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Are Google Ads Good for Your Site?


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I started think more about this subject over the last year or two as I started noticing that Google's ads have become increasingly irritating -- especially on these forums.  The ads are embed in some posts; popup as you go from one page to the next (often without clear way to close them); and the ones I hate the most, the super large images that appear at the top of the page forcing visitors to scroll to see the pages content.  These are the worse, because if you are new to the site, it makes it very confusing to know what to do next.

 

Google AdSense allows webmasters to place advertisement on their websites. Advertisements are sold, placed, and administered by Google in exchange for to payments to the website. I've been using AdSense since it was invented. Payments have range ranged from roughly $20 to $3,000 a day.

 

Google asserts that they like sites which serve quality content and that are uncluttered with advertising. However when I allow Google to serve ads on my site they tend to make my site's content look very cluttered.

 

To combat the problem of cluttering a website, visitors are increasingly using ad blockers -- which blocks ALL ads -- including the ones I sell directly. This reduces revenue, which reduces resources to produce quality content, which reduces traffic, and a death spiral ensues.

 

Of course, I could go with another ad network or sell my own advertising. Indeed I had to do that after Google's Panda update, in 2011, which reduced my website's traffic by 75% overnight. Google mortally wounded many websites with that sledgehammer approach to website ranking. Google's near monopoly power make it very hard to simply ignore their ad network. That would as foolhardy as failing to optimize one's site for Google's search engine.

 

When one company controls both the discoverability of a website AND their ad sales, the result does not server anyone, other than Google. If Google simply talked to their webmasters maybe they could help improve the quality of the WWW rather than merely extracting wealth from it.

 

I know Google owns YouTube and can bury this video and hide this post in search. I also know Google can bury my entire site in search, as they did this with their Panda update (which took 5 years to recover from). But I'm tired, and I don't believe everyone at Google wants to continue killing and hamstringing websites... but I could be naïve.

 

 

 

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@Troy

 

 

I think it's great that you are making money with AdSense.  I have never used 

it on any of my sites, I typically monetize with affiliate product links.

 

Can you tell where the clicks are coming from, because if they aren't coming 

from the forum section, you might consider disabling it on this part of your site.  

I am getting ads for stuff I'm not even interested in and I think it might be what

is hampering more participation.

 

I wonder what displays the others are getting.

 

 

                 image.gif.b05fef28d3e6760b4f9376c41adcdba5.gif

 

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19 minutes ago, Delano said:

. My least favourite are the videos that make the page grind to a halt.

@DelThe pop up ones are very irritating. They do have a tiny arrow that you can click on to get rid of them "courtesy" of Google and then on my adroid phone there is another symbol at the bottom of the page that will close all of the open ad pages.   I have to go through a whole ritual almost every time i try to get to some sites.  The "vip" link  is a particularly annoying one. 

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Mzuri

 

 

 and I think it might be what
is hampering more participation.

 

Either that or most people no longer have the mental capacity to engage in an intelligent conversation on a format like a message board.

With it's 200 character or less format....social media has dumbed down much of the population to the point they can do little but post a series of emojiis or unpunctuated emotionally driven phrases as responses.


 

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  • 1 year later...

I saw a lot of opinions here regarding Google ads, but anyway, I would like to share my experience. So, I have an e-commerce site, and I tried ad campaigns on all social media platforms and Google. After the first month, the most traffic came from social media platforms. From Google, I got very few visitors, and it was much more expensive to run the campaign compared to social media.

 

For my campaigns, I used adspy. It shows what campaigns my competitors are running on social media, and I just got inspired by them and used their strategies for my own campaigns. No headaches and great results. 

 

For Google, I'd recommend just taking care of the SEO part: relevant and useful content, optimizing your site in speed-loading aspects, adding cookies and privacy policies, etc. 

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@Delano I missed your question from two years ago.  Yes, that was Morrison, West, and Sanchez.  They were at an event hosted by the Center for Black Literature in Brooklyn 🙂

 

@Croocked T thanks for sharing your experience.  I was never smart enough to get social to work for me -- maybe I never spent enough. I've spent even less on Google advertising. I really on organic traffic, sadly Google controls that too...

 

The problem with the social media advertising for a site like mine is that I'm selling inexpensive low margin products, books.  Still people may discover a book here, but turn around and buy it at Amazon.  The other problem is once you stop adverting all that traffic you've paid for disappears.  

 

I'm working on a website upgrade that I hope will convert more people when they do visit the site and drive more traffic.

 

The advertising situation has not gotten any better.  Fortunately, I have ability to sell ads directly. I'm still always at Google's mercy when it comes to traffic as they control my organic traffic with their search engine.

 

At the end of the day I have to rely on people -- they are the only grace.

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  • 3 months later...

I can understand how the proliferation of Google ads on websites can be frustrating for users, especially when they disrupt the browsing experience. The issue of intrusive ads is something that many users and webmasters grapple with.
While Google AdSense can be a source of revenue for websites, it's essential to strike a balance between monetization and user experience. Properly configuring your Google Ads dashboard can help you control the types and placements of ads on your site, allowing you to reduce intrusive elements and enhance the overall user experience.

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@ModestoGarr thanks for sharing the advice. I reread the entire conversation and it is hard to believe that it is almost 2 1/2 years since I initiated it. Google has actually gotten worse.

 

I do use there dashboard there are a number of pages on my website, including the homepage that I don’t allow any Google ads to appear on. I’ve completely removed the interstitial ads (ads that appear in between page views). The net result is that Google ad revenue is way down.
 

In an ideal world I would not have any Google ads appearing, however, I would not put it past Google to depreciate websites that do not serve their ads meaning, all things being equal, Google would rank a website serving their ads higher than a website that does not.

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16 hours ago, Troy said:

I would not put it past Google to depreciate websites that do not serve their ads meaning, all things being equal, Google would rank a website serving their ads higher than a website that does not.

 

Either Google knows this is my favorite site, or Google loves AALBC.  Case in point,  I was searching for the name of a filmmaker, and maybe there weren't a lot of results, but I can tell you I found content that I posted here earlier in the month - ranked on Google's first page.  😳

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