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Thread: SE spammers using blogs

  1. #46
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    I'd have to agree with yo-yo on conversion quality on spam sites. However, there are advertisers who are more concerned about their image and brand than conversions. These are the same type of people who will bid way up beyond unprofitable ppc levels just to be #1 on the serp.

    Its really just dependant on what perspective you are looking at it from. As an advertiser, anything that sends you converting traffic is good. As Google, a mixture of both, some blogger pointed out that google is making way more money from spam than they are paying their algorithm guys to get rid of it. From someone building a quality site, they are bad if they are taking your rankings, but not always; I've gotten tons of traffic from these sites that scraped wikipedia's links. As a user, they are good or bad depending on what you are trying to find.
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  2. #47
    Senior Member chromate's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by yo-yo
    If both visitors were looking for the same thing then I don't see any difference.
    That's just the point. They may not be looking for exactly the same thing. I agree if you as an advertiser have exactly what someone is looking for, it doesn't really matter where they click from. But haven't you ever been sidetracked by something? It's a hell of a lot easier to get sidetracked if you're not interested in what you're looking at in the first place, like a page full of spam. So even if you're only mildly interested in the ad, you will probably click anyway. If you search for "pay day loan comparisons" and get a page of comparisons, you're less likely to click the adsense ads than if you get a page of spam.

    Mildly interested people don't convert as well as people that're highly interested.

    Quote Originally Posted by yo-yo
    That's actually great for me, I'm paying $.25/click average for highly competitive keywords ($35/click bids in overture) on the content network and they're converting excellent.
    Well, good for you. But that illustrates the point that most advertisers switch the content network off because generally it doesn't convert as well.

  3. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by chromate
    So even if you're only mildly interested in the ad, you will probably click anyway.
    No, I'd probably hit the back button. 99% of the time I search for something in any SE the first result I click on winds up being some sort of spam or junk site, I don't click their ads - I hit back and click the next result.

    Of course not everyone is so smart

    Quote Originally Posted by chromate
    But that illustrates the point that most advertisers switch the content network off because generally it doesn't convert as well.
    There are way too many factors involved to say that "spammy" sites are the reason the content network doesn't convert as well for SOME advertisers.

    You have to take into account for :
    a) click fraud
    b) blending ads to look like regular links
    c) the different mind set of someone browsing a web site and someone searching on google

    Just imagine how much click fraud gos on every day... that's the REAL problem.

  4. #49
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    Why would bob click on something he wasn't interested in instead of just hitting the back button...
    cause bob isn't the brightest internet user. You know there are people who type URLs into search boxes because they don't know they can type directly into the address bar at the top of their browser.
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  5. #50
    I'm the oogie boogie man! James's Avatar
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    That is true; I see it all the time.

    Also people who are so used to certain browsing software, and don't know about the *actual* internet, who believe that you just turn your computer on, type it in, and push enter.

  6. #51
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    As an AdWords advertiser I hate the idea of rewarding someone for scraping someone else's hard efforts to create a spammy site simply to display AdSense advertising. More times than not I turn off content ads in my AdWords campaigns for this reason alone. If it weren't for SE spammers who use cloaking or site scrapping to show a page consisting of no content and only AdSense ads, I'd be willing to pay a lot more for ads delivered on honest to goodness content sites than I would for ads displayed on search results pages.

    I don't care if a SE/AdSense spammer has a child dying from cancer. The SE/AdSense spammer is a cancer them self that is hurting those who are trying to make an honest living and who try to bring real value to the Internet. They are trying to get rich at the expense of other using less than ethical means.

    Nothing personal against Nintendo, but I'm thrilled to death that tactics like AWS have collapsed. I'd love nothing more than Google, other SEs and context ad providers to get smart and put an end to SE spammers who create junk pages that display nothing but ads. It would increase the ad revenues for hard working web publishers who try to produce real content. It would also improve the ROI for content advertisers and thus make it more worthwhile for them to spend more of their advertising budget on content ads.
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  7. #52
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    Quote Originally Posted by KLB
    As an AdWords advertiser I hate the idea of rewarding someone for scraping someone else's hard efforts to create a spammy site simply to display AdSense advertising. More times than not I turn off content ads in my AdWords campaigns for this reason alone.
    Are you a business man or a preacher?

    I'm in the business of making money, and quite simply (if it isn't illegal) I don't care how they send me targeted visitors. Targeted visitors = money regardless of the method or page that referred it.

    You can keep turning them off, and keep letting me increase my ROI by paying them less, thanks!

    Just remember, [smart people] work smarter, not harder.

  8. #53
    Site Contributor KLB's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by yo-yo
    Are you a business man or a preacher?

    I'm in the business of making money, and quite simply (if it isn't illegal) I don't care how they send me targeted visitors. Targeted visitors = money regardless of the method or page that referred it.

    You can keep turning them off, and keep letting me increase my ROI by paying them less, thanks!

    Just remember, [smart people] work smarter, not harder.
    To me, scrapper sites are not targeted traffic it is desperate ignorate traffic that is trying to escape a useless site. Have you ever wondered why Google doesn't let us see what content sites are sending us traffic?

    I'm not just an AdWords advertiser, I am an AdSense publisher and scraper sites hurt my efforts two ways. They drive down the value of AdSense clicks by generating vast quantities of useless inventory and they increase advertising costs by sending junk leads to me.

    Mark my words, if Google had the nerve to really do something about shutting down scraper sites, Advertisers would have a better ROI and publishers would have higher eCPMs. The only ones to lose would be Google and the scraper sites because they wouldn't be making money off of junk clicks.
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  9. #54
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    Certainly little incentive for Google to do anything that would even take a tiny fraction out of its earnings now that its a publicly traded company..
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  10. #55
    Registered Member moonshield's Avatar
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    Does anyone have any proof that scraper sites don't convert well for the advertisers? Or are we just assuming?

  11. #56
    Site Contributor KLB's Avatar
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    Google denies us the ability to find proof by not allowing us to know where clicks are coming from. AdSense clicks normally have no referrer information associated with them.

    With that said, I'm not looking for lots of clicks, I'm only looking for people who are really interested in my product. It is reasonable to assume that if a page contains nothing but garbage text and AdSense ads disguised to look like a site menu that users are more likely to click on the ads out of confusion and ignorance. This makes these clicks much less valuable to me. Besides I don't like the idea of using my advertising dollars to support such scummy tactics that provide no inherent value to users or the Internet.
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  12. #57
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    You would need to do a site targeting campaign to find out. I've heard some people say the content network does well for them, others say it does terrible. Of course this would include both scraper sites and high quality sites.
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  13. #58
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    Quote Originally Posted by moonshield
    Does anyone have any proof that scraper sites don't convert well for the advertisers? Or are we just assuming?
    No, they don't. People like KLB are just mad for several reasons:
    a) The spammers are smarter than him
    b) make more money than him
    c) do it with less effort than him

    It's just like if you show up in a shiny new mercedes and a construction worker shows up in his ford escort. He asks what you did to earn that mercedes and you tell him you clicked a few buttons on the internet, meanwhile he's busting his *** 16 hours a day just to put food on the table, do you think that angers him?

  14. #59
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    Quote Originally Posted by KLB
    To me, scrapper sites are not targeted traffic it is desperate ignorate traffic that is trying to escape a useless site.
    That's funny. I have several traffic equalizer sites that are over a year old. 1 of them makes an average of 15 affiliate sales per month from only 200 or so visits. The affiliate knows exactly where the traffic is coming from, and doesn't seem to mind me making him money

  15. #60
    Site Contributor KLB's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by yo-yo
    No, they don't. People like KLB are just mad for several reasons:
    a) The spammers are smarter than him
    b) make more money than him
    c) do it with less effort than him
    Actually I'm mad because some of these spammers are doing it by scraping pages like mine and then creating cloaked pages that feed the scraped content to SEs. In otherwords they are trying to get rich by using other people's work. My hard work contributes something back to the Internet. I provide something of inherent value to the user. I provide something the user wants to use in and of itself.

    Spammers create nothing that adds value to the Internet at large. They steal other people's efforts and then create pages that contriibute nothing back to the Internet. All they create is something everyone wants to escape. This is not being smart this is being a thief. Anyone can create this type of crap. It takes real smarts to be able to create something of true value. what spammers do is unethical, immoral and sometimes illegal (e.g. copyright infringment).

    The real problem is Google allows this to continue by not giving AdWords advertisers a means of figuring out what sites clicks are coming from so that advertisers can exclude sites they don't like.
    Last edited by KLB; 03-05-2006 at 06:39 AM. Reason: grammar corrections. -Wrote post before being awake
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