Removing low quality Adsense

Since I rediscovered the issue of Adsense Smart Pricing, I’ve been looking more carefully at how my Adsense is deployed.

I have no idea if Google even still employs such a system - but I figure paranoia about it is a good excuse to focus on making my own Adsense campaign leaner.

Now, I’m not a big Adsense earner, but I want to make what I have work better.

So, on the presumption that Smart Pricing may still exist, I’ve removed all sites that were earning very few clicks.

Much of this was effectively “web spam” - a couple of years ago I sent up autogenerated content for link building purposes - 100 domains, each with 10 subdomains, each with 100 pages pulling synonyms from a small database. The aim was on-topic links in volume.

However, with the aggressive devaluation changes Google made after (sandboxing and duplicate content filters), I migrated the links to other more effective programs, and added Adsense just because I figured on using those domains for something.

Most of those domain have since expired - think there’s maybe a handful left, simply because they ended up as nameserver domains on reseller accounts - but are otherwise abandoned.

However, the Adsense was still displayed - little traffic, few clicks. So, in case Smart Pricing still exists these could adversely affect pay-outs, Adsense now removed from my source PHP files for them.

Similar with a dozen DMOZ clones I set up a while back. Low traffic and clickthrough rates, so Adsense removed from all but 1.

Interestingly, I have only ever had two sites banned by Google - and they were both DMOZ clones - one for the Finance category, and the other for Shopping. I threw some Co-op links for “Finance” and “Shopping” at each, figuring on hitting the Longtail, but I must have annoyed someone because they were both removed.

A couple of years ago the DMOZ clones would actually earn decent money via Adsense (as with the autogenerated content), but the only real use for them now is as “aged-domains” I should rebuild proper content around.

I’ve also removed Adsense from a few fledgling forums I run - high pageviews through repeat community visits, and low clickthroughs. If Smart Pricing exists, an invitation to lower payout on the account.

Overall, I’ve removed anything from Adsense that was low quality and low on clickthroughs. If Smart Pricing exists, I should see a positive impact on my income. If not, I’ve simply cleaned up my act somewhat as a webmaster and made my Adsense targeting better quality.