Made For AdSense sites (MFA sites)
Shortly after AdSense appeared, MFA sites started to appear.These are sites that are created for the sole purpose of making money from AdSense. Some of them contain genuine information and are useful, but most of them contain nothing of real value to Web users. The non-useful ones usually contain nothing but links to other sites – the links themselves being more AdSense ads – although some of them contain some real content that has been stolen from other websites. They are parasite websites that help nobody but their owners.
The few MFA sites that have been created with genuine, useful content are perfectly good. The rest (most of them) are parasites that make the Web a worse place for everyone except themselves. They are SEOed to rank well in the search engines’ search results, which wastes people’s time, and is annoying when a search result is clicked on, only to find another list of links to look through and click on. That’s not what people are searching for, and it’s not what people want. Occasionally, the MFA sites overwhelm the top search results, and it is a real pain trying to find something useful. That situation continues to get worse.
Arbitrage
Arbitrage is the purchase of something in one market for immediate resale in another market in order to profit from a price discrepancy. AdSense arbitrage sites are MFA sites that are created to be found in the AdWords system rather than in the search results. They advertise in AdWords, and, when a person clicks on one of their ads, they are taken to a page that offers more ads, but nothing of value.
They advertise on low cost-per-click keywords in AdWords, and their pages are designed to attract high cost-per-click AdSense ads. In many cases, they advertise on low cost topics and their pages are designed to attract high cost ads of a different topic, particularly when the high cost topic includes some of the same words, so that people can be fooled into clicking on the ads.
The only difference between this type of MFA site and the other type is that they operate in different ways. The other one seeks to get free traffic from the search results, while this one pays for the traffic in AdWords, but has to ensure that there is enough difference between the click cost and the click commission to make it worthwhile. Apart from that difference, this type is the same as the other type in that they both offer people nothing of value, and any non-ad content is usually stolen.
AdSense arbitrage sites are not as annoying as the normal MFA sites, because they don’t fool people in the generic search results. I’ve seen advertisers who are really mad about AdSense arbitrage, because they feel they are being cheated, and in some cases they are. I’ve also seen advertisers who are happy with it, because they feel that people who click on their ads in an arbitrager’s site, click because they are interested in what the advertiser is advertising. But I’ve never seen any ordinary Web user who is happy to land on a page that asks them to look through another list of links and choose again. They already did that in the search results, and they really don’t want to do it again. AdSense arbitraging is bad for Web users, and detrimental to the Web.
Both types of MFA sites are mushrooming, and, unless the search engines do something about it, they will continue to mushroom to the detriment of Web users, and the Web itself. Unfortunately, the search engines don’t appear to be inclined to do anything about it at the present time. They are not the keepers of the Web, and they are not the Web’s police, but the Web will continue to deteriorate until they take some action to prevent the MFA sites from cluttering up the organic search results, and from being displayed in AdWords and AdSense.
