effective blocking

What do you do to see if your filter list is hurting your bottom line?

First, take your filter list. Paste it into a text file. Save it. Next, delete the entire thing from your URL filter list in your account. Yes, the entire list. Add selected URLs back to it, but ONLY the ones you use to block competitors or unethical companies.

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After a few hours, some new ads should start appearing on your site. For AdSense, use the AdSense ad viewing tool, if you are outside the geotargeted area of the majority of your audience. The tool takes into account the filter list. Try and resist the knee-jerk reaction to automatically put those "irrelevant" ad URLs back into the filter. Remember, that one URL could be responsible for higher paying ads appearing on your site.

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Don't forget! AdSense & YPN are in it to make money, too! They are going to show the highest-paying ads available for the keywords selected for each individual web page. The more the advertiser pays, the more you and AdSense/YPN earn. It doesn't benefit them to show ads worth the least amount of money. So, if you think ads pay too low, it is a mistake to block them (especially since you could be blocking all their highly-targeted, and high-paying, ads from your site as well.)

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Over the next several days, watch your stats! It is preferable to do this over weekdays, and over a non-holiday week. Other factors (such as advertisers lowering bids for weekends and holidays, or pausing campaigns altogether) can have an impact that are not related to your filter list at all.