The new era of AdSense nonsense
- Stephen Murphy
- 30 March 2009
Well, it’s official: the internet is full of crap. I know that is probably just stating the obvious, but the dam has truly burst and the amount has reached new levels of volume, acceptance and even tolerance. (See ‘The internet is full of rubbish’, p36 for more details.)
A common technique is to register a common misspelling of a well-known brand – say, anericanexpress.com – and then fill that site with nothing but pay-per-click ads for that brand. Every time someone clicks, the site gets some revenue. Another tactic is to register a domain name on a common search term, like cheapholidays.com.au, and again stack it with ad links. The most insidious of these sites plagiarises content from legitimate sites to help increase their search ranking.
The very bad news is: it is growing like a cancer.
Online content is set to reach a new high of deliriously old, rehashed and utterly useless content. When you’ve sweated over the copywriting, navigation menus, functionality and usability to support your online business, it can all seem a bit futile when your legitimate website is competing for attention with millions of automatically generated link-bait sites. Surely this isn’t going to be allowed?
Ummm, well, it is. What’s worse, Google loves it as it reaps in billions of dollars in revenue for online advertising as desperate surfers click on paid ads, in feverish attempts to find any content with substance. Google reported $5.70 billion of income in the fourth quarter of 2008, an 18% increase on the previous year. A full 30% of this revenue was attributed to AdSense. With that sort of revenue, is it in Google’s best interest to discourage this type of activity?
The online environment has always been riddled with the wide boys of the web trying to make a quick buck. But this technique is becoming legitimised and people are making serious money. A top ad agency executive recently joined forces with one of the largest domain name holders, a company that owns 40,000 domains. (Find out just how much a domain name can be worth, p70.) What quality content do you think they will be publishing on those domains?
AdSense can work well on reputable sites. Even a parked domain site can pull in a decent income – especially if it is a typo of a well known brand. But who is footing the bill? You are, especially if you are running paid search ads on the Google Content Network.
I know it seems depressing, but you can turn it off. First, open your AdWords campaign and run a Placement Performance Report to find out what sites your ads are showing on. If the sites don’t meet your quality requirements, exclude them – or even block all parked domains.
But wait, aren’t you doing yourself a disservice by reducing the number of sites your ads appear on? Absolutely not! If you don’t believe me, have a look at your bounce rate and conversion rate for traffic coming from these sites. You’re paying good money for clicks that lead nowhere. So go on, get busy and start saving your money.
For the rest of us, optimisation and quality content will become more important as frustrated users get increasingly less tolerant of the barrage of bottom-feeders wasting online space.
Bring on the new search engine! We are ready!
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Stephen Murphy is head of search at payperclick.net.au
