Filter out those MFAs

I have always read about filtering out MFA sites, but I used not care. The clicks on one of my old sites used to range from 0.01 to .10, and sometimes .20+. Out of curiosity I typed the urls to find out my advertiser's site, and my adsense units was plagued with MFAs, (the advertiser's pages were only adsense/yahoo ads, and link farms) so I've placed the urls in my competitive filters. Now majority of the clicks are .20 - $1.00, and the website's daily adsense income increased by 50%.

Lesson learned: If you are not filtering out MFAs from your ads, you are probably throwing money out of the window.

 

Thanks for this, I'll keep it in mind! I always thought MFAs for no good. Rep added.

 

MFA's are no good, but if you filter out the ones on your site, they will just be replaced by more of them. There are hundreds of MFA sites, which Google is actually trying to decrease.

 

Some areas of content are less targeted by MFAs. You also have to be vigilant and keep checking your site. If you are, filtering works, and works well. Whether you filter or not is not going to contribute to the overall number, they are going to keep increasing regardless. Until google gets firm. The June 1 shutdown was NOT getting firm.

 

It's good to get rid of MFA's but then even if you check your site that will mean that you will be making alot of impressions yourself on the ads and that could get you into trouble in the long run them especially if you have CPM advertisers running ads on our site. It will also make it look to the advertiser that your sites traffic doesn't click much and then may drop you when it comes to advertising on your site using CPM.

 

Just one question - Adsense is supposed to show the ads with the highest payout first in your ad unit. So if the MFA ad was displayed, it means it was the highest paying ad, isnt it? If you block that ad, the next one to show up will be the next highest paying ad but lower in cost ie it will pay less than the MFA ad, so how come you can get greater payouts by filtering ads? It doesnt make sense unless i'm not thinking straight!

 

Fluid you have got that practically right. Adsense is owned by Google which is a corporation. They want to make as much money as possible which means they want to show the highest paying ads for your ad space which are targetted to your sites content.

I have told some people that if they remove the MFA ads they will just be replaced by more MFA ads that are likely to pay lower than the ones that has just been removed. If they are not replace by more MFA ads, then it will still be ads that are more or less lower paid per click.

I think some people seem to think that Google just chucks any ads on their site as longs as they are targetted Adsense is not worried if it pays $0.03 or $5, which is incorrect.

But I would think that the larger majority of people that try to get rid of most or all of their MFA ads if because they pay low plus they want to give their visitors a good experience. They don't really want their visitors to click of their site from clicking on one of their ads and then end up on a poor site that just is covered in Adsense with hardly no content. If their visitors keep clicking on them MFA ads, then eventually their visitors will never click an ad again as they will keep thinking that all the ads must be like that.

 

No, folks, how then do you explain 10-fold increases in ePC after filtering? Google's algorithm is a lot more complicated than that I suspect. CTR across sites is also taken into consideration I've been told.

 

How do we know if the ad we are filtering is MFA sites?

I once went to adsblacklist site and blacklisted the sites it told me to, and My incomes were around $3-$3.5 a day. Then one day i removed them all from competitive ads filter and saw my earnings to $9-$10 for 2 days and then averages $5-$8 nowdays.
I have not put to filter because i fear or say i am conscious that i filtered a legit good paying site
please help

 

It could just be a coincidence that you have a 10 fold increase. I tried it about 2 years ago and I didn't see no increase in earnings, infact my earnings per click on average declined about 1-2 cents afterwards.

I guess it may work for some people and not others. It could also change the way the smart pricing works if you filter out some of the ads aswell for some sites.

 

No, this wasn't a one shot deal, I've experimented quite heavily over a long period of time with that filter, keeping detailed records of dates and earnings. Every time I engage the filter, the results improve. As soon as I kill it and let the crap in, ePC plummets. And every time, runs were made over a period of time long enough to collect statistically significant data.

 

I might have figured it out actually.

It's a combination of two theories:

(1) Highest paying ad is displayed first
(2) SmartPricing

When an advertiser bids for a keyword, the advertiser's ad with the maximum bid will show on your site (with relevant content). Now because the advertiser also specifies conversion goals and if these are not met, you are smartpriced, it means that although his ad is shown on your site, you will get less money, hence smartpriced! Now when you filter out this site, the next ad that is displayed returns you the 'proper click value' until you're smartpriced again!

In essence, if advertiser A bids for 'mortgage' as follows:
A - $3.00
B - $2.90
C - $2.50

The ad for advertiser A will always be shown first for the "mortgage" keyword. Now if you've been smartpriced, you will not get the maximum cost for this keyword ie $3.00 and could only get $0.20 instead. However by blacklisting advertiser A, you will get the real cost of Advertiser B that is $2.90 (until you get SmartPriced again!).

 

That actually sounds true

 

The problem with this is that smartpricing supposedly resets after a period of time...my tests have run longer than the period of time that has been usually accepted as the "reset time" This means that when I engage my filter it filters out the MFA site for a period of time that would allow my smartprice status to be reset.

Then, I kill the filter and I immediately (without any time for statistics to be generated to get me smartpriced) get the $0.01 and $0.02 clicks from sites which are known MFA offenders. That is all they are paying, regardless of your smartprice status. True, you can then be "further smartpriced" because the converstion rate on the advertiser site is going to go down.

What I'm saying is that I get the lower price ads appearing immediately, before the advertiser can complain based upon conversion goals.

 

I have lots of blogs that make just .01-.10 per click.. I would love to test this method out. Whats the easiest way to filter out MFA ads?

 

Adpubster, according to Google SmartPricing is calculated on a regular basis and i think that's what you're referring to with the "reset time". However unless the advertiser changes its conversion goal, it would in no way affect your "smartprice status".

Conversion goals are the driving force behind SmartPricing. SmartPricing in itself depends on a number of factors including the traffic you're sending, where they come from, what search engines and search terms the visitors have used in coming to your webpage first and so on.

The filter list provided by Adsense was meant to be used only to block competitors ads at your own discretion. However in terms of pricing, whether it's an MFA site or quality one, the highest paying ad will be displayed first. Otherwise Google Adwords keyword bidding wouldn't have any meaning.

 

It will only met their conversion goal if your traffic improves. Traffic normally is good one minute and not quite so good the next which is normally what brings in smartpricing I would thing.

 

wrong, ad ranking within the adsense block is a function of how well the ad pays, AND how often it will be clicked on.

keyword bidding is not relevant to that, it's a price war between advertisers, period.

mfa'ers thrive on keywords in the ad title, they know how to generate phrases that will interest people, and therefore be clicked on more... google puts that trash ahead of real ads from real companies, because it will be clicked on more often.

therefore, mfa ads take clicks away from real ads by real companies, which wrecks the conversion ratios for your site... you end up earning less, because there is no reliable conversion data for your site.

 

No, it will not improve when the ads are misleading. When you get a person clicking there because of deceptive ad text, and then the site is a directory listing, it doesn't matter how targeted/good the traffic is.

Thanks danimal for the confirmation, those were precisely my points above, too.

 

danimal you got any official sources where we can confirm what you are saying is true? I've stipulated the above theory by reading the adwords/adsense guidelines and faqs and i haven't seen the "ad ranking" you are referring to. I know that the first ad in the HTML will be the highest paying one among the other ads but that doesn't fit to what you are actually saying.