June 1st, it was reported that Google was to shut down AdSense arbitrageurs and target MFA (made for AdSense) sites. It has now been over a month and a WebmasterWorld thread is looking back to see what patterns of changes have people noticed.
Here are some quotes:
CTR increases by few percent, but eCPM decreases significantly.
CTR down as compared to previous 3 months, but CPM up a bit. As a side... I decided to listen to Google and empty my competitive folder late on June 15. The first 1/2 of June with the filter list had a higher CTR but when I emptied the filter list the CPM went up. And to top it off I haven't seen a great abundance of MFAs since. They're still there but I'm not sure how bad the problem is now as compared to before because I had the filter list before to block the most popular ones...
June 2007 compared to May 2007
CTR unchanged, all other values (traffic, revenue, EPC, eCPM) slightly down, but close within last month (i.e. within +/-5% range).
June 2007 compared to June 2006
All values (traffic, CTR, revenue, EPC, eCPM) down, with only traffic being close to last years (i.e. within the +/-5% range). All other values significant down, with revenue (-35%) and eCPM (-30%) being the worst values.In general, I am far away from being able to clear the filter list. I see more parked domains popping up daily, and at a higher speed. And I see more thin-content sites. As .info and .biz TLDs seem to have a bad credibility already, these type of sites seem to now also target .tv TLD.
As I see it, based on the averages of responses, most are noticing a drop in MFAs they have to block from displaying on their site. So that is good overall. But publishers still want to see more from Google.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
And hat tip to Ogletree SEO for sending me this thread to cover.
