Ok, when I switched host and redesigned my blog, I brought my massive list of filtered sites with me (for adsense). I have added to it since launching the new site. Last night, I cut the whole list out, so my ads are now completely unfiltered. G is deciding what gets put on there. The reason I did this is because nothing else worked, and I was getting a few one cent clicks. Not anymore. While it certainly isnt a big earner (it hasn't broken even yet), today I have earned over $1 for the first time, except for when I had a few crazy firefox referral days with my old site (around $15/day, just from FF referrals). My CTR is 10 times higher than it was before. It may be too early to jump to conclusions, but if this keeps up, dropping that filter list may turn out to be the best move I ever made
I dropped the filter 2 days ago because I had the same problem and things seem to be working better. I guess filtering MFA sites sometimes isnt such a good idea. Ed
I've turned mine off too, all except a couple of sites that encouraged students to cheat by writing their essays for them.
I have always wondered whether MFA filter lists were effective. I mean Google isn't stupid, they want to make money as well and they make more money when they serve higher paying ads to websites. So surely they aren't out there to screw themselves, I mean I understand there are advertisers out there that are clearly out to cut their costs, but if that is the case surely Google is smart enough to know that placing that ad is reducing their ROI and ours (as publishers).
I removed my made for adsense ads yesterday and I dont think they'll be going back up. The first few days of filtering sites was good, but then it was earning less on a third more traffic/clicks. Ads blacklist aint all its cracked up to be.
Yeah, I had a massive list I'd found somewhere, back in the days of being hosted on blogspot, so I could get rid of all the blog ads (which were completely irrelevant to my content). After clearing out the list, my ads have only changed slightly, are still relevant, and pay WAY more
I never used the filter. There aren't that many sites that get displayed that I would consider as "competition", even though they have similar content. I am only getting about 5 or more clicks a day so what does it matter if 5 people a day get distracted from my site. They might not like the site they end up on so they might come back.