10e20 Blog

Yesterday I spoke with Holly Sanders from The New York Post and appear in her article in today’s paper called Ad & Subtract. The article is all about the recent emails that Google sent out to many AdSense publishers informing them that their accounts would be disabled on June 1st.

Search experts said Google routinely cuts off publishers who run afoul of AdSense rules, but they believe this latest round of notices was a more widespread effort to clean up its ad network.

“I don’t really remember where this many people reported it at one time,” said Chris Winfield, president of Internet search marketing firm 10e20.

Google confirmed that it had sent out notices, but characterized it as part of an ongoing review.

Just my $.02 on this whole thing. This was not an all & out attack on arbitragers or even everyone running MFA sites. Out of all the people I know running AdSense only one got the letter. This was more of a move on Google’s part to bring attention to this matter, they knew that as soon as a few people got the letter that a threads would start at Webmaster World, DigitalPoint, etc and it would get everyone all riled up. By doing this they are doing two things:

• Letting advertisers know that they are addressing the problems with their content network
  
• Scaring a lot of the publishers who didn’t get the letter (and who are toeing the line) into possibly changing their biz models

All of this without ever making an official statement. If you’re interested in more information on this, I would recommend checking out this video post from Shoemoney or this short discussion on ThreadWatch which raises some other interesting points.

Check out the full online version of the NY Post article here.