We’ve been fighting (not literally) to keep various “Download Now” ads off of print-bingo.com because they confuse many end users. I would gladly block them all as a category in AdSense, if I could figure out which subcategory to block without losing too many “good” ads. But, until we have a good way to do that, we are blocking unwanted advertisers by their domain name.
I’ve searched the web briefly for a list of web sites to block… without luck. So, I’m posting our own list of misleading AdSense advertisers in this post.
This is strictly a list of misleading advertisers that have a big “Download” or “Download Now” button and a small amount of semi-relevant text. Many of these are offering 7-zip, PDFCreator, and other open source packages, presumably bundled with some sort of advertising.
If you find this list useful, please post your additions to the list in the comments, or at least post a comment. If we know that there is interest in this list, it’s more likely that we’ll update it!
I believe that the owners of these websites continually register new domains, so this list will probably need constant updates.
- wiseconvert.com
- coolpdfcreator.com
- facemoods.com
- downlopedia.com
- ultimatepdfconverter.com
- wisedownloads.com
- go-downloads.com
- pchealthdoc.com
- soft.foxtab.com
- alwaysdownloads.com
- vgamenetwork.com
- adlsoft.net
We haven’t done it yet, but I suggest adding a border around your AdSense ad units in the future. I can’t see this problem going away, we’ve already purged these ads once.
Ironically, it was fashionable to color-match borders from AdSense so that the ads blend in just a few years ago!
Once again, please comment if you find this useful… and post your additions.
Update 2014-01-15: After trying to maintain a list, I gave up. These ads keep showing up for new domains and new AdWords accounts. My current practice is to log in once a week and block the entire AdWords accounts via the Review Center. I’ve probably blocked a couple hundred over the last 2 years.