My website w3cay.com is a site for sharing interesting websites. When I first built it, I wanted to share interesting websites one by one in a list format. To quickly fill the site with content, I used web scraping to collect and filter content from other websites.
To be honest, I thought it worked quite well. Google and Bing’s indexing was steadily increasing, starting from February 2025 and peaking around May-July. According to website statistics, I could reach about 500 UV per day, which was pretty good for a cold-start website. I was very happy at the time.
First AdSense Application: Rejected#
I thought it was time to monetize, but when I applied for Google AdSense, I was shocked—the review was rejected due to low-quality content.
I looked up the reasons on Google and found that each article or page must have at least 500 words and comply with the E-E-A-T principles. E-E-A-T guidelines are standards used by Quality Raters to evaluate website content quality, assessing a website across four dimensions: “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.”
However, many of the websites I shared could be introduced in just one sentence or at most 200 words. I simply couldn’t write that much content.
Trying to Expand Content with AI: Rejected Again#
Later, I used AI to rewrite and expand the website content, adding background information, usage instructions, personal experiences, and more. However, since I had published too many websites before, even using AI to supplement was very time-consuming. Moreover, much of the generated content felt too AI-generated when I read it myself—it seemed like it was just done to meet requirements.
I manually wrote and used AI to polish about 70% of the website’s content, then tried submitting again. The result was still rejection, for the same reason.
Later, I directly deleted the remaining recommended content that I couldn’t write about and tried submitting again, but it still wasn’t approved. I wonder if Google detected that my content was AI-generated spam.
After some reflection, I realized this approach wouldn’t work. Even if I got approved later, maintaining a website this way was too exhausting. I was the only one working on it, and I needed to write massive amounts of content to fill the site—the cost was too high.
Decision to Refactor: From List to Random Recommendations#
Afterward, I decided to completely refactor my website. I changed from a blog-style list format to a random recommendation format on the homepage. I unified the UI, interactions, and the website’s tech stack. After adding the site’s disclaimer, privacy policy, about page, and other content, I submitted it to Google for review again.
Unexpectedly, it was approved immediately. I thought to myself, I had worked hard for half a year, and it would have been better to start over from scratch.
Looking back, I realize that for half a year, I was just creating internet garbage without creating any valuable content. That’s why Google kept rejecting me. Collecting content from the web and posting it on my own site, while it reduced costs, didn’t really make the website meaningful.
Results After the Redesign#
After this website redesign, the bounce rate dropped from 70% to an average of around 50%, indicating that the website is attractive to users.
Summary#
This experience taught me that you can’t take shortcuts when building a website. If you want good traffic, the website must provide genuinely valuable content or a unique user experience.
Through this experience, I’ve learned:
Content quality matters more than quantity: Rather than using web scraping and AI to generate low-quality content in bulk, focus on creating truly valuable content.
User experience is core: Changing from a list format to random recommendations not only reduced content maintenance costs but also improved user experience. The bounce rate dropping from 70% to 50% is the best proof.
Following platform rules is important: Although the E-E-A-T principles may seem like restrictions, they actually help websites provide better content and services.
Starting over isn’t scary: Sometimes, rather than continuing to invest in the wrong direction, it’s better to cut losses and start fresh.
Now, w3cay.com has passed AdSense review. Although the traffic may not be as high as before, at least I’m doing something meaningful rather than creating internet garbage.