I posted the below in my Adsense survey feedback, and thought it was worth sharing my disatisfaction here. I’m disgruntled with the disconnect between the Google Adsense Team and the Google Search team – they give conflicting advice, and it seems obvious to many webmasters that the Adsense team is recommending ad placement strategy that is detrimental to search engine rankings.
I am very tired of seeing Adsense on spam and scraper websites.
This is a prime example of a scraper site with Adsense. This article is a scraped and spun version of this original work.
And after your “Panda” search algorithm update, the scraped article OUTRANKED the original!!
This has been remedied slightly – the original is now first in the SERP’s again. BUT, the site http://www.bestcactus.com/ is still on page one for this search. A SITE LIKE THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO USE ADSENSE!!!
Additionally, you guys sent out an email a few days ago blindly recommending we should place more ads on our sites – a lot of people are speculating that adding excessive ads is a factor in the Panda update penalties which many publishers are experiencing.
Your email also said that sf.funcheap.com had made 50% more revenue by making your changes.
However, sf.funcheap.com posted in this thread:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en
And they say they have lost at least 40% revenue since your Panda update!!!
How can this site be penalized when it has been featured as a quality and successful Adsense publisher?
http://www.askthebuilder.com also got penalised in your Panda update and lost half his traffic!! He is also a featured Adsense publisher. You can read his story here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en&start=59
You guys really need to sort out your spam Adsense users, they should not be earning revenue from scraping other peoples work. You also need to stop recommending people put more ads if this may detrimentally affect a sites search engine rankings.
My site http://i.padaccessories.info/ is also suffering some kind of penalty – we publish only original reviews of iPad Accessories written by my partner and I. We have been scraped and copied. It’s unfair and I’m sick of it.
The Niche Hunter
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article, I am glad you have some examples. I know from experience that we implemented adsense under the guise that we would see an increase in revenue of 30% or so, but from the day we implemented, our purchase conversion rate dropped in half (We are a seller of goods) and out PR went from 6 to 5, almost overnight.
I don’t think those two halves of the house talk at all and I would be hard pressed to believe that advertising would help your ranking in any way. Some people believe that to be the case since, they think there is a back room where traffic is being divided up and the people who are creating income for Google through adsense, are somehow getting special treatment. Well, that is just not the case.
Our site has 100% pure handwritten content, reviews and product descriptions, not cookie cutter and not reused, but we took a hit and people that are scraping our site or have our content from a feed (ahem, Amazon) outrank us with our own information. this isn’t limited to the 800 pound gorilla either, little joe schmoe sites that simply scrape us and pop up adsense are beating us. I am baffled as to how this is mathematically possible or allowable. Especially when you take user experience into account…..
I hear you B-Double-B… Sometimes I feel like I must wake from this to find it was all just a horrible dream, it’s surreal. Google really do seem to have lost control of the SERP’s entirely.
Everyone presumes Google’s algorithm is foolproof, but it does have loopholes, such as scraper sites getting your pages listed higher than the original site, maybe this has something to do with page revisions being classed as new pages when re-indexed, i’ve noticed this on a couple of pages, this worries me a great deal, if a page is doing well don’t touch it.
Mike