DomainPark, and it's available to accounts that can deliver more than 750,000 page views per month. See:
[google.com...]
But I wouldn't be surprised if this encourages people to register domains, never develop them, and anchor-text-bomb them for serp placement and clicks.
I don't think it's possible anymore. I didn't run across a parked domain showing in higher G serps for a long time.
Google bought them, and ran ads through them, in March of 2003 and didn't start AdSense until June of 2003.
