Aghhhh! Adsense Publisher ID Reveals All Your Adsense Sites

[piper97]

The seasoned IMer's probably know this but, anyhow, I've just discovered that there are companies that scrape Adsense Publisher ID's from publisher websites.

I recently installed a Firefox plugin that lifts the Adsense Publisher ID from the source code of a web page and can tell you how many websites there are with that same ID. Clicking on the associated link takes you to a site that will sell a report that includes a list of all the websites with that ID. I tested one of my sites and there was the data for all to see. And I have very few Adsense sites.

I did a quick Google search and found that there are several companies that scrape this info and make it available.

Now, apparently, not all publisher ID's are scraped (it takes time to find them) but my guess is that if you have a lot of Adsense sites your ID has been scraped and all of your sites are in the database.

I'm about to build a bundle of sites using Xfactor John's Micro Niche Adsense guide. Having my publisher ID out there when I only have a handful of sites is no big deal, but should I build one of John's "empires" my whole kingdom will be exposed for all to pillage. I wonder how John protects his Adsense empire.

Unfortunately Google will not allow multiple publisher ID's for one Adsense account and will only allow one account per user (entity).

Does anyone know of a way to cloak Adsense publisher ID's, or in some other way thwart the robots that scrape our ID's?

[kindsvater]

So create another entity. That minor speedbump should not stop you.

[banless]

I agree with the above post, why do need to have so many under the same id? It's not that hard to create another, unless you are doing something illegal.

[brucekaushik]

hmm ... good info here thanks for revealing ... but also it does bad for everyone because anyone can exploit.

but i feel that people always are there to exploit in internet marketing we should keep our head high and outthink them!

good luck everyone.

[bgmacaw]

You can use an ad delivery system like OpenX or the like to essentially hide your ads, Adsense or whatever else, from 'bots and scrappers.

[piper97]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

You can use an ad delivery system like OpenX or the like to essentially hide your ads, Adsense or whatever else, from 'bots and scrappers.

Thanks. I just took a look at OpenX. It looks like it might do the trick. I'll need to do some more reading on this approach to see if it is the way to go for sure. Pros and cons, you know what I mean