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?