Contrary to good blogging practice, this is my first post on this blog for a few weeks. Unfortunately I've been busy setting up a new business and moving to a quaint old thatched cottage in the English countryside. Many topical news stories have come and gone during my hiatus but there is one that I just cannot resist commenting on.
One of the big news stories of recent weeks was the closure of several AdSense accounts that were based on MFA (made for AdSense) sites and AdWords arbitrage. However, for me the biggest aspect of that story was the hypocrisy of AdSense guru Joel Comm when he blogged about this topic. To quote Mr. Comm:
What did those publishers do wrong?Do you see the blatant hypocrisy? No? Well, let me enlighten you. First, take a look at these 2 web sites run by Joel Comm, InstantAdSenseTemplates.com and SuperAdSenseTemplates.com. What are these sites selling? MFA web site templates! That is, Joel himself sells templates to create the very type of sites that he is disparaging in his own blog post. If that isn't hypocritical I don't know what is.
They had either built their site specifically for AdSense or they'd been practicing AdSense arbitrage (buying traffic cheaply from one place then selling it on to AdWords advertisers through their AdSense units.)
What both those practices have in common is that they put the ads ahead of the content.
That's just wrong. Google is making a good move for advertisers in drawing the line.
I'm certainly fed up clicking search results and finding myself on a page full of ad links instead of the content I want. And advertisers are fed up paying for clicks from people who aren't really interested in their services.
To make matters worse, I left a comment about this very issue on his blog but, of course, it didn't pass his moderation. That's the second time I've left a critical comment on his blog that he has refused to publish. Guess he's more concerned about protecting his online empire than actually being prepared to face honest, valid criticism.
I've had issues with Joel for quite some time (see this post and this one), now I've concluded that he's just a shallow money grabber and a hypocrite to boot.
Tags: adsense, opinion,
joel comm
