I'm wondering where I can find this part of the Adsense terms explained more in detail: Google ads, search boxes or search results may not be: Placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads. A lot of people create websites just for the purpose of displaying Adsense, so called Made For Adsense websites, especially everyone creating micro niche sites. You could argue that almost all websites are made with the purpose of earning money, but where is there border where Google would say the page is specifically made for ads and thus ban it? Has anyone ever been banned from Adsense cause of running ads on a MFA site? Is there any danger in making niche sites with 4-5 articles on them to display adsense as long as all the content is unique and useful?
"You could argue that many recent websites are made with the purpose of earning money," There was a large banning a while ago of websites that, as Google explained it, "didn't fit their business model" These were MFAA sites. They still do exist and they do disappear after a while (only to be replaced by a new crop, so it's like playing whack-a-mole)
The way I think of it is to ask whether a site would have any value if the ads were removed. Most MFA sites copy content from Wikipedia, or are autoblogs of other people's feeds, or have terribly "spun" articles, or are otherwise pretty worthless. The whole point of MFA-type sites is to have so little valuable content that visitors are likely to click the ads rather than actually read through the site. There are some microniche sites that provide 4 or 5 pages of interesting original content. There are some MFA sites that provide 100s of pages of crap.
I am interested in micro niche sites that do provide original content, even though the main goal of the site is to have people click the ads and make money. I have some sites like these, and I am considering making more of them. All content will be unique and fairly useful, not just spun articles and wikipedia stuff. Ever heard of anyone getting in trouble running adsense on sites like these? The large banning you mention, Adpubster, was not of any regular MFA sites, was it? All MFAA sites, that is sites who get visitors from adwords and use a landing page with heavy adsense content to make money, right?
I'm not sure who all was affected by it, but it appeared to be a pretty system-wide clean out. It wasn't just petty little buck or two a day sites, but the whole range. I noticed many of the small-time MFAAs that I tracked were weeded at that time as well. Ones very similar to those have since reappeared, though. Hard to really agree on definitions of MFA and MFAA, too (well, not necessarily AGREE but rather what is accepted as standard definition) Most of the posts in these forums are from people starting MFAs in the strictest sense of the word. Anyone asking for a high paying "niche" is creating an MFA because you can bet your bottom dollar that if it weren't for adsense he'd be out golfing rather than making the website. I have problems with those at one level, but have more problems with the ones that do it strictly to turn a profit on volume via Adwords advertising (which ends up putting crap ads on my sites) It was this latter batch that was cleaned out a few years ago but, like I said, they (or ones like them) are back. Time for another cleaning I'd say.