The REAL reason Google Is Banning Made For Adsense Sites
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If you remember this post where I gloated that I was right about Made For Adsense being dead, it was pretty much stated that Google was banning all adsense accounts that use the MFA model to get clicks. No more smart pricing no more warnings about ‘invalid click activity’ just a straight up ban and you get to keep your earnings. I guess that is Google’s way of trying to avoid a class action…
Anyway people thought that Google was trying to be “not evil” (their ethics policy not mine), and was trying to get their advertisers the best bang for their buck. But I seriously doubt that. I did some digging around and I see a different reason altogether about why Google decided to ban MFA sites, when they said the respect ‘arbitrage’ sites as a business model.
First lets think about the repercussions of this ban. A company has very very publically (N.Y. Post, Jensense) announced that they will be banning accounts that are making them money. Some of these accounts are making them over $10k a month. Now if you are a investor you get a bit edgy. The reason is because well that means Google has just shaved off a nice chunky piece of profits from it’s balance sheet. Lower profits mean Less Returns. Investors don’t like that, an announcement like this could ruin a company’s stock. I mean one post on engadget cost Apple close to $4 Billion when the stock fell. Now why would Google announce this publicly when they know that it can lead to trouble?
Very Simple.
Google is playing offense. It seems that a research company had been conducting a study on billable clack fraud rates at Google and had found 10-15% of all billed clicks to a small sampling of accounts had stemmed from invalid activity. The Fair Isaac Corporation released this study. The study was picked up by main stream media including The Wall Street Journal.
Now think about it. You make an announcement that you are closing all low converting Made For Adsense Accounts. Information about click fraud hits the media. Your already covered in the eyes of investors because you have already got rid of all low yielding accounts.
I wonder if one day Google will be leaving the CPC arena and moving onto the CPA arena. I mean the reason we as publishers take such low cuts is because we know NOT ALL consumers convert. If we knew that all consumers would convert don’t you think we would take out your ads and replace them with our own affiliate ads?
14 Comments on this post
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Robert said:
Be careful using Google logos. I got a email from them today telling me to remove a Gmail logo from a blog post.
May 29th, 2007 at 5:53 pm -
morphy said:
very reasonable buddy, i think u r right.
well in fact i didn’t think about that this way, but now u’ve made me re-analyze the whole thing for new.morphy from incbuy.com
May 29th, 2007 at 7:36 pm -
mubin said:
Awesome! I would love for Google to get in contact with me as well, I got a few things I’d like to tell them
May 29th, 2007 at 7:41 pm -
Earl said:
Great article! I do believe advertisers make better returns with PPC. than PPA. when you take into account agency fees with PPA and the mere existence of Google and the record profits they make year on year proves it.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:28 pm -
monton said:
Actually, there was a piece in the Daily Telegraph the other day on how small businesses (companies that sell products/services) are making it big thanks to adwords/adsense. The traffic they were genrating through clicks to their site was paying off.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:01 pm -
Court said:
It’s about freaking time. That garbage has been hurting all of us.
May 30th, 2007 at 2:28 am -
weput said:
What can I say??
I decided to get involved in the online business couple weeks before the rulez changed.May 30th, 2007 at 3:12 pm -
jason said:
Actually everyone keeps over reacting and not processing this through their heads. MFA sites are only dead if your content is junk or your traffic to the ads is junk. If you have valid content then you are fine.
May 30th, 2007 at 8:05 pm -
My Adsense Account Was Disabled said:
I had my AdSense Account disable on 1st June.
All my sites had useful content, some of the content
were unique that I paid others to write for me and some
other sites I use quality private label articles.
most of my sites are themed niche sites that provide useful
content.I’ve never used any site generator or any spam techniques.
All I did, is monetizing the sites with adsense and also have
several sites with email forms to capture users contact.I was waiting for the next step to add more quality affiliate
programs as I find them… so in the mean time I was keeping
the ads to get some cash, as I am getting very relevant ads
this way.I have every title/description/keywords meta tags unique
that I have typed myself. no script or program..After all this plan, I got the email that my business model
don’t fit G.I think this is something to do with G investors more than
the program improvement.Here is how I look at it , I optimize the site to get a very
relevant adds that even you search the organic results
it won’t be that relevant. So once the searcher use
my relevant sites, he can find more ads than the google
search itself, I think Google doesn’t won’t this,
Because of course they need searchers to click ads from
Google.com then clicking an ad in a content sites…
advertisers pay more in Google search engine than the content and
partner sites, ( so of course it’s more profit this way for
google and investors)Think about this, if you check the ads on google , you will
still find many low quality sites with just ads from other
ad network with no content at all…
So is this relevant…Anyhow I think google should have made other solutions instead
of just diable the account, they could just disable the sites…My Conclusion:
What happened was not 100% about quality,
it was about profit and investor relations…
and google will keep changing their policy all time,
so just be careful… and don’t rely 100% on Google..BTW: If you’ve a good alternative to adsense let me know
Thanks
Thanks
June 5th, 2007 at 9:36 pm -
mubin said:
That’s bad, and I feel for you. Can I ask were you using adwords to drive traffic to your site?
June 5th, 2007 at 11:55 pm -
My Adsense Account Was Disabled said:
I was using many combination of free & paid advertising, including adwords. I used many legitimate traffic sources, including ppc, ads, seo and so on.
Yes most of my traffic comes from adwords, and I believe this is the main reason that my account was disabled.
G doesn’t want you to buy traffic from them and then sell it in your site…
I did this but I was doing it 100% in a professional way as I stated above, using only useful & relevant content. I have NEVER had 1 page with just links… they all have relevant informative article that is not from article directories, it’s either unique or PLR article..Thanks..
June 8th, 2007 at 6:59 pm -
Jin said:
Sad to hear that and thanks for sharing your case. I will be careful of every move made on Adsense, I think Mubin is right, is probably due to arbitrage.
Mubin, first time to your blog and nice to meet you. Enjoy your new place.
June 10th, 2007 at 2:25 am -
Wes Mahler said:
Hm interesting.
July 12th, 2007 at 12:10 am -
Google is biting the hand that feeds it's stockholders said:
Google is biting the hand(publishers) that feeds it’s stockholders.
Whenever one of my sites starts getting A lot of hits a day. Google throws my site under the bus. I make websites that advertise services, products and information. For example I advertise Wedding rentals in Orlando my site gets to #1 or #2 on Google(than bam under the bus). It is a MFA site but the advertisers benefit because it targets there local market Google loses because they were bypassed and now have to share there earnings. Content ads are a lot cheaper than if someone clicks on Google’s search page. My sites our helping local economies By saving small businesses money on advertising. My motivation is create sites that make everyone money. As soon as business see my site they want google to put there Ad on it (bam under the bus)
There’s is value in my sites and I’m always trying to make them better with new content and pics there not like Sedo.
sites. HERE’S MY PREDICTION GOOGLE IS GOING TO LOSE 25% MARKET SHARE IN THE NEXT 18 MONTHS DUE TO THEM SCREWING PUBLISHERS Today is 06/06/2008..
I have starting to get a lot of traffic from MSN Yahoo and Dogpile and I’m using other pay per click services like Bidvertiser and about 5 other programs. Also I’m using Yahoo and msn more and more for my own Internet searches. “Remember Google” David killed Goliath just like you killed Yahoo. Trying to save a dime could cost you Billions.June 7th, 2008 at 2:45 am
