or MSN would see their traffic fall even further back behind Google because they don't show the best results.

Likely a combination of both.


Tom

Yes, maybe.

But I'm sure a solid % would be spammy sites set up just for Google Adsense.

It would be a bit of a balancing act like you say.

Brendon

I wouldn't be too worried about it, there are plenty of top-notch websites that are using Adsense. Ultimately Microsoft needs to have quality results if they want to beat Google. Clearing out all Adsense-monetized sites would be the equivalent to carpet bombing Baghdad to take out Saddam.

One of our own sites that ranks really well with all the search engines (top 5 for two years) carries Google ads. MSN brings us heaps of traffic.

We can add a new page and they (search engines) all pick the page up in a day or two and some pages have only Google Ads and no content.

This is not spamming, we are trying to sell advertising space and we have to show our prospectives they will be found in Google searches!

We have other sites that we try to follow a similar formula - fresh pages, good content, lots of links etc etc and never get a ranking. The day I eventually work it out, Google will go and move the goal posts again!