Fused Nation – UK SEO Blog

I think Google really screwed the pooch with their Adsense network.  Half the web has it plastered over their crappy little sites, not entirely unlike banner advertising.  At least banner ads had variety (to an extent) from site to site and there wasn’t such a huge motivation to churn out carbon copy websites to stick banners in.

We’re at the point now where I bet many SEOs start out designing a site and think “OK I’m going to put some Adsense here, here, here and here…”.

Oh and good, Yahoo is following suit with the tacky Adsense text ad format as are many other networks (and no doubt MSN will be running along late chasing the big kids as usual!).

Perhaps if Google set out and actually implemented some quality control (you know – like they constantly preach to webmasters about linking…) then people wouldn’t have this gut wrenching feeling everytime they open a page to find 60% of their screen is occupied with Adsense?  Maybe it’s just me because I’m a SEO and all I see these days is a piece of excrement floating in a sea of spam…maybe regular users think that the designer is an amateur and simply churned out a badly designed (and written) page?

What really annoys me is SEO agency sites with Adsense on them.  That just screams of newbieism (yeh I just made that word up).  Huh, so business is so great that the extra $100 a month from Adsense clicks makes the difference?  Shit, most SEOs wouldn’t take a phone call for that.

Don’t get me wrong.  I do make a nice little earner from the sites I run Adsense on – but I least make an effort to integrate it into the design of the site.  I considered throwing some on here, but what’s the point?  SEO adverts on a blog read by other SEOs?  Not really great targeting there, is it?  Perhaps my perception of Adsense would be a different if I didn’t see it on half the sites I end up visiting.

I think it’s time for the web to find a better method of monetising non product or service websites.

MG