Is there a list of these MFA sites that you have off hand?

Sure! Here you go.

searchscribe.com
8-topsites.com
toseeka.com
5-top-sites.com
digg4it.com
best4sites.net
everyrule.com
25-topsites.com
purebusiness.com
thinktarget.com
toptensites.org
10-bestsites.com
everyclick.com
megasearch.biz
8bestsites.com
best8sites.org
expert-expert.com
7-topsites.com
10-top-sites.com
9topsites.com
chosenresult.com
e-nternet.com
gubaara.com
cv2006.biz
dbmoz.com
8-TopWebSites.com
1s.md
alltheindustrials.com
faster-results.com
ewossnewsbar.com
reviewsbykrystal.com
dbmoz.biz
webzsearch.com
infoscouts.com
rw2006.com
e-isn.com
linxbest.com
buymp3music.info
Top-10Sites.com
ez4search.com
mylot.info
top8sites.com
mozsite.com
dbmoz.org
dbmoz.net
sureresult.com
best7sites.com
discussit.biz
topbestsites.org
searchemu.com
gr8info.net
links-4-you.com
top4search.net
inhunt.com
factguide.org
haohao99.com
download-hub.com
xdope.com
infosearch4u.com
all-free-info.com
puredirectory.com
hot4sites.com
extreme-rides.com
searchignite.com
ru2006.com
ivue.com
idesktopwallpaper.net
dirkw.com
besthomegardensites.com
pimpmyride.com
articlescafe.com
webfinder360.com
bestwebpix.com
oceleb.com
alltheautomotive.com
popularq.com
best3websites.com
12-bestsites.com
bestwebpix.net
picturetoplist.com
finditonline.ws
myluxuryyachtcharter.com
tools4myspace.com
SearchTorpedo.com
8topsites.com
downloadrings.com
guideya.com
freedigg.com
top-3-sites.com
info-on.biz
usnom.com
ringtonemusic.info
mywebgold.com
mediataskmaster.com
greatinfo.biz
finest4.com
usefulfaqs.com
ephotoalbum.net
infoforyourhealth.com
coolringtones.com
1st-home-business.net
1click.com
advancedwebsearch.info
101soho.com
ratedsolutions.com
oninformation.com
bestcomputingsites.com
fastcoolrides.com
world-click.com
best4solutions.com
eanimationschools.com
xtraone.co.uk
best5online.com
bestringtonesoffer.com
downtown-internet.com
getinfoon.info
aprido.com
emotivationalvideos.com
zimply.com
allinformationabout.com
findmonk.com
bestwebdiscounts.com
eantispyware.info
bestautosites.net
free2select.com
internet-downloads.net
romingerlegal.com
thebabydepartment.com
drift-kings.com
acne.com
commerce-database.com
gooyeep.com
thextremehosting.com
infobeagle.com
top-articles-house.com
bestcraftsites.net
1st-portal.net
guide2biz.com
1st-free-articles.com
get-free-reports-tips-and.info
2020ok.com
seek4me.org
teachandtravel.net
searchwisp.com
findinfotoday.com
aptmicro.com
ecomputerwallpaper.com
chasingstuff.com
compare-to-choose.com
eroyaltyfreeimages.net
tunu.com
1st-lingerie.net
freeusefulinfo.com
otelevision.info
answerstoday.com
videosstreaming.info
oneinvestment.co.uk
u-i-x.com
resourcemecca.com
myluxuryyacht.com
purityplanet.com
findexia.com
quotematch.com
fasterinfo.com
eretirementjokes.com
bestsportingsites.com
dealsandoffers4u.com
imedicalanimation.com
1homeshopping.info
website-savvy.com
faqsdirect.com
searchguide.biz
scholarshipnet.info
richesse-succes-sante.com
bestpictures.org
topbeautysites.com
edigitalphotoalbum.com
savvygate.com
edigitalphoto.info
business-wiz.com
top10websites.net
educational-online.com
8topsitespro.com
gd-invest.com
compendianet.com
go-2-shop.co.uk
medicalhelpers.com
top4sites.net
rapvideos.info
dry-skin-care-guide.com
1step1.info
top4search.com
globalinfoexchange.com
faxingsoftware.info
medkuz.com
goodplace-on.net
best-healthcare.info
wilddreams.org
filtersspam.info
tipace.com

John, I never realized that this could really hurt my income. I have started using AdsBlackList and am looking forward to seeing how it affects my income. Thanks a ton.
David.

Great article John, I really appreciate your work on this one.

Off to block some sites.

Thanks a bunch!

That’s one hell of a list of crappy MFA sites. The ones we make look nothing like that garbage, no wonder people do bad with them. But even so, that’s the old way to do arbitrage. I’ve done well over $5k a day with one site with a nice MFA site that you’d never think was a MFA site at all.

Anyhow, good post John.

[...] The post that sidetracked me tonight was about using the competitive ad filter to increase Adsense earnings. I didn’t even know that there was a term for those ad-heavy, content-light sites that are cluttering up the Internet, but John’s post about MFA sites sent me straight to a service that helps you stop Google from serving their useless ads to your site. [...]

Nice post. You’re sure on top of your game John.

I’ve never really used the ad filter though I’m aware of its existence.

Thanks for the tip. I’ll give it a shot.

Thanks for the tip, I’m not entirely sure this will work as surely the AdSense ad’s being displayed are the ones with the highest bids?

I’ve given it a go anyway as I’m interested in seeing how this works.

Cheers,
Kev

Thanks a ton!

Thanks John, I’ll be giving this a try for my Korea blog.

I signed up myself recently and was surprized to find that yahoo.com is in the list of the greedy web sites. Who would think?

Thanks for your list. The list is really good. Actually, it is quite sad that we have to pay AdsBlackList.com to get the list.

Is there any free portal?

John, there’re a millions of MFA sites in web now, so you can’t list their all in ad Filter. And we don’t know how many MFA sites will appear in near future, so your adSense filters not effective.

I’ve tried blocking adverts using the filter but one of the consequences of doing that is some ad units may not be filled.
I can’t say for sure if it’s related, but after one particular session of tracking down MFA sites my income halved the next day - despite having a normal CTR. I really need to get my adsense tracking script working properly and see what ads are being shown. A daily summary of viewed adverts (and not just clicked) would be very useful to track down what adverts are not money making.

Great Piece John.

Excellent posts John Chow. I was aware of AdsBlackList.com but never got around to using it, I think it’s about time I start.

Of course you can’t block out all the MFA sites, just like you can’t stop all the spam in your inbox, blog comments, etc. My thought is that any little bit that can help, especially when presented to us so clearly, can’t hurt.

Thanks John. I’ve added these and will see how they affect my Adsense bottom line in the future.

I thought I would experiment with this also to see what the stats show over the next few days. I will let you know which way it goes.

[...] It’s common that Adsense publishers block MFA’s with the competitive ad filter to increase their earnings. Now John Chow has written a post about how to do it, but it isn’t as easy as he makes it seem like. There are some issues to be aware of when trying to do it. [...]

Thank your for this article John.

I’ll make sure to notify my members about it as it’s really enlightning.

and siong1987, althought ABL is far from being “paid membership” site, it will always remain free to users who contribute to site by reporting their MFA discoveries.

kind regards,
Emir
AdsBlackList.com

Yeah, only being allowed 200 sites in the list kinda sucks. I run about a dozen sites on different topics, and it’s kinda hard to do much with only 200 blacklists across the whole account.

Thanks for the info, actually i shared in the beta stages of AdsblackList.com and i really liked it

it helped me tripple my earnings ( yeah 3X so far) and i’m expecting more earnings from my site as long as i keep updating my blocked list

those MFA sites really affected my income for 2 months getting few cents per click but not anymore

thanks ABL team and thanks John Chow for caring to spread the word

I just want to share this Before / After example with you all: http://www.slibe.com/fullimage/ee2ba160-abl_story_gif.gif

Great post, John. I better get rich now! Dugg, and linked!

One of my sites actually had a roughly 300% increase in earnings after blocking these sites! (It’s a low earning site in an unpopular niche, but I’m very happy with these results!)

Great Post, very informative.

[...] Using the Competitive Ad Filter to Eliminate MFA Sites - A good post about how you can enter the URL of known Made For Adsense (MFA) sites into the Competitive Ad filter in Adsense to prevent the ads from being shown on your site. These ads are usually low paying ones where the landing page features a slew of other Adsense ads. Eliminating these from the ads served on your site should help to boost your earnings. [...]

[...] Review: AdsBlackList.Com, 4/5 Rating.     Google Adsense is perhaps one of the most popular ways for webmasters to make money. Google lets you dip into their advertisers for a slice of the advertising income and delivers contextual ads wherever you want on your website. Its a deal made in heaven. But recently there has been a growing problem with websites called "MFAs". MFA stands for "made for adsense" and indicates that these websites rather than having ads to support their content, have low quality content to drive their ads. These sites bid on keywords and then drive people to their ad-filled sites. Using low bids they are able to earn more money from ads even after paying Google. This causes webmasters to get low prices for the clicks they send Google (to these ad sites) while these ad sites pull in the real money. Anyways, John Chow wrote a good article on it, as well as the solution. Generating a list of these sites from AdsBlackList.Com. AdsBlackList.Com tracks what sites are only advertising and then generates lists of these that bid on keywords related to your site. Its still a bit raw, which is why I give it a 4/5 rating, but it definetly seems like a worthwhile idea - similar to a spam filter. Published Sunday, November 05, 2006 6:11 PM by admin Filed under: Websites. [...]

Some of those sites seems to have very similar names. It’d be nice to have regex, or some other way of matching and blocking groups. Especially with the imposed 200 entry limit.

wow, never knew this… thanks for the information,

very good article !!

I’m curious how the revenue increase is explained - considering that adwords is an auction and advertisers always pay the lowest CPC possible - so if you remove the lowest bidder either there is no other bidder so you lose 3 cents, or there is a next higher bidder, but that next higher bidder automatically drops to the lowest possible CPC. I can’t think of a scenario that would explain higher revenue per pageview… Thanks!

thanks for the tip!

u’re a ‘god-send’

> My thought is that any little bit that can help, especially when presented to us so clearly, can’t hurt.

I think this help really a little bit.
But you can left ONE adSense block in top of page and take away two other to make ads more expensive and increase CPM. This will block MFA sites by adSense without any filter as well.

Jonancoop - It’s not that simple. Google doesn’t always serve the highest CPC ads on a page. They use Smart Pricing to decide what sites get the good ads and what sites get the bad ones. If we know how this all works we can prevent but we don’t. However, blocking off the MFA site won’t mean the ad goes to the next bidder. It just mean the MFA ad shows up on some other site.

Google Chance - Having only one AdSense won’t stop the MFA sites. And overall CPM goes down with you run just one ad spot.

> And overall CPM goes down with you run just one ad spot.

I’m not sure that’s right. Maybe CPM goes down for a few fist weeks while Googlebot put your pages in search index, but if your adSense block placed good CPM will rise from the initial after. I’ve hundreds of sites, so this is experimental results.

> Having only one AdSense won’t stop the MFA sites.

In most cases it stops. Why?

adSense is able to redistribute CPM depending on a site’s thematic, blocks amount and placing them on a page. I Think adSense blocks show more expensive ads if you put only one block in page, as I wrote. It means MFA sites that paying less money for a click will be replaced by quality sites with good bids in your adSense.

These are active MFA sites. Do yourself a favor and block these:

UltraSites.cc
big.com

You know it never really occurred to me before reading this that I might be missing out on a lot more quality ads by blocking these MFA types. I’d read and interpreted the information on the Google site as being competitors only, but having read your entry and the comments that followed it makes perfect sense! I wish I had learned of this sooner but I thank you for educating me now. I’ll have to see how much this effects my daily earnings of $0.00 on average!

Same here!
It worked!
At least 100% increase in profit.
Hope someone can post more MFA sites
thanks!

Thanks for this valuable information. I wasn’t aware of these MFA sites…Can’t Google ban these type of sites? I added the sites to the filter and I hope my income will increase!

[...] If you’re monetizing your blog or blog network using AdSense, it might be a good idea to check whether you’re getting low-paying clicks from made-for-AdSense (MFA) sites. I came across a post on johncow.com that explains how you lose and MFA sites win from their advertising cheap on your sites. I used to think that the competitive ad filter makes you earn less because you block out potentially high-paying ads. But it turns out to be the other way around–you actually get a lot of low-paying ads these days because of MFAs or splogs. The purpose of the Competitive Ad Filter is to enable you to block specific ads, such as competitor’s ads, from appearing on your pages. Google allows you to enter up to 200 URLs. Most webmasters don’t block out any sites because they’re not an AdWords advertisers and therefore feel they have no competition. However, by not taking advantage of the Competitive Ad Filter you’re losing money to MFA sites and Arbitragers. … Traffic to MFA sites are generated by advertising from Google AdSense and other PPC services. These sites offer a really low CPC rate so they can get the traffic as cheap as possible. If you’ve ever checked your AdSense account and see some 1 to 3 cent clicks, chances are it’s from a MFA site. … A user clicks on an ad expecting to find information, not more ads. The funny thing is, Google can easily put a stop to this but they won’t because they make huge money from it - whether the click comes from your site or the MFA site, Google profits. Therefore, they have no incentive to shut this down. [...]

[...] Provide a better user experience by offering better ads J. Angelo Racoma just commented on a recent post regarding improving Your AdSense Earnings With The Competitive Ad Filter. In his post, he also quoted John Chow’s post on the same topic. [...]

Google should revise slightly its pricing structure. I mean they just reported huge profits for the quarter, they need to make sure that the whole system (including publishers and advertisers) will keep working, else they might suffer also.

[...] There’s a post over at ShoeMoney stating that Google may soon send out bots to find click arbitragers. I wasn’t sure if this would happen; Mr. John Chow says the following in this article: [The process known as PPC Arbitrage] directly affects your AdSense income. It also creates a very poor user experience. A user clicks on an ad expecting to find information, not more ads. The funny thing is, Google can easily put a stop to this but they won’t because they make huge money from it - whether the click comes from your site or the MFA site, Google profits. Therefore, they have no incentive to shut this down. As long as Google allows this, you will have more Arbitragers creating MFA sites to take advantage of legit sites. [...]

Thanks for the list!

[...] If you’re monetizing your blog or blog network using AdSense, it might be a good idea to check whether you’re getting low-paying clicks from made-for-AdSense (MFA) sites. I came across a post on johnchow.com that explains how you lose and MFA sites win from their advertising cheap on your sites. I used to think that the competitive ad filter makes you earn less because you block out potentially high-paying ads. But it turns out to be the other way around–you actually get a lot of low-paying ads these days because of MFAs or splogs. The purpose of the Competitive Ad Filter is to enable you to block specific ads, such as competitor’s ads, from appearing on your pages. Google allows you to enter up to 200 URLs. Most webmasters don’t block out any sites because they’re not an AdWords advertisers and therefore feel they have no competition. However, by not taking advantage of the Competitive Ad Filter you’re losing money to MFA sites and Arbitragers. … Traffic to MFA sites are generated by advertising from Google AdSense and other PPC services. These sites offer a really low CPC rate so they can get the traffic as cheap as possible. If you’ve ever checked your AdSense account and see some 1 to 3 cent clicks, chances are it’s from a MFA site. … A user clicks on an ad expecting to find information, not more ads. The funny thing is, Google can easily put a stop to this but they won’t because they make huge money from it - whether the click comes from your site or the MFA site, Google profits. Therefore, they have no incentive to shut this down. [...]

No more question. Even some of the internet marketing consultant not recommending you to do it, but I do. It is unethical act to publish website that contain nothing more than ads on your blog. People will feel tricked, as their purpose is to find content.