There is much discussion going on over the new landing page quality alogrithm that Google has implemented this week. As many of you know, using adsense for content on your websites is the easiest way to earn an income. So there are now millions of sites placing ads all over there pages, becasue affiliate links convert at a much lower rate. I look at adsense as my main income maker and anything I get from an affiliate link as gravy. Even many highly respected websites are now covered with them. So the question we must ask is why? And the answer is, that they pay. I have a few small travel sites so I will use this as an example. Tripadvisor.com has many of the top organic positions on the web for 1000's of travel related searches, but if you look to the right of the organic listings at the paid listings, you will almost always see an ad for their site as well. When you are directed to Tripadvisor's page it is covered with paying ads. They supply virtually no original content at all. They consider a travel guide a few lines of text about an area and then forward you to another page that has a bunch of ads on it. They are obviously using adsense arbitrage to to earn a profit, and are offering very little to the consumer in the way of fresh content. If you drill down through their pages, you may eventually come to a link to an area's chamber of commerce site that you can click on, but there is not a bunch of originality going on. So why would this site not be considered a Made For Adsense site? And if they are, do you think Google is going to increase their minimum click bid to $10 per keyword? I doubt it. So the question is, just how much quality content does a site need to not get penalized by Google for having low landing page quality? I would bet that the bigger you are and the more you contibute to Google's bottom line the safer you are. Some really competitive travel terms have seen paid ads drop by two thirds. And guess who those one third that are left are? Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Hotwire, Tripadvisor..etc Almost all of those sites are selling travel, not supplying rich content. So why are so many small sites that have better content being bid out of Adwords? That question is yet to be answered. Do you know of any other large sites that could be considered MFA sites and are going to get a pass from Google on their landing page quality? And if you are one of the sites that has been punished for low page quality, what are you going to do to fix the problem? Are there people out there now working on a way to optimize their sites for this new reality and if so are you having any success yet getting re-listed?
I guess you not have a good look at tripadvisor.com before you posted this ! They are the best site for hotel reviews on the web, bar none. I have no connection with them; but when I saw this post I had to respond. You are really barking up the wrong tree here. I have used Tripadvisor to research hotels for my last 4 vacations, and it has been immensely helpful. It's an awesome site for impartial, user reviews of hotels...big or small, anywhere in the world.
That may be true for hotels, but they also have many high ranking pages for attractions choose any city and type in that city, and things to do in Google, and it will put up a TA page that has very little content, just ads
try this link for example tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g60898-Activities-Atlanta_Georgia.html add www. to the front of the above link This page was found by typing in "atlanta things to do" on google
There is still lots of content at those pages too. There is a list of attracions, clicking on the attraction brings up a brief description and lots of reviews.. I don't see any problem with it.
Wow, talk about clueless. You have no idea what MFA sites are, nor "Adsense Arbitrage", nor any understanding of the real power of affiliate links versus Adsense income. It's nice that Adsense has done so well for you, but one conversion via TripAdvisor's affilate links probably makes them more than 100 Adsense ad click, and since all their visitors are highly targeted, their conversion rate must be pretty high. You know not what you speak, my friend. This is how it SHOULD be done.
I am trying to make the point that if a site like tripadvisor can earn an income by not offering huge amounts of content on certain pages and serving lots of ads, then the small guy who does this also should not be priced out of adwords for doing the same thing. I happen to be a tripadvisor affiliate and know what they pay on average per click to their affiliates. I also have an MFA site that I run tripadvisor on, and the adsense revenue is 10 times the ta income. And lastly, I generate 95% of my traffic through adwords, so I do know a bit about adsense arbitrage. I have tried just about every other travel affiliate program, and they just do not convert. Maybe $20 a month versus many, many,many times more with adsense. Sorry to anger you I guess I just can't write very good
There's plenty of content on those pages considering that is a page about the sights in Atlanta, I can only see two Sponsored Links boxes..... I think you're getting confused with what arbitrage really is....if this was a MFA site they would be sending visitors to a page with little more than some text on it & some adsense ads. As jackburton pointed out, these guys make WAY more money from you booking a hotel etc so it's not worth their while.....
Just so I understand the definition of adsense arbitrage, I believe it to mean that you purchase an ad from adwords for 5 cents, drive the person to your website, and hope they click on an ad that pays more than your 5 cent investment and you pocket the difference minus your hosting costs etc.. Is this right or have I been mis-informed? Thanks
Just one more thing on this.. TA does not sell travel. neary everything on their site is affiliate links or sponsored ads. They are driving traffic to other sites for which they collect a commision. Which is all good! But the point I am making is that if I built a webpage and put six lines of text about a specific destination on it, added a picture, and then placed 2 adwords boxes on the page and and a few affiliate links to other travel sites and added an RSS feed about atlanta, that would be considered a MFA page, Spammy, or a scraper site. TripAdvisor is just really sophisticated about it. Virtually all the links on any given TA page is a link to a page with a bunch of ads, or a link directly to a site like expedia, that pay them per click just like many of us do with adsense on our pages. Even the pages that have traveler reviews on them start with an adbox. They have other people providing their content, their photos, and newspaper articles. TA is a very good website and they have done a great job of pulling a huge amount of sources together, but they have taken the concept of an MFA website to perfection
It's a bit more complex than that. What makes it arbitrage (click pimping is a term I like to use for it) is that you offer nothing to the user other than PPC links. Tripadvisor provide a service! If you have a site with Adsense, useful content/service and you drive traffic to the site with PPC it is 'Internet Marketing' NOT arbitrage. Take away the useful content/service and you have arbitrage.
Yes you are mostly right on this. There is just one more differentiation needed. A content site (like the travel site above) might be using AdWords to attract users and are using ads to generate revenue, however, the real purpose of the advertising is to expose the site to new visitors who will then come back to the site later via a bookmark, etc. In otherwords for a legitimate content site the purpose of the advertising is to help with branding and build awareness for the site. With arbitrage the site is simply trying to buy eyeballs at cheap prices and then sell those same eyeballs to other advertisers at higher prices. They don't really care if the same eyeballs come back to their site or not. The content site is trying to be a destination in and of itself and the arbitrage site is nothing more than a speed bump in the road.
The best part about Trip Advisor are the user reviews. The more reviews on a subject the better info you get for planning out your trip. The content is provided by the users. All they do is host the info and display their advertising while you read the reviews. Sweet for them and good info for the readers. I actually got Trip Advisor to link to my site but it is buried so deep only an occasional person ever finds it and ends up at my site. But a link is a link
Bold and underlined for effect. That's how you make a successful site. Draw them in, get them involved, and then let them do all the work.