5 ms·
Google have two strong incentives to weed out AdSense drivel sites in the search results. 1. They diminish the value of Google Search as an advertising platfor
by abrahamsen 16y ago
Google have two strong incentives to weed out AdSense drivel sites in the search results.
1. They diminish the value of Google Search as an advertising platform. And Google Search is likely the most valuable virtual estate on the net. I more often click on ads in Google Search than I click on ads on all other sites combined. This is because when I'm on Google Search I'm actually searching for something, so I might click on a relevant ad.
2. They diminish the value of AdWords content network ads. People pay Google to display their ads because they believe they get better return for their money there than on the alternatives (Yahoo and Microsoft). Ads on low quality sites are unlikely to be competitive, so these sites decrease the relative value of AdWords.
That is, high-ranked low quality sites with AdSense are a double threat to the main source of income for Google, and I expect Google to make it their main priority.
Why, then, aren't they more successful? My guess: Because the problem is a lot hard than any armchair designer would believe. Problems tend to be a lot simpler when you are not the one who must solve them.
- rfergie 16y agoI agree with you on point 1; if Google's search quality is not the best than people will (eventually) go elsewhere. I disagree on point 2. Users on low quality AdSense sites almost certainly arrived there from a search engine so if I can display my adverts on a users landing page it will be almost as good as if they arrived on my site straight from Google.
- storborg 16y agoIn fact, AdSense ads on sites with shitty content are even more likely to be effective, because users won't find what they're looking for in the page content.
- zaidf 16y agoBingo. When our indie music site's stream server would go down, our adsense ctrs would skyrocket. The people who come from google go apeshit and start clicking anything--especially adsense units--when the content they were expecting isn't found or isn't functional.
- noibl 16y agoI'm guessing this is in response to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2128263 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2128263 1: One of Google's major weaknesses is the concentration of its revenue around a few large websites. Having the most popular advertising network on the web (AdSense) is an important asset for pretty much anything else Google wants to do. If what you said were true, the greatest threat to the Google Search page would be a strong AdSense market with high quality content which everybody finds using organic search. 2: AdSense does not compete with Content Network because it is long tail. The value for advertisers is in reach and diversity.