I think that the common advice that using the URL filter ("competitive ad filter") will likely lower your earnings, is simply not necessarily true. There is consensus that it is productive to filter out irrelevant ads, but, there is debate on trying to filter out low paying ads. Some good points raised by people are that by blocking an advertiser by URL, you block the whole advertiser's inventory. So, by blocking what you think is a low-paying ad from an advertiser, may just be one of many that the advertiser has -- and some of their ads may be the good paying ones! Another good point, is that you simply cannot ever tell who the cheap advertisers are because G doesn't want you to know. This makes total sense: if we did know, and then all filled up our URL filters, it would impact their bottom line... Why else would they limit the number of URLs we can filter? But I am not going to stop trying to figure out who the el cheapos are.... So I got to thinking, why not look at the URLS in the ads on your site daily/regularly, and try to spot the obvious spam/made-for-adsense sites? It is a safe bet that these are the ones who would pay the least: sites who are just using Adwords to get traffic. They are not selling tangible goods or services. So, if you visit the site of an advertiser, and their site is a scraper or just made-for-adsense, I bet it is safe to say that they likely are paying you peanuts. My testing with this over the past few days is that I have put heap of crap sites in my URL filter, and my earnings are going up. One time a month ago, I took all of the URLs out of my filter for two weeks. What happened? Traffic was the same, but earnings and CTR went down!
Interesing advice... I can add here that another tip. Sometimes you can find the same ads in Overture bid tool. And unlike Google - you can see the bid amount there. Yes, these are too different things - Google and Overture and there is no way bids match between those systems, but if somebody bids high in Overture... most probably they bid good in Adwords as well. Eh... "Google Bid Tool" would make our life much easier
The thing I think that is misleading about the Overture bid tool, is that it shows what advertisers bid to get their ads on the search network, whereas you and I are on the content network, which has a whole other (lesser) price value. I'll keep looking for the chislers though, who want to pay peanuts..
If you will check my posts a week or so ago, you will see I have spent some time checking the overture bid tool and eliminated a lot of very low paying urls from my sites, unfortunately unless you found a different overture bid tool then the one I used, it can cost you money. The tool I used never showed ads that were worth less than 5 cents. I eliminated a lot of urls that paid less than a dime down to the 5 cents. And my earnings plummeted even more, why ? Because googles adwords accepts bids as low now as 1 cent, and after I elimiated numerous 5-10 cent ads, the ones that started showing next were the ONLY ads left..... the 1-4 cent ones LOL
I think that this is the tricky part: not using the bid tools to seek out low paying ads via keywords, but instead to look at the quality of the advertiser's sites themselves and try to determine if they are a scraper or spam site. If this is the case, I bet its a given that they are low paying cheapos. But I agree totally wth your point that trying to filter out low paying ads, will likely result in even lower paying ads being triggered. This is all such a cat-and-mouse game, ah?
Why need to check cheap advertiser manually? We all post those cheap advertiser here, everyone will know them and filter them out. Here are those cheap advertisers paid me only 0.03 cent for 1 click: 100links.com a2zguider.com about-parishilton.info all-music-converter.com my-bikinis.com all-photographycourses.info allposters.com alltheweba-z.com alltheweba-z.net astockphotography.info mate1.com away.com beautywiz.net best-price.com betterhomesandgardens.com big-live.com blogspot.com business.com buymybutterfly.com cameradollars.com canadadrugpharmacy.com celebritybikinis.info celldorado.com chatterbean.com citiesguide365.com clickwatchplay.com clipblast.com cocodating.com completephotographyguide.com concierge.com consumersearch.com contactanycelebrity.com cool-collection.com curesboredom.com dada.net dadavideos.com digicombos.com direktory.info discountedcheap.com discoverees.com dreamstime.com dvdsonyouripod.info easyfactfinder.com easyresultz.com easywebvideo.com eazydealz.com entertainmentledger.com everyprice.com ez-poetry.com ezquickinfo.com fancyfinder.com faster-results.com fastestfinds.com fastfinderguy.com fatloss4idiots.com find-digital-camera-batteries.info findlens.info first-compare.com fitness-singles.com fixmyspace.com flowersbeautiful.net foralltheringtones.com forsaleflowers.info free-clip-art.net free-fun-ecards.com free-pictures-photos.com freemyspacebackgrounds.com freepimpvideos.com funfreeoffers.com funvideodownload.com get-photoshop.com getvideo4free.com giftbasketsandflowers.com governmentgrantlist.com greatoutdoorspix.com hd.org healthline.com helium.com helpfulfinder.com hitormissinfo.com hollywoodgrind.com home-garden-premiumblvd.com home-garden-rewardblvd.com homeworkmadeez.com hot-funny-video.com howcoolwasthat.com imvite.com info.com infocritiques.com instanteyecandy.com itextyou.com ithinkisearchiam.com itsgottabe.com latest-mobi.com learnphotoshopnow.com legfoot.com lirated.com local.com maybefriends.com meevee.com mega-search.ws movie4best.com musicvixen.com myartexpressions.com myfreelayout.us myglobalsearch.com myparishiltonpictures.com mypurchase.net newmoviesonline.info nextag.com offerscomparison.com okdigitalcameras.info onlytopdeals.com p-a-v-i-p.com pacnpay.com pamela-anderson-top10-photos.com pamelaandersonimages.info pamelaandersonpictures.biz pamelaandersonpictures.org panicportal.com panthermedia.com parentsalready.com parishiltonpictures.biz passionup.com petpeoplemeet.com photographydir.info photographysites.com picks-finder.com popularscreensavers.com powerbacks.com priceparadice.com pricescan.com retrevo.com ringringmobile.com ringrockstarz.com royalty-free-photo.net royaltyfreephotographs.info sales365days.com screensaversandwallpapersfree.com searchbigdaddy.com searchy.co.uk seenon.com sexymodelsworld.com shopbig.com shopcartusa.com shopcompare.eu shopping.com shopzilla.com singlesall4u.com skype-stop.com sleepgentle.com smart-review.com smarter.com soundtaxi.info starware.com stock-photo-resources-inc.com stock-photo-resources.net stylefrizz.com superdeluxe.com sweetim.com theflowerscatalog.com thewomenmenadore.com thinktarget.com titanfacts.com tmz.com tooth-pain-guide.com top100-screensavers.com topcelebritiesmodels.info toseeka.com trainpetdog.com travel-rewardblvd.com true.com trueloveandgod.com truesexysingles.com tv-buzz.com vaveeva.com veoh.com victoria-beckham-top10-photos.com videodownloadlistings.info videosdownload.info vivadiscovery.net webcrawler.com webpamelaanderson.com wemakeitfree.com weshow.com whitesmoke.com willyourdogdienext.com wulongforlife.com www-brochuredesign.info www-digitalcameralenses.info www-familyportraits.info www-flowers.net www-funny-videos.com www-naturephotos.info www-photoalbums.info www-photoeditingsoftware.info www-pictureeditingsofware.info www-pix.com www-printers.info yachtsforme.info
Thanks for the great list, but I still confuse, is this list applicable to every site or there are different for each site?