Yesterday, the world buzzed about Google finally releasing a feature to all Adsense publishers that allows them to give Google a list of "allowed sites". This is a list of all sites that the publisher confirms is allowed to show their ads. Any site not on the list, is not approved by the publisher, and will not be counted. This would prevent scraper sites or anyone else from showing a publisher's Adsense ads and subsequently getting the publisher banned through no fault of their own. This allowed sites feature had been in the testing phase for a while, but was finally rolled out to all publishers yesterday.
Or was it? I put in my list of URLs early yesterday morning before I went on my big Mall trip. By the time I returned home late yesterday afternoon, the feature had disappeared. This removal was also noted at the WMW forums.
- Did Google accidentally release the feature to all publishers, and then remove it when they realized their mistake?
- Did Google intentionally release the feature, and then change their minds?
- Is Google just completely inept, despite have a gargantuan amount of money and brain power behind it?
- Why does the world continue to ignore the missteps that Google makes?
See, I think you are missing a very important point in this Donna. The fiscalpsychological equation that directly describes the relationship between money and brain power states that intelligence is inversely proportionate to greed. Up until “Fabulously Wealthy” they were probably fine… but once they passed “Could Probably Have Solved World Hunger But The Profit Margins Were Too Low”, then they started having problems.
A big part of it has to do with the perception that image is more valuable than actual quality, and the way that thought processes can then be dictated by trying to keep up appearances instead of just kicking ass. Sad, really, but extremely reminiscent of the original dot-com boom.
I also saw this but thought that it was dumb idea. Which it is. By having an ‘approve only’ list, publishers are missing out on potential advertisers that are new or that they haven’t yet heard of.
Who knows what goes through the heads of them up there at the not-so-mighty-Google but this is an idea that should have been strangled at birth. Pulling the feature is probably a kindness akin to putting to sleep a terminally ill cat.
Mark, I think you misunderstood the feature. It allows publishers to let Google know which sites they own, essentially. So, let’s say I own 2 sites, both displaying adsense. I don’t want anyone else stealing my adsense pubid and displaying ads on THEIR sites, with MY id. Why not? Because their site may be violating guidelines and my account would be suspended because of it. So I get to tell Google that if anyone is displaying my code on their site, that it isn’t my site, and i’m not responsible for whatever guidelines they may break. The feature is a good idea, if it is actually implemented.
Would be nice feature, especially if they added in a feature where they didn’t pay adsense publishers to steal your content too.
Ha! Aaron, you made me spit my coffee. 😀
It is hard to stay real and not to make some conspiration theories. But why worry about that if we can’t influence it.