This is a topic that I thought would create some interesting diologue. I think most of us know that a site with no content is of little value to a visitor. But is it ethically wrong to create content for the purpose of getting ranked and making money on AdSense? There seems to be very passionate people on both sides of this topic. It would be nice if everything in this world was free, but it isn't. Publishers in the real world create content in newspapers and magazines in order to sell more copies and sell advertising. Even many major news sites have moved to a pay model for their content. They obviously think it is valuable enough for someone to pay for it's access. If you are a webmaster who just wants to produce some interesting discussions and information on your site for the world to use and hopefully make enough on AdSense to cover your costs, I don't think that is so much different than the person who treats it as a business and wants to do more than cover their costs. But this is a very grey area here. How do you know which is which? Is someone putting up news articles and commentary to get ranked and make money, or are they doing it primarily to provide their visitors with good content? Many people think that blogs can be nothing more than useless gibberish of someone talking about any random topic like what they had for breakfast. Yet many other blogs are very informative and have intelligent viewpoints. So is the ethical and moral standard based on the intelligence of the person posting the information? This gets merky when you try to define "content" or "value". Something that may be valuable to one person might be valueless to another. There was a time when people used directories such as DMOZ to throw up as many pages as they could hoping some of them would get ranked in something, place AdSense on those pages, then hope to rake in a little bit of money. I might view that directory as nothing more than a listing of other websites and it may be valueless to me. But maybe that listing of sites itself has value to someone else (after all, isn't Google search results just a list of websites?) Maybe we define valuable as an original work of authorship. But again, I guess the compilation of sites into a directory could be considered original. Maybe it is the techniques we use that determines ethical stability. So, sure you can create pages that have some information that may be valuable to someone, and maybe you DID create those pages because you are hoping to make money on the ad revenue, but you aren't forcing the people to click and if you aren't tricking or persuading them to click there doesn't seem to be any problem with it. This topic gets stranger the more I think about it because I can see both sides of the argument. Yes we want to keep the internet clean of "trash". But one man's trash is another man's treasure. I don't have any problems with people treating it as a business as long as the intentions are correct, and how on earth do we (or Google for that matter) judge intent?
lots of people put out sites that have info to offer and are good sites but they were only started to make money for adsense...i think there is nothing wrong with that...
i'd say it depends on the very site itself. alot of people start sites with the intention of making money, and they end up with very authoritative sites. i see nothing wrong with that. after all, when you start a business, isn't your goal (usually) making money? if the business prosper and benefits thousands of people, while making money, will that be unethical? i believe not. the ones that are unethical are sites that are poorly made and really have no content whatsoever. those scraper sites with no original content. SO... people can do both. some may start out to make money, others may intend to provide visitors with information. both can end up as authoritative sites.