Terminated By Journey Mediavine But Not Because of AI
When I first joined Journey Mediavine, I felt a surge of excitement and optimism. Having heard glowing reviews about its potential for high earnings and the next step to Mediavine, I made the leap from Ezoic, eager to elevate my recipe site to new heights. However, just ten months into this promising partnership, I was blindsided when they abruptly terminated my ads without any prior warning.
Journey By Mediavine Termination Email
It wasn’t until a week later (21st March) that I received a vague explanation: my recipe site was deemed to have low-value content.
This is what was said in the email:
In review of your site, it was determined that your site has low value to the advertiser.
Advertisers value original and informative content that cannot be easily found by searching other areas of the web. Websites with low advertiser value repurpose other content that can be easily found on other sites and are solely made to generate advertising revenue.
Examples can include:
A website where most of the content is dedicated to linking to other sites with little original content provided.
A website where most of the content is structured as a list, even if extra text is added relating to each item.
You may take corrective action and request a reevaluation sixty days after the date of this email. Instructions will appear in your Journey dashboard for next steps
This left me perplexed and frustrated—after all, recipes are among the most sought-after content on the internet. Isn’t providing people with the instructions they need to create delicious meals exactly what they’re looking for?
Why Has My Site Low Value Content
My initial reaction was I need to apply for another ad network so I wouldn’t lose earnings. Applying for ad networks takes time so whilst waiting for replies I applied for Google Adsense as they are pretty quick on the uptake.
A couple of days later I got a response, but not a good one. They said it was disapproved because of low value content. Yet again I got the same feedback. This got me thinking. Does my site have AI images? Does this class as low value content?
The answer is no; my recipe site doesn’t feature AI-generated images. Moreover, Journey by Mediavine didn’t mention anything about AI content in their email, even though I know of others whose sites were terminated for that very reason!
Does my site link to other sites? The only time I would link to another site was if I did a recipe round-up post, which a very few! The round-up post would consist mainly of my recipes and an odd one of someone else. Doesn’t Yoast SEO plugin suggest to link to other sites if applicable!
And lastly does my site have structured lists? I presume these are bullet pointed areas. Yes I do have bullet pointed areas to make it easier for the reader, such as an ingredients list or serving suggestions.
How To Fix Low Value Content
I have 571 published posts on my recipe site and the thought of going through each one was going to be a long exhausting task to put it lightly!
So this is what I did.
- TITLES: I looked through all my titles. Why? Some were, shall we say a bit over the top. For example; the best ever super tasty fudgy brownies. So I changed them to a more simple format ie: Easy Fudgy Brownies.
- OLD POSTS: I quickly went through some old posts, added some relevant text that would be extra helpful for the reader.
- LISTS: If there were too many bullet points in a post I changed them to the paragraph setting. So if there were 2 or more lots of bullet point lists I would only leave one as a list and change the rest to a paragraph.
This is all I did. I did these changes in a day and reapplied to Google Adsense. Within 2 days I was approved!
I will continue to update old content and always improve on my new ones, and in 60 days time I will probably reapply to Journey by Mediavine. Why? I know, I was treated like dirt, they were rude and the customer service is not great but the ads are less intrusive and my core web vitals were really good when I was this this network.
Were All My Sites Terminated on Journey Mediavine?
No, which is the weird thing. This site you are on has some AI images but has less listed items. The posts have more long written articles and fully edited by myself so I presume they like that. Recipes in my eyes don’t want to be too long, at the end of the day you just want the recipe not the whole history behind the recipe! What’s your opinion?
Update on Termination By Journey Mediavine
Since the termination from Journey I got a email on the 4th April saying that I may appeal their decision to terminate my recipe site based on their findings of low value templated or MFA content. So I appealed and filled in a simple form! Their Marketplace Quality team said they will review my appeal and will be notified via email of the final decision in 10-15 business days.
On 25th April I was approved and the ads were reenabled immediately.