Google AdSense Gets It Right? - Too Late I Think 0
Disclaimer: I do not even know if this is old news or new news and can’t be arsed to dig into it. I just noticed it and thought I’d post about it. If you have something to say go ahead and comment but this is just my opinion and you can take it or leave it.
I don’t spend anywhere nearly as much time dealing with Google AdCents (copyright someone in Syndk8, whoever first coined the term - so very true these days) as I used to when it was still worth it - but I had to tweak some of my really old stuff and had to log into the AdSense interface. Evidently they ahve implemented a ton of changes in there but what attracted my attention the most is the littlelink saying “Allowed Sites”. Their explanation of this feature in Help goes like this:
What is my Allowed Sites list?
Allowed sites are sites or URLs on which AdSense publishers allow or wish to have their Google ads displayed. If a URL displaying your AdSense ad code is not on your Allowed Sites list, ads will still be displayed, but impressions and clicks won’t be recorded, advertisers won’t be charged, and you won’t receive any earnings for that URL.
We’ve added the Allowed Sites feature because we’ve learned that some AdSense publishers are concerned about potentially malicious behavior from others on the web, such as stealing their ad code and placing it on an inappropriate site. By offering this feature, we allow AdSense publishers more control over which sites or URLs can have their AdSense code.
Hmm, with all the banning of people’s accounts left and right, I guess they did receive a lot of criticism, and indeed I am not going to talk about the nasty techniques of killing a person’s AdSense account here - but would this feature have been in place from the very start killing somebody else’s account would have definitely been much more difficult.
On the other hand, should some newbie forget to put a site into the allowed sites list, and here’s what happens:
Will my reports show statistics from all sites with my ad code or just my Allowed Sites?
Reports will only show statistics from sites and URLs in your Allowed Sites list. Impressions, clicks, and earnings will not be recorded for sites and URLs not in your Allowed Sites list.
Oh well, I guess Google would say something has to be sacrificed anyway for the sake of security… However, it’s way too late to try fixing stuff in AdSense - I can only approximately estimate how many publishers they have lost due to 1) banning accounts, 2) cutting down the CPC, 3) cutting down the CTR with their tweaks to the ad format. Almost everybody I know who used to do AdSense either has dropped it alltogether and switched to affiliate marketing exclusively or reduced the amount of efforts they spend on Adsense to a bare minimum. Another generation of publishers needs to grow now before Google has a chance to fix their publisher network - and there is no guarantee it will ever get to the volume it used to be.