MFA stands for Made For AdSense. It refers to a blog whose content is farmed out to non-professional writers (or scripts). The goal of these sites is not the creation of quality content, but rather the collection of revenue from AdSense or other advertising schemes.

One attribute of these sites is often the creation and or organization of the content according to heavy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. Some of these include separating the content that the GoogleBot sees from what humans see on a particular site, loading sites with keywords, etc.

This is a difficult definition, however, because many legitimate companies are moving to “content networks” where they recruit people to make their content for them. They too, of course, employ online advertising and also try and enhance their SEO qualities. The question becomes one of integrity and judgement.

In short, how much emphasis is placed on creating quality content vs. just getting a higher Google PageRank or more AdSense traffic? If the stress is on the quality of the content and being a serious resource then I’d say the site is a legitimate content network.

If however the site is all about doing whatever it can to get more hits (and hence more money) — and the content is only a means to that end — then the site is an MFA site. That’s my definition.: