As far as I'm concerned, AdSense/Content network is broken

Huge amounts of worthless and fraudulent clicks

[limitup]

Now that Google allows advertisers to block up to 25 sites we decided to turn back on the content network, setup some serious tracking, and see if we could make it profitable.

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?

[jim_w]

That just starts using tons of bandwidth, harddrive space and processing time. It would be never ending (nummer of adword advertisers) x (number of banned sites) x (number of sites added per day/hour)At some point there wouldn't be enough processors in the world to handle it.

[diamondgrl]

jim_w,

I'm not sure we're in disagreement. Adsense publishers are important. My point was simply that Google shouldn't be focused on all the garbled messages they hear from publishers - "I want Adsense on my blog", "I want Adsense on my spam site", "Why can't I ask my friends to click on ads?", etc. - and focus on what the advertisers want to see their ads on.

And without doubt, Adwords advertisers DO want their ads shown on publisher pages. But for the most part, they don't want them on spam sites. And users don't want the spam sites.

So I'm simply saying, if Google focuses on pleasing the only two constituents it should pay attention to - users and advertisers - then they'll be plenty of Adsense dollars to go around, but only to sites that are worthy of users and advertisers.

Users stay happy, advertisers stay happy and Adsense publishers who have minimal standards stay happy. But pleasing the publishers is only a side-benefit of focusing laser-like on the needs of user and advertisers, not an end-goal in itself.

[spaceylacie]

I think there should be standards for both publishers and advertisers. I offer private advertising... if I like their site. When I first started Adsense, I had spammy ads all over my sites(luring visitors with false descriptions/titles...). In order to get rid of them, I had to work on the site and get my EPC up.

It goes both ways. I say Google should put the spammy ads on the spammy publisher sites. Separate the databases, spam/no spam.

[jim_w]

diamondgrl;

Sorry, I missed your point, but I got it now ;-))
(I'm only firing on 1/2 my cylinders today)

I thought you were saying that adsense publishers were not as important. I see it as one system with all parts required to make the whole. And if all parts cannot work efficiently and in harmony, then it will fall apart.

[limitup]

Just a follow-up to this post ... I just got done analyzing our stats for the past 2 weeks or so and so far we've received clicks from 1180 unique domains. Weeding out those that have sent just a tiny number of clicks leaves us with about 600 unique domains. Out of these 600, based on conversion ratios, we'd like to block about 400 of them. What say you Google?

I guess this brings up another interesting point. With so many bright PhDs over there, why can't they come up with a system that can accurately determine what a page is about? The main problem is that while our keywords are all very specific, our ads are appearing on BS sites that have absolutely nothing to do with our keywords.

[europeforvisitors]

Could the limit of 25 blocked publishers be intended to encourage the purchase of "site-targeted" CPM ads?

Maybe, maybe not. I imagine the initial limit will be raised at some point, however. That's how things have worked on the publisher side.

[markus007]

AdWordsAdvisor, i showed the adsense team some detailed stats showing that scrapper sites are converting at 5% of what content sites are converting at. There are about 4 big content sites in the market i was looking at and 50 semi big scrapper sites. In the last week yahoo/revenuescience have got most of these major publishers to commit to go over to yahoo within the next 2 weeks. I'm a big spender in adwords and by far the biggest adsense publisher (4 million pageviews a day) if these other publishers leave i will be forced to abandon adwords as it won't be profitable for me on the advertiser side, and i will be forced to pull out of adsense as the rates will fall even more then they already have.

[RailMan]

I've come to the conclusion that for all intents and purposes the AdSense/Content network is completely "broken".

I think Adwords / Adsense is working just fine - it's how it's being used and abused that's the problem.

In my opinion the first step Google needs to take is to immediately allow advertisers to block as many sites as they want.

Why would Google want to do that? Google earns a fortune from these scraper sites.

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.

I don't blame you. I did that a long long time ago.
But, Google won't bat an eyelid at you leaving them.
Thousands and thousands of other advertisers don't have a clue about scraper sites / fraudulent clicks etc.
And that suits Google just fine.

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.

If you came up with a wonderful system that made you millions, and you knew a large chunk of those millions were made because of people abusing the system, would you do the morally right and ethical thing and stop the abuse? What would your shareholders say?

Google has put up a big "moral" and "ethical" front for years. They've built a massive business that is highly profitable. Almost the whole world thinks the sun shines out of Google's bum.

At the end of the day, you know the problems with Adwords / Adsense / scraper sites / click fraud etc, and it's your job to deal with it in the best way for your business.

I could even see a class action lawsuit on the horizon.

So can I .......... one day ..........

[jim_w]

Ok, this is my last post in this thread.

There is a big scraper site that I have reported to (G) 3 times for violations. Each time (G) has apparently contacted them and told them to stop doing it. However, due to the fact that this site gets lots of hits, (G) will not cancel them.

The violations are

1) Had ads mixed into text and same color so that people would click on the ads unknowingly? After reporting, you can now clearly see that the ads are ads.

2) The site uses pop-ups. If you have pop-up blocking on, the page would continue to send the pop-ups and thus would crash IE. After reporting, they only try to do one pop-up w/o retrying.

3) This site was hot linking to my zip files as well as download.com. After reporting, they now have the links go to download.com’s download page. I had already redirected the referral to my download page. Of course they have 10’s of thousands of hot links still online. The only 2 pages fixed were the ones reported.

Based on this, I feel that (G) has no intensions of doing anything about it. If it were I, I would have been canceled and dumped.

So apparently, it is no longer relevant on how much you earn per click. It’s all about volume. (Remember the crazy Eddie commercials on TV? Volume, Volume, Volume)

So I will write my own scraper software and start doing the same so that I can have 10,000 pages with ads and no content, instead of 170 scientific pages each hand written and correct with real formulas and theories.