Google Continues To Target Made For AdSense Sites
We’ve had some recent discussions here about building focused, quality sites based on what you actually know versus building “made for AdSense” (MFA) sites that don’t generally add to the usefulness of the Web. (See the comments on Project Black Mask: Initial Thoughts for an extensive discussion.) As I reported earlier, Google is going on a page quality offensive by requiring AdSense publishers to follow both its webmaster guidelines and its AdWords landing page quality guidelines.
So today there’s a further indication that Google is getting serious about ridding the Web of useless MFA sites. There’s a very interesting discussion in the Google Webmaster Help group about a site full of general articles about random topics that’s been dropped from the Google search index because of its lack of quality. (See the related posts on SEO Buzz Box, Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal for more.)
Adam Lasnik of Google’s Search Engine Quality team had some very strong words to say to the site owner:
The reductions in rankings you’ve experienced are not going to be
reversed by simple technical or structural changes. You may wish to
focus your efforts, add compelling, original, and substantive content
or tools, and *then* file a reconsideration request.
Ouch! I’m surprised they’d say things like this in public to a site owner, but I guess it shows that they’ve finally decided to get tougher about the whole MFA topic.
[Aside: One wonders why they've finally decided to do this. The cynical would say that either advertising revenues have started to decrease because of quality issues, forcing their hand, or else they've reached enough critical mass now that losing the revenue generated by MFA sites, which is not insubstantial, will be made up for by increased revenues on the non-MFA sites. Only the bean counters know for sure. I'm sure Googlers will protest otherwise, but they whey has it taken Google so long to crack down on sites that have clearly been in violation of the terms and conditions ever since AdSense was introduced? End aside]
This is good news for those of us who focus on building quality sites. It’s also a big worry for those who build MFA sites by the bucketful, since for the most part those sites live and die on search engine traffic. If they’re getting banned by Google that’s going to dry up a major part of their income stream.
What does this mean for the average AdSense publisher? After all, it’s quite normal to think about adding content with AdSense monetization firmly in mind. Does this mean that we’re all going to be banned?
No, I don’t think so, not if you approach it the right way. Note that there is no universal definition of “made for AdSense”, for one thing, and that in many ways it’s a matter of interpretation. I discussed this almost two years ago in this pair of posts, which I urge you to read (or reread):
Note that this was around the time where I was premiering my Invisible Fence guide as a simple AdSense case study about making useful sites that could be monetized via AdSense. That site’s still going strong, by the way, even though it’s slipped in the rankings in the last couple of weeks. And it’s nothing fantastic, kind of amateurish really, but it’s also something almost anyone could do because it’s based on personal experience and provides some useful information for anyone considering the purchase of a pet containment system like Invisible Fence. My advice to you has always been to concentrate on building sites that are on topics you know about, said site being a prime example. If you don’t do that, don’t be surprised when Google drops your site because it doesn’t pass muster!
Sponsored Link: Learn more about the ins and outs of AdSense by reading Uncommon AdSense, my latest book about AdSense.
Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.
Tags
AdSense, advertising, articles, content, Google, made for AdSense, monetization, quality
Comments
5 Responses to “Google Continues To Target Made For AdSense Sites”
Eric, I think one thing that’s happening is that quality publishers using Adsense are sick of seeing continually diminishing returns. I’m sure that this is at least partially to blame on the MFA publishers, if a rising tide lifts all boats, than a receding tide sinks them all, right?
A year ago, I was running Adsense on the majority of my website pages. I averaged about 4.5 million page views a month given to Adsense ads. What bothered me was that a year prior to that, I was delivering closer to 2 million page views a month, and my Adsense earnings were not increasing.
So, why not give other forms of advertising a try? That’s what I did, and quickly found that I can increase my revenues several fold by dumping Adsense. Now, I really don’t care if MFA sites are to blame, if I can increase revenue by plastering more and bigger Adsense blocks over my site or whatever. What matters is without changing things, Adsense revenue had decreased greatly considering eCPM, and it’s no longer making sense for publishers of quality websites to depend heavily on Adsense revenues.
Peter, did you ever investigate the AdSense Premium program? It seems to me with so many pageviews you’d be a candidate. That may be one option to do better.
I’m not saying AdSense is the best program for everyone. In fact, I’d say AdSense is weighted towards the long tail more than anything, which means that it’s the small publishers — the ones with page views only in the hundreds or low thousands per day — that benefit.
But if you’re in a good niche and you’re willing to do some legwork, I’m sure you can find better paying alternative or complimentary ad programs.
My niche (hobbies) seems to have somewhat low CPC. On the other hand, there are thousands of advertisers who think nothing of slapping down ten thousand dollars for a full page layout in print publications. It’s certainly more of a challenge to entice some of those dollars from print to the web, but we’re riding the wave. It would be easier if more of them were on the crest of the wave, but there aren’t many early adopters in the industry, to put it mildly.
And some of them have probably been scared off by worries about click fraud and high prices, especially since there have been prominent reports in publications like the New York Times about these things recently. Google and the others are taking measures to regain the trust of advertisers, and killing off the spam sites is one step in that effort.
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