Google finally cracks down on Arbitrage

In a move that wasn’t really much of a surprise Google has finally taken action on Adsense Publishers that are using Arbitrage & MFA Sites to make money. Claiming that it’s an unfit business model.

Starting from June 1st many arbitrage publishers will have their accounts disabled & any remaining balance paid out. Even the big boys who are earning 70k/month are not safe. Some publishers have already had the dreaded email explaining that their accounts will be disabled as of June 1st.

So, If you are doing arbitrage & not had an email yet, now may be the time to stop if you want to keep your Adsense account. No-one is quite sure how Adsense are detecting publishers, even still which publishers they are targeting, but it could be a number of factors:

1. Those advertising on .info domains
2. Those with Adsense code on Landing Pages
3. Those with a high overall CTR
4. Publishers that are not converting well

After all, Adsense is all about providing value for the Advertiser. We’ve seen this in the past. If the Advertisers is not converting then they won’t use the content network. Simple.

So what does this mean for publishers?

Well it’s hard to say. Whilst I don’t doubt that the quality of the content network will increase greatly, there will be less advertisers & less inventory, therefore potential less earnings. That is until Adwords Advertisers start trusting the quality of the content network (which at the moment many are not advertising on).

Sources: Webmaster World, Jensense, Wickedfire, Shoemoney

Update: Check out the sources to read into this topic for yourself. Lots of conflicting stories. What we do know is that people ARE getting accounts disabled (not everyone), those people WERE doing arbitrage. Sending Adwords traffic to MFA sites with multiple 336×280 blocks of Adsense. What we don’t know is the criteria for the bans.