Comments on: Made-For-Adwords (MFA) Sites Suck!

By: Comment Spammers Get Sneaky, But You Should Delete Them Ruthlessly!

Comment Spammers Get Sneaky, But You Should Delete Them Ruthlessly! — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 18:21:51 +0000

[...] they are not spammers as long as they leave a nice sounding comment along with their spammy “made-for-adwords” website link. And I guess they even think it’s ok for them to use different names on [...]

By: Johnny W.

Johnny W. — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:25:13 +0000

Does anyone else see the irony of this post?

By: kaka

kaka — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:36:18 +0000

Definitely agree John. How sucks MFA sites are. Never think what are in their mind since they hve nothin to offer to their visitor. It’s just another spammy site which make search engine dirty meanwhile another useful sites hard to get into the search engine.

By: Glen

Glen — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:00:23 +0000

I completely agree…I hate sites that are crawling with adsense. Fair enough, the inexperienced user will click on the ads but the regular internet user will simply skip to the next site and that’s not what you want. I’d rather have an experience PC user on my site than a noob; although everyone is welcome lol.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:58:26 +0000

Yeah you’re right… putting adds all over the place is not very interesting for your users. Also you destroy your work by making it spammy

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:49:07 +0000

I don’t click on banner ads ever! Those deals are not worth it to me and yes it destroys the page’s credibility.

By: moserw

moserw — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:52:32 +0000

Totally agree with you John. Most people unfortunately have started blogging just for the money it brings in hence the creation of a niche like Make Money Online and themes for it too. Things were better when people blogged just for the love of blogging and because they had something they wanted to speak about and speak out and just share it with the world. Now blogging has become so commercialized…

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:53:12 +0000

Hear hear!

By: SiberHoca

SiberHoca — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:04:02 +0000

Google used to be a lot stricter when the Adsense first began but it’s not so anymore(imho). You can have a 2-3 page MFA website and still join Adsense nowadays.

By: SiberHoca

SiberHoca — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:57:53 +0000

I simply felt the urge to click the google add that comes right after the article. I’ve read a few of other articles on the site and this was the only one I noticed with Adsense adds.

I absolutely agree with you when it comes to MFA sites as you call them. But I think you should also monetize this site a little bit better than it is right now. Just my two cents…

You are putting your time on it, you might as well make some money doing it ;)

By: Critical Critic

Critical Critic — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:31:38 +0000

I know if you report MFA sites to Google, they’ll eventually ban them. Google certainly needs a better way of detecting them on their own though…

By: Donace

Donace — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:53:12 +0000

Actually you can earn a fair bit, have a snoop at sitepoint marketplace and garryconns site, you can see how profitable it can be

By: Donace

Donace — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:51:18 +0000

Adsense is a good money maker and arguably the bes ppc platform, so they will ALWAYS be people trying to use t to its maximum potential.

Some of these people will be good at making MFA sites and you will not be able to tell the difference. Others will not be and will result in sites as the above.

After all if you do keyword research and have adsense on your site. It is arguably a MFA site.

By: Edward Khoo

Edward Khoo — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:48:19 +0000

Do they really earn money from those sites? Dont think anyone would click on the ads anyway~

By: Jerry

Jerry — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:11:24 +0000

Not to defend a hideous corporate behemoth, but it’s not like Google doesn’t have *any* constraints on its AdSense publishers. For starters, webmasters are supposed to limit their Google ads to three ad blocks per page. Those who violate this rule risk losing their affiliation.

I think this is a self-regulating problem. Those sites that overuse advertising, whether it’s Google’s or anybody else’s, will be the object of a backlash (like your own post, for example), and risk limiting their readership to those who are extremely tolerant of overloaded pages.

Makes me wonder if loading up a web page with all those ads actually works. In which case, all the indignation in the world isn’t likely to persuade anyone away from it.

Anyway, interesting thoughts there.

By: John P.

John P. — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:33:36 +0000

Hey, thanks for the kind words Jerry. ;-)

I might have been unclear about what I would like from Google… I don’t want them approving content; I just want them to exercise some control over who they allow to use/abuse the AdWords system.

Many advertising firms review the content of the site before they allow it into the ad network. But Google allows anyone and their dog to slap AdWords on a site. With no QC whatsoever, they are in essence monitizing their own referral traffic.

What happens is, Google is incented to actually send traffic to MFA sites. On one end they show the advertisers that their ads are being viewed, and on the other end they collect money!

If you put a team in place to do some quality checks on the content and boot people out of the AdWords program who ruin the Web experience for visitors, you might see a slowdown in the proliferation of such sites.

One way or another though… I just know MFA sites suck! ;-)

John

By: Lisa Marie Mary

Lisa Marie Mary — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:23:37 +0000

When you have search for actual content – that drives me up a wall! And the fact that a lot of these sites still have their darn page rank really sucks, too!

By: Jerry Thomas

Jerry Thomas — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:32:28 +0000

Love ya, John P., but think for a minute about what you’re saying. Do you really want Google approving content? The people who control what you see when you do a web search actually telling you what you can and cannot post? That thought truly frightens me.

I’d rather deal with a few spammy sites than give one institution that much control over the Internet.

Thanks — yours is one of my go-to blogs every morning.