How to harden Adsense sites against competitors?

I guess I will remove all About Me pages then.

Interestingly I found out that the Privacy Policy or any other page crawled by the Adsense crawler will NOT be indexed in the regular Google search index.

So I can let the Adsense crawler crawl around all over the site without concern that what it crawls will be searchable through Google search.

So what I will do is remove the About Me page, use a robots.txt file to deny the regular Google crawler access to my Privacy Page and other pages which might be used to find all my Adsense sites through a unique sentence on them, and give the Adsense crawler unrestricted access. That should work.

Here's where I found out about the no indexing of the Adsense crawler -> Inside AdSense: The AdSense Pub(lisher) Crawl

Thanks for the input you all.

Carlos

If the difference between Google considering a site an MFA site that is of the junk variety and not is the presence of an About Me page then that site is...well...probably junk to begin with.

If a site has quality content that is hand written and based on sound research into a topic so that it gives value to the site reader I seriously doubt that Google will cancel an Adsense account just because an About Me page is missing.

My sites are all Made For Adsense in the sense that I make them to make money from Adsense but they are not MFA sites of the kind that Google is referring to since I don't scrape content, I link out to high authority sites in support of what I say on my sites, I write all the content myself and it's written very well...in short I create a quality mini-site. They are relevant, targeted, and perfectly in line with the kind of sites that Google wants Adsense on though a bit smaller than they might prefer.

I don't just put up a bunch of poorly written text and hope that people click on my ads because they can't stand reading what my site is about. I hope they click on my ads because the ads appeal to their interests while they are reading my valuable content.

That might not be a way that is recommended for Adsense success in some circles but I chose to operate that way. Time will tell whether my approach works as well as the junk site made for Adsense approach (otherwise known as an MFA site).

Carlos

Don't know. I've never seen any of them explain why them might include an About Me page so I can't say why.

There are lots and lots of internet marketers, good one's, that do all kinds of things on their sites just because they have seen others do it where they would not be able to adequately explain why it's good to have it. Just because they do something doesn't make it worth doing if they can't explain why it's good to do it.

I am not knocking what John and others here do in particular only saying that for me...I chose not to include an About Me page since I see no logic or reason to include one.

My sites are not so thin that not having an About Me will not make any difference.

Thanks. I wish you all the success in the world with your own Adsense sites.

Carlos

Perhaps I did go too far in saying Google is stupid Don. But from my perspective I don't know how else to explain all the seeming junk showing up in Google these days. Or the way in which it allows black hat SEO's to manipulate the SERP's at will.

Agreed Don but I was referring more to the way that great content is beaten in the SERP's by SEO manipulation. Mostly from artificial, self-promoting, backlinking. I don't call that poor quality clarifying of relevant keywords. I call that poor search engine judgement when the primary way in which it determines relevancy and quality of content is not from the content itself but from the quality and relevancy of backlinks to that content.

It is the whole notion that backlinks can determine relevant quality content that I dispute and have a problem with.

At least in the sense that backlinks have become an item that we who are in the know can manipulate artificially to give us higher ranks in the SERP's than the quality of our content would otherwise warrant.

People on this forum for example are not getting to the top in Google by the excellence of their Adsense site content. They are getting there on the whole because of their growing skill at search engine manipulation.

Don't get me wrong. I love that I can manipulate my way to the top in the SERP's through backlink manipulation. It gives me as the little guy a way to beat competitors who put in less effort into doing their own manipulation of Google ranking.

But again it's all manipulation. The quality of content has very little bearing on whether my page or that of my competitors will rank at the top.

I generally agree with what you are saying Don. But what I am saying is that most people on this forum, as internet marketers using Adsense, are not focused on creating great content. They are focused on making money through Adsense and manipulating the search engines through SEO techniques that have little to do with the quality of page content (i.e. as in well written, informative, useful content).

That such techniques actually work, even for substandard and low quality content, is a testament to a failure on the part of Google's algorithm and not so much a testament to a lack of effort on the part of those web site owners who pride themselves on great content.

Google's algorithm puts pressure on all of us, whether we are great content creators or not, to resort to SEO manipulation (which mainly involves creating keyword relevant anchored backlinks for ourselves in an artificial manner without waiting on natural backlinks to occur). That's the problem. Their algorithm does not recognize and promote great content. It recognizes and promotes those with the most polished SEO manipulation, great content or not.

To the degree that this is so...it cheapens search by causing content that should not be rising to the top, getting to the top. Artificially so.

I suppose that great content creators could use a dose of SEO training in how to manipulate their way to the top too but my whole point is that a search engine should not force web site owners to have to resort to SEO manipulation techniques to have their great content recognized. It's algorithm should be such that great content gets recognized.

In my opinion Google's algorithm has ceased to be one that recognizes great content as much as one which recognizes SEO effort and SEO manipulation on the part of those like us who would use such techniques to get to the top.

Not that Google is purposely setting out to recognize and reward SEO manipulation but that is what is rewarded in the SERP's it seems to me.

Again I am not knocking this for my purposes. I like that I can manipulate and claw my way to the top. I can make more money that way. But it also leads me to believe as I do that Google's algorithm is seriously, seriously flawed with respect to recognizing great content.

In the last few weeks I have been reading a lot of black hat stuff to see what I can gleam from their techniques. I won't use many such techniques for me that cross a line in the sand that I will not cross. I won't lie or cheat or otherwise throw all right and wrong to the wind in a desire to make money.

But my eyes have been opened to how easily Google can be manipulated. With impunity. At will. Whenever one wants.

There are whole series of link wheels and armies of sites supporting some of the highest ranking sites in very competitive niches. Not because those sites have such great content but because the site owner is an expert on how to game Google.

There are layers of feeder sites feeding link juice to other feeders which in turn feed link juice to money making sites. It's an entire underground network. Vast and highly effective.

And it's got very little to do with great content.

Like I said...Google's algorithm is fatally flawed and the proof is in how easily it's algorithm can be manipulated to achieve high ranking. I don't mean easily in that it doesn't take anything to do it. I mean easily in that one does not have to actually go through the hassle of having to create great content. One can just create so-so, even somewhat poor content and still get great ranking by creating a whole series of feeder blogs and sites to feed link juice to the site(s) that we want to rank highly for.

Carlos