Google Goes After Adsense Arbitrage Websites With Quality Score

by Darren McLaughlin

It looks like Google has made some serious radical changes that should affect the overall quality of websites that run ads in the Google Adsense network. In fact, the changes are expected to radical enough that the company has even sent out an early warning to Adwords advertisers letting them know that they can expect less clicks from Adsense publishers in the coming weeks. Wow! I’ve never seen a warning like that from Google before.

Google gets serious about low quality and “Adsense Arbitrage” websites

The latest changes seem to be directed at “Search Engines Scrapers” and “Adsense Arbitrage websites”. The changes are clear in the Google Quality Score Section:

* Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad.
* Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your keywords and your ad text.
* Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.
* Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.
* In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad.
* You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site). For more information, see our affiliate guidelines.

I think this is very explicit. If you don’t add any “substantial and useful information” for the end user, you can expect your Quality Score, and subsequent payment, to be low.

Google has conveniently identified the Quality Score in no uncertain terms.

Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword’s clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page.

The long and short of it is that you will now pay more for your minimum Click bid. The rise in minimum bid prices will probably drive most arbitragers out of business quickly. At the very least, it will require them to build pages that are more useful than the current listing of ads most of them have. This could be a giant step forward for the Adsense Publishers network.

I look forward to seeing if this results in a positive increase in revenues for many of us.