Thoughts On Why People Hate Google Adsense

Ahmed from Performancing has a list of the 10 Things People Hate About Google Adsense. He thinks most are silly and ridiculous but admits a couple are valid concerns. I've done similar lists The Most Annoying Adsense Questions Ever and 15 Signs You're A Paranoid Adsense Freak and I've thought about a haters list but since Ahmed did one, I decided to just comment on a few of his.

9 - Google allows AdSense ads on scrapper sites

Ahmed suggests: Google needs to do manual checks both at the point of application (maybe introduce minimum conditions for joining - such as site age, traffic, etc) and at any random time every 6 months (or 1 year).

To get the scrappers out of the system sites need to be checked manually - although this raises another nasty problem where personal bias on ads can mean the difference between a site being seen as heavily optimized and blatant spam.

I think the random site testing is unrealistic, Google does this today (see How I Got Yellow Carded ByGoogle) but I'm definitely a proponent of the having each and every site that runs Adsense approved before they are allowed. This alone will eliminate a number of the MFA type sites. Not all of them, some people will be willing to go to the trouble to make an acceptable site then change it after approved but not all, many are in it believing they'll make a quick fortune, those will get eliminated.

7 - Doesn't pay enough

Ahmed suggests it's: A problem of expectations and nothing to do with Google or Google AdSense.

AdSense is usually a function of traffic - if you have low traffic you might want to head the TLA way and push your PageRank up.

I completely agree here. Poor performance of Adsense is largely a case of mindset. Take the Adsense forum on Digital Point for example, what used to be a great resource has turned into a whining convention about how little Adsense pays and how crappy it is. Sure, it's not what it used to be but that's the reality of things. Advertisers are smarter so publishers must become smarter. If you spend all your time on someplace like the DP Forums it's easy to see why someone would think Adsense sucks.

5 - Don't allow arbitrage

Ahmed says: Losely translates into:

Don't allow us to cheat by going against their TOS.

I'm all for arbitrage, but you have to make sure you don't get caught :)

Arbitrage is allowed and there are plenty of sites still doing it. It's the implementation that Google has a problem with. Affiliate marketers use this with great success. Using Arbitrage to push a product is one thing, using it to push a bunch of Made For Adsense sites is another matter entirely.

4 - Dont allow banned accounts to be reinstated

Ahmed says: Never had an account banned (touch wood) so I can't say much about this. If it really is a zero-tolerance policy then it's not necessarily a bad thing - although accounts that are wrongly banned for suspicious activity should be reactivated once the mistake is discovered. Google will only get better at detecting fraud though, so the number of false positives should decrease.

Again, anywhere you go people are whining about this or they're paranoid because they spend all their time reading forums that have become havens for the Paranoid Adsense Freaks out there. Point of fact there have been numerous cases where accounts that were banned for the dreaded "invalid clicks" and have been reinstated after being investigated further by Google (Google Loves Me Again). I do agree that over time Google should get better at detecting false positives and the collateral damage should decrease everytime there is a new culling.

These are just a few of the points Ahmed brought up, read the rest of them at Performancing.com