8 replies to this topic

[Pip Bennett]

Good morning everyone

I posted a query about whether there is a difference between Made for Adsense site which I think are no longer being indexed and Adsense for Domains on my new blog*but as it is new I thought I would ask here.

How are these two systems actually different?

Thanks so much

*Link removed.

Edited by eKstreme, 28 June 2007 - 04:32 AM.

[JohnMu]

The main and most important difference (in my opinion) is that:

Adsense for domains (or all those other domain parking services) is used on sites that are not meant to be indexed. They receive their traffic straight from the browser, the visitor types their domain name into the URL bar and goes to those sites directly.

Made-for-Adsense sites (which covers about 90% of the sites using Adsense, depending on how you look at it -- but I assume you mean those which have no "real value" [though that's another element which is hard to determine]) are sites that are generally made to get indexed and get their traffic through search engines.

The difference is generally that the MFA sites try to trick the search engines into believing that their content is worthwhile to get indexed and to rank for certain keywords. They hope that by tricking the search engines, they can also trick the users of the search engines into going to their sites, and accordingly, clicking on their ads.

Search engines do not want either kind of these sites in their index; the sites usually have nothing to offer other than ads. Sites with parking services usually do not even try to get indexed, MFA sites try to trick their way to a listing and free traffic.

John

[Pip Bennett]

Thank you very much! Also thanks to whoever removed link I clearly did not pay enough attention to the Terms of Service.

[rynert]

Search engines do not want either kind of these sites in their index; the sites usually have nothing to offer other than ads. Sites with parking services usually do not even try to get indexed,

Don't Google have loads of parked domains in their 'content' inventory?

[send2paul]

The difference is generally that the MFA sites try to trick the search engines into believing that their content is worthwhile to get indexed and to rank for certain keywords. They hope that by tricking the search engines, they can also trick the users of the search engines into going to their sites, and accordingly, clicking on their ads.

John - ola! And the trick of the person producing the MFA is to make it so that it does look like it's got worthwhile content - whatever that is.

And, if you really want to get technical about things, the fact that the content of the MFA has generated certain Google Adsense ads to appear on the MFA - which a visitor has then found useful enough to click on for further info.... doesn't that make the content of the MFA worthwhile? Hasn't a service been provided by the MFA website in that instance?

Curious of Essex

[JohnMu]

Dear Curious of Essex

I agree!

If a user searches for something and is led to a MFA site where an ad brings him closer to what he was really searching for then YES the MFA site has done the user a service. In that case, the MFA site helped him find what he was looking for -- or at least helped him to refine his search (think in terms of Adwords/Adsense arbitrage where you bid on obscure keywords and bring up a page with better targeted, more expensive ads).

Assuming nothing changes then those MFA sites could actually be a good thing. However, things change .

The better thing would be for the search engine to either display the ads from your site directly or better yet - bring better targeted search results. Remove the middle-man, remove the unnecessary additional step of the MFA site. Better targeted search results also bring along the necessary step of removing the MFA site from the index. Once higher quality sites are shown, it doesn't make much sense to keep the middle-man in the listing.

Those three steps are however not always done together. Sometimes the MFA sites are removed before the results are cleaned up or before the ads are better targeted. They take it one step at a time .

Getting better targeted ads would be relatively easy for Google, but I don't know if they do this (but I'm sure they track it): Just track the times when a user comes in to a MFA site from a search query and exits with a click on Adsense. If they had shown the ad directly (and in the right position), they could have had the full payout (instead of having to give a part to the Adsense publisher).

So.... if you can get a MFA site ranking and can profit from it, perhaps you're doing the users a favor by getting them to the places they wanted to be AND by giving the search engine tips on how to improve their results. By getting your MFA site to rank you'd be helping the search engines to remove MFA sites

John

[tambre]

this thread started at a perfect time. no joke i've been looking for this kind of information for almost a full day (if you add up all the time over a week that i've been looking).

anyway.

can you create a site only to generate revenue?

from what i've been reading MFA sites are sites that have adsense blocks within the content or in an area that would get good traffic and good click through rates.

but what about AFD sites? i have previously asked on this forum about websites that have ads on one side, links to similar topics on another, which lead into something like a big directory. John actually replied and told me that was Adsense for Domains but apparently google only allows for large portfolio sites to take part in that. i'm assuming large portfolio sites are meaning places like godaddy, network solutions or some place that sells domains.

according to guidelines:

• No Google ad may be placed on any non-content-based pages.
• No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant

so basically, i've answered my question of: no, you can't create a page only to generate revenue? (unless it's AFD?)

-sam

[JohnMu]

Hi Sam

There are several other companies that can set up "parking pages" for domains. They're similar to what Adsense for Domains does. One of the popular ones is sedo, and there are several others (many registrars also offer similar services). These services are usually set up for domains which are not actively being developed.

They can be as simple as http://seorch.info/ or as elaborate as http://candy.com/ (just picked two). You can sign up with sedo even if you just have one domain with a handful of visitors a month, some of the other services require a minimal number of domains or visitors.

John

[tambre]

thanks john! i'll check those links out today