I'm surprised they (google) don't - or maybe they do...

Investigate an advertiser if enough publishers have decided to block them. Kind of like a voting system... ?

[...Investigate an advertiser if enough publishers have decided to block them. Kind of like a voting system...? ...]

******
I like your idea, an evaluative score given by the natural market force instead of Google's administrative QS.

[edited by: GoldenHammer at 8:54 am (utc) on Aug. 30, 2006]

My sites with AdSense are lost in an endless sea of scraper results in Google. Content they've stolen from me consistently appears above my own real results. There are also examples in which my content is used for "doorway" pages that refresh to some unrelated page (where my content never actually appears). I'm beginning to feel like a complete idiot sitting here making "real" content while the scrapers are laughing all the way to the bank.

So I'd like some answers to these questions:

1. Are scraper sites making money? I'm convinced they're making money or people wouldn't keep flooding the SE's with them. Even scraper sites with PR0 rank high for certain keywords. They are clearly stealing traffic from me.

2. Is Google doing anything about this? As smart as the Google algorithym is, how come it can't detect and reject all these scraper sites? They all use virtually identical templates!

3. Is it hopeless to report scraper sites? I bet there are 100,000 new scraper pages a day or maybe 1,000,000. Who knows? It seems like the only way to prevent this is at the Google level, not by individuals like us reporting single sites.

4. Do the Google AdSense people want/need scraper sites?

5. Is there any end in site to this scraper madness?

[edited by: martinibuster at 9:12 am (utc) on Aug. 30, 2006]
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[1][edit reason] Fixed bug [/edit] [/edit][/1]

Did you miss this thread?

[webmasterworld.com...]

Obviously, your experience runs counter to what some people are seeing, but I tend to agree with those who are saying that for the most part, the scraper problem is not as bad as it was, say, a year ago.

I certainlyi haven't been able to find scrapers in my area. MFA directory sites, yes, but not scrapers.

Perhaps certain areas are more likely to be a target?

1. Are scraper sites making money? I'm convinced they're making money or people wouldn't keep flooding the SE's with them. Even scraper sites with PR0 rank high for certain keywords. They are clearly stealing traffic from me.

Yes, they certainly are making money. It's only short term but it will pay their way for a while.

2. Is Google doing anything about this? As smart as the Google algorithym is, how come it can't detect and reject all these scraper sites? They all use virtually identical templates!

Google are working on reducing these sites and their rankings. Unfortunately, much like crooked politicians, new ones spring up as fast as the old ones are cut down.

3. Is it hopeless to report scraper sites? I bet there are 100,000 new scraper pages a day or maybe 1,000,000. Who knows? It seems like the only way to prevent this is at the Google level, not by individuals like us reporting single sites.

Reporting scraper sites may help Google improve its algorithms to automatically catch the sites.

4. Do the Google AdSense people want/need scraper sites?

I would imagine that the presence of scraper sites, at the moment, has created a net gain for Google over not having them. There are worries in many quarters that the long term effect of scraper sites in the index will be a net loss for Google as more spam-free search engines take market share.

5. Is there any end in site to this scraper madness?

Was the 'site' pun intended, or is the web overpowering everything? :-) According to most authorities, it will definately end as all things have an end (refer to your chosen religious text for details).

<sub>My scraper sites with AdSense are lost in an endless sea of content results in Google. Content I've stolen from them consistently appears above my spam results. There are also examples in which I used content for "doorway" pages which refresh to some unrelated page (where the content never actually appears) but even these are not performing well. I'm beginning to feel like a complete idiot sitting here making spam content while the content guys are laughing all the way to the bank.

So I'd like some answers to these questions:

1. Are content sites making money? I'm convinced they're making money or people wouldn't keep flooding the SE's with them. Even content sites with PR0 rank high for certain keywords. They are clearly stealing traffic from me.

2. Is Google doing anything about this? As smart as the Google algorithym is, how come it can't detect and reject all these content sites? They don't even use consistant templates!

3. Is it hopeless to report content sites? I bet there are 100,000 new content pages a day or maybe 1,000,000. Who knows? It seems like the only way to prevent this is at the Google level, not by individuals like us reporting single sites.

4. Do the Google AdSense people want/need content sites?

5. Is there any end in site to this content madness?</sub>

Hit the "dissatisfied" link, turn'em in, wait for the next major algorithm change, watch'em get nuked in the SERPs.

Hi ronburk,

Yes, I use the tools that we're given on the assumption that G does not just gratuitously tip our reports into /dev/null while laughing madly mawmawmawmaw!

Rgds

Damon

so how many advertisers are showing up in the google search engine, for your sector?

1) Unless you define "sector" to mean "one keyphrase or keyword" (which isn't the correct definition), it would be impossible to have a valid count, even at one moment in time, unless the number of ads in Google's inventory were extremely small. Why? because the number of keywords and keyphrases (and therefore ads) in a given sector is open-ended.

2) The display of Google Search ads for a given keyword or keyphrase is likely to vary, even within a very short timeframe. For example, I just searched on "[bigcityname] hotels" in Google, and Google displayed eight ads. However, when I repeated the search half a dozen times, at least one of the ads were different on most of the new page displays. (The same pattern is true of ads on a content page--refresh the page several times, and you won't necessarily see the same ads each time.)

To summarize, attempts to measure Google's ad inventory by viewing SERPs or content pages are fruitless, even during a short time period.

>>>To summarize, attempts to measure Google's ad inventory by viewing SERPs or content pages are fruitless, even during a short time period.<<<

i didn't suggest using content pages to measure the total number of ads in a sector, for all the obvious reasons... incredibill mentioned the preview tools as a standard, to meet the minimum ads required in the sector.

google search results give you a sponsored links list that is pretty consistent... in your sector, efv, the hotel search still brings up around 80 sponsored links... just like it did the other day.

i didn't check for duplicate links in the sponsored list, but the quantity of links there is proof enough that hotels in the european travel sector will provide plenty of good advertisers... you could make a adsense site on just that subject alone.

>>>It doesn't matter the design and contents of a web site, poor design and contents should ** NOT ** necessarily result in MFAs, but PSA or wrongly-targetted ads (not equivalent to MFAs), this is a realistic expectation .... :P<<<

that's what i think, because it would be very difficult to create an algo that can tell what good content really is... and we already know that google doesn't care how many ads you have on the page, because they are putting a dozen ads per page on some search results.

however, i suppose that some people will look to the new qs on the search side as an example of an algo that can determine the "quality" of landing pages.

the bigger problem is that nearly all ads targeted to aspiring writers are junk ads

I'm finding this to be true in the music area (specifically for ads targeted to musicians/bands) which makes sense if you think about it - they're all after the same thing, essentially.

1) Unless you define "sector" to mean "one keyphrase or keyword" (which isn't the correct definition), it would be impossible to have a valid count, even at one moment in time, unless the number of ads in Google's inventory were extremely small. Why? because the number of keywords and keyphrases (and therefore ads) in a given sector is open-ended.

Exactly. You can infer ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the availability of google ads by looking at a single site, OR using the preview tool on a page or small set of pages. Because you simply do NOT know what keywords are triggering the ads.

Add in geotargeting to the mix. If I'm in Nebraska and do a search on compact drag racing (or something fairly obscure), will I see the same ads as those I might see if I'm in California, where compact drag racing is popular, and where there are a lot more drag racing strips?

Further, as the amount of semantic content increases on a page, the harder it will be to know what keywords are triggering the ads served.

Also, the way ads are served on the google search pages is much different than the way they are served to content, because in one case the ads are based on the search string, and in the other they are based on the entire text on the page the ads are served to.

You can't compare.

[edited by: jatar_k at 9:28 pm (utc) on Aug. 30, 2006]

To answer the subject line title, Just what will it take for Google to get rid of MFAs?... we're waiting:

If by MFA you mean those ads that lead to pages with nothing but more ads or mostly more ads and a token amount of content, I don't think they are going away. Stop waiting and expecting and you won't be disappointed.

If Google could wave a magic wand today and make all those go away, the "second tier" MFA's would just increase.

Second tier MFA's are those where content is put on a page for the purpose of displaying AdSense ads on the page - Made For AdSense in another context.

A lot of this content is generated by people hiring others to write short articles for a few bucks each, regardless of the writer's knowledge of the subject matter. Much of this content is "borrowed" from other sites by these paid "writers."

Some of it is useful and some is uselss. The useless version is often as frustrating to a visitor as the type of MFA page that has nothing but ads displayed. And the useless version is just as likely to create a web surfer who is hesitant to click on ads in the future.

The "second tier" MFA's won't get as many complaints on this forum because of the number of people following that business model.

But both types of MFA's are going to stay unless Google will (1) clearly define what they mean in the terms about not having a page for the purpose of displaying AdSense ads and (2) enforce the policy.

(1) doesn't seem likely to happen and (2) seems even less likely to happen.

Just accept that MFA's are going to exist and run your sites accordingly.

FarmBoy

But both types of MFA's are going to stay unless Google will (1) clearly define what they mean in the terms about not having a page for the purpose of displaying AdSense ads and (2) enforce the policy.

They can enforce it without clearly defining it, in the same way that they're enforcing landing-page Quality Scores on the AdWords side without saying exactly how landing-page QS scores are calculated.

Realistically, though, they may not want to openly enforce anti-MFA rules (at least for the "second tier" that you describe) for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the impossibility of judging the publisher's motive when a page contents a limited amount of junk content (as opposed to no content at all). It makes a lot more sense for them to use a "quality score" algorithm to adjust compensation levels, thereby starving out the junk publishers instead of closing their accounts. Whether they're already doing that or not is something we can't know; we can safely assume that compensation could be tied to a QS algorithm without any change to the contract between Google and publishers.

>>>But both types of MFA's are going to stay unless Google will (1) clearly define what they mean in the terms about not having a page for the purpose of displaying AdSense ads and (2) enforce the policy.<<<

nice post! waiting for google to try and remove mfa's from adsense is a waste of time... it's a huge profit center for google, so what would they tell the stockholders? "you made less $$ this quarter because we cleaned up the mfa mess that we created?"

that's why you have to evaluate the sector you are in, and if it's overrun with mfa's, go to an ad network that doesn't have the whored-out keyword pricing that adsense does... those $.01 adwords prices are mfa fodder, and google lowered the minimum bid price just so that they could create their mfa empire.

Hi danimal,

those $.01 adwords prices are mfa fodder, and google lowered the minimum bid price just so that they could create their mfa empire

You may in hindsight be correct about the first half of your statement (I don't know, but it's an interesting thought), but you assert the second half as if you know it to be a fact. Unless Eric S told you directly, then it is no such thing, even if it is your strongly- and honestly- held opinion.

Rgds

Damon

>>>Unless you define "sector" to mean "one keyphrase or keyword"<<<

i don't think that's how your website operates, efv... you told us that those "long tail" searches that you keep posting out here don't generate very many quality advertisers, and you provided us with some numbers to that effect, as i recall.

so the obvious way to monitize those long tail searches is to steer that traffic towards your hotel pages, because that is where you have a bunch of advertisers, as evidenced by the ~80 ads in google's sponsored listing.

not all of the long tail traffic will be relevant, but most of those people will of course need hotels in either europe or the city that they were doing the long tail search on.

so you don't need to "define "sector" to mean "one keyphrase or keyword", as you put it... the real object is to locate a sector with a few keywords that have plenty of advertisers, and use other relevant keywords to help drive the traffic to the website... you'll need to do that, because there are over 200 million search listings for the european city that has those 80 sponsored listings.

>>> Unless Eric S told you directly, then it is no such thing, even if it is your strongly- and honestly- held opinion.<<<

i'm keeping an eye on eric schmidt, he's gonna stick his foot in his mouth about those $.01 clicks one of these days! until then, lol, yes it is my opinion only.

but truthfully, it was also done to bring in the ebay's of the ad world... with a keyword portfolio of 15 million(?) combos, they won't want to pay much for their ads... google wants the volume advertisers, as we learned in that robert cringley blog about the guy who couldn't afford to use adsense because nobody else was using the same keywords that he was.

The "second tier" MFA's won't get as many complaints on this forum because of the number of people following that business model.

Now this IS a topic that doesn't seem to receive much attention.

Hi Scurramunga,

It'll get a helluva lot more attention once/if G squishes the 1st tier lot... %-P

Rgds

Damon

You mean that there are tiers of MFAs?
Guess were just waiting for the big Googleboot to come along an squish em'!

[edited by: martinibuster at 10:19 pm (utc) on Aug. 30, 2006]
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i don't think that's how your website operates, efv... you told us that those "long tail" searches that you keep posting out here don't generate very many quality advertisers, and you provided us with some numbers to that effect, as i recall.

You've misread my posts. Some of those "long tail" topics have far higher EPC and eCPM than the topics that you assume are the most profitable. If there were a shortage of quality advertisers, I'd be able to tell that not only from a visual check, but from my channel statistics.

At any rate, this thread isn't about my site, how traffic flows on my site, or how my site derives its revenues, so let's get back to the topic at hand.

we should get a list of our advertisers ads in the google adsense panel showing us the average value we could make from each advertiser.. and more information about the advertiser for instance How many quality clicks it produces, if it is worthy to us for our members or not.

I imagine one reason G wouldn't provide this is that publishers could use it to cut deals directly with advertisers.

but truthfully, it was also done to bring in the ebay's of the ad world... with a keyword portfolio of 15 million(?) combos, they won't want to pay much for their ads... google wants the volume advertisers

eBay ads and similar ads are "filler ads" that could very easily go away when AdSense 2.0 and 3.0 come along. The problem right now is that some sites and pages don't lend themselves to keyword-targeted contextual ads. How many high-bid targeted ads are you likely to see in a newspaper story about some guy getting executed in Texas, civil war in Iraq, a hurricane in the Caribbean, or a cat that got rescued from a girder on the Eiffel Tower? Contextual targeting has limitations, and not all audiences are in a buying mindset.

These are simple facts of the advertising life, and they're why Google has been beta-testing "rich media" ads, making deals to run ads in video clips and on MySpace, etc. Over time, AdSense is likely to become far more than the contextual ad network than it is now--it's likely to become a platform for delivery of contextual ads on niche sites, demographically focused behavioral or branding ads on partner sites like MySpace or NewYorkTimes.com, etc. At that point, eBay and other contextual but low-quality filler ads are likely to become much prevalent than they are now.

Seems to me there is a simple answer to the whole MFA situation. Google needs to put in place an approval process for EVERY site that uses Adsense, rather than the current process of approving one site and then letting the publisher place Adsense on new sites without approval. Once each site is approved, each site then has to be re-evaluated every X months.

Yes, it would cost Google some money to implement this, but hey, they need to find a place to spend money anyway so they don't have to deal with being considered a mutual fund.

This, in my opinion, is the quickest and easiest way to nuke MFA sites. Costly? Yes. Effective? I think so.

Google needs to put in place an approval process for EVERY site that uses Adsense, rather than the current process of approving one site and then letting the publisher place Adsense on new sites without approval. Once each site is approved, each site then has to be re-evaluated every X months.

Is that an easily "scalable solution"? I'd guess not.

Why not simply have algorithms that look for certain patterns and stop the display of ads on pages that trigger an "MFA alarm"?

Better yet, use the solution that I've mentioned before (and which may already be in place, for all we know): Use a "quality score" algorithm to adjust compensation downward for pages that fit the MFA pattern. Just starve out the bottom-feeders without telling them why their EPC, eCPM, and revenues keep falling.

>>>You've misread my posts. Some of those "long tail" topics have far higher EPC and eCPM than the topics that you assume are the most profitable.<<<

i never mentioned epc or ecpm.

your personal epc/ecpm is not relevant, because epc/ecpm will vary with every sector.

and if you don't want your site discussed, maybe you should stop using it as an example for things like those long tail searches you keep posting out here.

>>>These are simple facts of the advertising life, and they're why Google has been beta-testing "rich media" ads, making deals to run ads in video clips and on MySpace, etc.<<<

advertising on myspace social networks is not the same thing as google rich media and google video ads, because the latter is a direct response to the new technologies of web communication.

so while we are evolving from the text-only usenet days, there will always be a place for the ebay keyword portfolio, including in the search results of those social networking websites.

mfa's will be with us until google stops using it's $.01 minimum keyword bid as bait to hook 'em up.

i never mentioned epc or ecpm.

You talked about a lack of "quality advertisers" for those long-tail searches, which was simply wrong on all counts.

As for MFAs being with us as long as Google has a one-cent minimum, that's a bit of a red herring, since it implies that all or most MFAs are using minimum bids. In any case, bids are only one part of the MFA equation: MFAs earn their profit on the spread, and if Google wants to starve them out, it can do so by reducing the spread to the point where the MFA business model is no longer tenable.

Of course, Google may not want to eliminate MFAs; there are other things it can do to reassure advertisers without eliminating MFAs and other low-quality ad venues. For example:

- Google could allow site targeting of CPC ads.

- Google could introduce "Smart Select" [webmasterworld.com] (an automated system based on Smart Pricing data that Martinibuster preferred to call "contextual optimization, and which would give advertisers greater control over audience quality and price without the hands-on effort that site targeting requires).

By offering such premium services, Google would achieve several things:

1) Gun-shy advertisers would be more willing to try the content network.

2) Advertisers who already use the content network would be able to maximize their ROI.

3) Advertisers who are happy with the referrals they get from MFAs and other low-quality sites would be able to continue buying traffic at rockbottom rates.

I own a few MFA sites.

They are not scrapers, they are just single or double word domains names that are keyword rich and naturally rank in google and other search engines.

I make tiny hand edited directories that nofollow link to sites I have found and researched to be on topic to the search. Usually I put less than a dozen listings on the domain/page.
They are a mini DMOZ.

I feel no guilt having this type of MFA site.

It is a win for the user, the businesses, google and me.

Is that an easily "scalable solution"? I'd guess not.

No, probably not. But that's Google's problem to solve. Automation may not always be the best solution, even if it is "scalable".