In a recent move in their Google Adsense program, some heat from some bloggers is being generated here and originated from the same blog here (and discussed in this Register article) The thing that I find interesting about the Adsense program is it really isn’t all that different fundamentally than any other affiliate program. All affiliate programs have terms and conditions (TaC) which say that if you cheat them or violate their usage agreement in any way, you will be shut down — and usually not be paid. Sometimes, in some cases, these TaC are very difficult not to violate in some way, even for legitimate webmasters.

There are blogs and blog services out there currently, right now, where the publically available published rules are clearly being broken. Without naming names and being a whistle blower (or maybe I should be), I’ll simply display the public available program policies in bold that are available when webmasters consider signing up for the Google Adsense program:

Site may not include:

Excessive profanity
Hate, violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization
Hacking/cracking content
Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
Pornography, adult, or mature content
Gambling or casino-related content
Excessive advertising
Pop-ups that interfere with site navigation or are for downloads

Note gambling or casino-related content? I’ve seen a (virtual) sportsbetting site that is running Google ads. Wouldn’t this be “casino-related” yes/no? This also says if someone is running an adult site, legal or not, forget this program. “Excessive advertising” would be a violation that is repeated in a later rule, so read on. I read part of this rule to cover the “no illegal sites” rule that, again, every affiliate (or at least every legit affiliate program) has in it. The move not to include adult sites is not necessarily a legal issue, but a moral issue on Google’s part, apparently. If you have picutres of nudity in your blog, then you would most certainly be in violation.

AdWords ads may not be placed on search results pages.
Hint: a well known blog with search capability (that is linked from this page, actually) is currently using this program on their search results page! See the screenshot below (sitename was removed) – busted.

Personal Pages

In general, we do not accept personal pages, chat sites, or blogs into the AdSense program. However, if a site contains targeted, text-based content and/or provides a product or service, we may consider it for participation.

Most blogs do not provide a product or service, though one could clearly argue that almost all blogs include “text-based content”. This is a really gray area where most blogs would not be accepted into the program to run the ads — though I’ve seen many, many blogs using the adsense program.

Double-Serving
Site may only show one set of Google AdWords ads per page.
Again, I’ve seen a couple violators of this rule. Blogs run vertically pretty deep if the author is verbose, and I’ve seen multiple strips in the sidebar on a couple of blogs. This is a clear violation. One = 1. The very first rule on the page deals specifically with Ad Code Modification:

Ad Placement

Only one ad unit may be placed on each web page.
Ads must not be displayed on any domain parking websites, pop-ups, pop-unders, error, registration, or “thank you” pages, or in any email.
Ads may not be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant.
Elements on a page must not obscure any portion of the ads, and the ad colors must be such that the ad text and URL are visible.

So no email, no thank you pages after form results are submitted (because they can’t directly check out these pages or generate sponsor ads from the content?). No 404 pages, sorry. No banner farms (pages of nothing but advertisements).

Competitive Ads
We do not permit AdWords ads to be published on web pages that also contain what could be considered competing ads. This would include all content-targeted ads as well as text-based ads. Text-based ads, for this situation, can be loosely defined as ads that mimic AdWords ads or appear to be associated with AdWords ads on your site. We do allow affiliate or limited-text links.

A no compete clause? I guess it is safe to say that if one is running any other banner or text-based ads on the page where they are running the Google Ads, there could be a violation here.

In closing, I think it pays to review the TaC (or program rules in this case) agreement of any affiliate webmasters use and when in doubt ask for clarification. If you have something in writing from the sponsor saying that what you are doing is OK, then you do not have to worry. Otherwise, they can let you run up a nice amount of $$ and then shut you down. Those who get shut down for violating the TaC usually claim innocence and that the sponsor was just trying to scam them, but I’d argue that in the majority of cases there was blatant abuse of the TaC that caused the sponsor to take action. As the cliche` goes: look before you leap.

Related entries:
Opera and Google Adwords
Do Blogs Spam Google’s Results
eBay says no to Google Adwords
Google Adsense releases 2 new formats
Google adds more free services and features
… more Google entries from Things that … make you go hmm

Did this post make you go hmm?

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