Google AdSense Exclusion List

There are many websites which declare aversion to any kind of certification cheating, but on the other hand they publish AdSense content encouraging their readers to use illegal materials and services. And moreover they get a profit - dirty money from illegal business, payed by Google who gets it from the criminals.
This is ridiculous!

There is a first result of discussion started on filtering of Google AdSense. From now on if you are the author of any certification oriented site publishing AdSense and want to have your pages free of the braindump/gunman advertisements there is a possibility to purchase Google AdSense Exclusion List from CertGuard - the company which fights against those illegal sites. The annual subscription cost varies from 20 to 100 $, depending on the frequency of updates.

I think it's worth a shot if you want your site to be considered as credible by conscious readers and first of all, if you don't want to fuel dirty business.

AdSense braindump/gunmen filter

Today's post will continue the braindump subject started two days ago. Yesterday I had small e-mail exchange with CertGuard CEO Robert Williams concerning the ethics of AdSense in the context of braindump or gunmen sites. It happened to me many times that browsing some good, valuable certification web-pages I've noticed Google AdSense ads of those sites.

Let's see an example. Below there is a screenshot with advertisements published on CertCities:



These ads are just next to the article about Certification Ethics (sic!). For those who still do not understand - when you click there you will be redirected to the website maintained by the criminals offering taking exams for people that have no knowledge of the testing materials. And moreover - CertCities will get some money for your click from these bad guys. Does this mean that CertCities is popularizing dirty business?

Actually I am not the only one who is surprised.

CertCities is one of the best site about certification. No doubt. This post is not meant to be an attack, it's just an example. I'm going to publish AdSense in the future as well so I will have to deal with the same problem.

As for now I see one solution. Google offers Competitive Ad Filter. It lets you create your own set of sites the ads of which you do not want to publish on your site. Unfortunately it is limited to 200 URLs, but I think it's still worth a shot.

One can get the list of braindump and gunmen sites from CertGuard organization if one will be recognized as legitimate. Please contact CertGuard in the matter of obtaining the filter list.