After all is said and done I've come to the conclusion that for all intents and purposes the AdSense/Content network is completely "broken".
We are seeing huge amounts of worthless/fraudulent clicks from the worst of the worst scaper/autogenerated sites. 100s of them. Blocking the "top 25 worst offenders" barely makes a dent in the profitability (or lack thereof) of advertising on the "content" network.
Now I realize that it could be different in other industries but I highly doubt it. I'm sure these jerks have setup identical scraper/autogenerated pages/sites and clickbots for every possible money keyword that exists.
In my opinion the first step Google needs to take is to immediately allow advertisers to block as many sites as they want. This 25 site limit is a joke. I realize it's a new feature and they might still be testing and/or building up their infrastructure to handle more blocking, but they need to get this out there immediately if you ask me.
If Google does not fix this ASAP we will have no choice but to go direcly to the sites that do perform and work with them directly, cutting Google out of the profit loop.
This is just so blatantly broken I'm amazed that Google has allowed it to go this far. It really sickens me they know exactly what is going on, and have allowed this to happen. This is starting to smell like another FindWhat if you ask me. I could even see a class action lawsuit on the horizon.
For the record we have developed a custom tracking system that allows us to track clicks, conversions, etc. back to the original "content" site where our ad was clicked, and I know with 100% certainty that my figures/analysis is correct.
Anyone else have any comments on this?
Both Adsense and Adword customers are all very annoyed about scraper sites. Now, (G) must be doing something right obviously, but common sense tells me that if you tick off your advertisers and legitimate original content publishers, at some point, that bites you in the behind.
(G) has the ways and means to stop it, they just refuse to do it. Just my opinion
[edited by: spaceylacie at 11:39 pm (utc) on June 1, 2005]
But, what are they going to do when Adwords advertisers want to just promote scraped content(affiliates only) and Adsense publishers maintaining scraper sites want to promote these sites? Let them have each other.
Let us serious publishers, and serious Adwords advertisers meet.
He hasn't been heard from since. I think he's a brave soul to venture into a discussion at this point.
Because if you pay over 25 cents - it's not Google's fault but rather yours and I can show you how you can easily fix it.
Why not share for anyone who is bidding over 25 cents? Or is the fix to reduce the bid below 25 cents? :)
Essentially, if you are in business of celling kitchen appliances, there are thousands of keywords and abbreviations you can bid on and 5 five cents that will drive decent traffic. And this approach works for everybody. Say, you bid on "widget" 25 cents. Well, see what sited display your ad for this keyword and analyze that web page for other keywords that you may bid on. In my business I go to www.download.com and pick up names of software and bid on unpopular names
