15 Common Mistakes that Violate Google Adsense TOS
May 24th, 2005Google Adsense publishers often commit common mistakes that could ban their Adsense account. Google Adsense is a popular web advertising program which provides a good income source for many websites. There are well defined terms of service to strictly adhere to when participating in the program.
On my visit through sites and forums, I daily notice several instances of misuse of Adsense ads. So here a few helpful Google Adsense tips, probably many you already know, and few you might gain by knowing now. These adsense faq are all picked from the Program Policies, Terms and Conditions and FAQ itself and presented in a simplified manner.
1. Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. You know this one very well. This is a surefire way to close you Adsense account. Never tell your office associates or friends to click on them. Keep a check if your family or children are busy increasing your income by clicking your ads and indirectly trying to stop your income. Dont even think of offering incentives for clicks, using automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Adsense is very smart to detect fraudulent clicks. Check the ads which appear on your pages by the Google Preview tool if required.
2. Never change the Adsense code. There are enough means of adsense optimization & customizations available to change the colour, background or border to suit your needs. Do whatever you want to do outside the code, never fiddle within the ad or the search code. They know it when you do. The search code has more limitations to colour and placement, but you should adhere to the rules. The code may stop working and violates the TOS.
3. Do not place more than 3 ad units and 3 ad links or 2 adsense search boxes on any web page. Anyway, ads will not appear in those units even if you place more ad units. But this is the limit they set, so it is better to stick to it.
4. Do not run competitive contextual text ad or search services on the same site which offer Google Adsense competition in their field. Never try to create link structures resembling the adsense ads. Never use other competitive search tools on the same pages which have Adsense powered Google search. They do allow affiliate or limited-text links. Update: Google has allowed you to run contextual advertising like Yahoo ads, Chitika etc provided the ads do not resemble Adsense ads.
5. Do not disclose confidential information about your account like the CTR, CPM and income derived via individual ad units or any other confidential information they may reveal to you. However, you may reveal the total money you make as per recent updates to the TOS.
6. Label headings as “sponsored links” or “advertisements” only. Other labels are not allowed. I have seen many sites label ads with other titles. Dont make your site a target in a few seconds gaze.
7. Never launch a New Page for clicked ads by default. Adsense ads should open on the same page. You may be using a base target tag to open all links in a new window or frame by default. Correct it now as they do not want new pages opening from clicked ads.
8. One Account suffices for Multiple websites. You do not need to create 5 accounts for 5 different websites. One account will do. If you live in the fear that if one account is closed down for violation of TOS, believe me they will close all accounts when they find out. You can keep track of clicks by using channels with real time statistics. They will automatically detect the new site and display relevant ads.
9. Place ads only on Content Pages. Advertisers pay only for content based ads. Content drives relevant ads. Although you might manage some clicks from error, login, registration, “thank you” or welcome pages, parking pages or pop ups, it will get you out of the program.
10. Do not mask ad elements. Alteration of colours and border is a facility to blend or contrast ads as per your site requirements. I have seen many sites where the url part is of the same colour as the background. While blending the ad with your site is a good idea, hiding relevant components of the ads is not allowed. Also do not block the visibility of ads by overlapping images, pop ups, tables etc.
11. Do not send your ads by email. Html formatted emails look good and allow placement of these javascript ads. But it is not allowed as per TOS. You do not want impressions registering on their logs from any email even once. They are watching!
12. Keep track of your content. So Adsense is not allowed on several non content pages. But it is also not allowed on several content pages too. Do not add it on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results. Also exclude any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content.
13. Do not alter the results after ad clicks or searches – Ensure you are not in any way altering the site which the user reaches to after clicking the ads. Do not frame, minimize, remove, redirect or otherwise inhibit the full and complete display of any Advertiser Page or Search Results Page after the user clicks on any Ad or Search results.
14. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing – Although the definition of ‘excessive’ is a gray area and is subject to discretion, yet Google adsense with correct placement, focused content and high traffic will get you much more income than other programs, so excessive advertising is not required. Keyword stuffing does target better focused ads, but overdoing it is not required.
15. Ensure you Language is Supported – Adsense supports “Chinese (simplified), Japanese, Danish, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, English, Polish, Finnish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Swedish, Italian and Turkish”. In addition, AdSense for search is available in Czech, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese. If your web pages language is not supported, do not use the code on such pages.
Update:
16. Maximum 2 referral button per product per page – With the launch of the google adsense referral program, you are allowed to put only 2 referral buttons for adsense referral, adwords referral, Google pack and Firefox with google toolbar referral. Update: This feature is closing Aug 2008.
17. Do not specify Google ads as your alternate ads. – Several services like Chitika eminimalls allow you to place alternate urls, when a targeted paying ad cannot be displayed. This involved creating an simple html page and putting the ad to be displayed instead. Even Adsense allows an alternate url feature instead of displaying public service ads. But never use Adsense ads as alternate urls.
18. Do not confuse with adjacent images – It was a common policy to increase CTR by placing same number of images as the number of text ads, which falsely gave the impression that the text ads represented an explanation to these images. Inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads is not allowed. Make sure that the ads and images are not arranged in a way that could easily mislead or confuse your visitors. More.
Whenever in doubt, it is better to ask for adsense help from the learned staff of Google Adsense. They are very helpful!
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Now adsense supports more languages – that includes Indic – Hindi, Gujarati etc.
very good please me the details of how to make revenue from adsense and how to get hits thanks
srikanth
as u said in the 7 point that never launch a new page for ad. i have a question that if someone copy adsense ad link and open in text mode internet and open the ad link is it make any problem
In response to Stas Bekman’s comment #16, virtually exactly the same thing happened to our business – Google mistakenly closed our AdSense account.
After nearly 3 years of steady page impression growth, with Adsense earnings consistent around $4-7 a day, one day our page impressions trebled, resulting in earnings of $31 in one day. Two days later our account was closed for ‘fraudulent clicks’ with no further details.
In hindight, there was a perfectly rational explanation for the spike in page impressions – our site is soccer news related and it was a really big soccer news day. Confident we had done nothing wrong, we pled our case and launched an appeal.
The language we used was virtually the same as your own. We too had the same theories about competitors clicking on ads. Three months later we still do not have a Google AdSense account and we have given up writing to them.
We are now consulting a law firm since it has had a pretty serious impact on our business. We were right in the middle of closing an important round of financing, and it nearly cost us our investment.
We are left with more questions than answers…
We had 8 other sites which had run Google ads at various times over the past 3 years with the same Google AdSense account. Are all of them now tainted, or just the ones with active Google ads?
Is it just the one site we think (but aren’t 100% sure) had the spike in impressions and thus the increased earnings? Google won’t tell us.
What happens if we sell our sites to an outside buyer or transfer them to a new division? Will they be banned from Adsense too? If so, that DRASTICALLY affects the price we can seek. If we don’t know which ones are tainted, it affects the price of all of them, and it would be unethical not to disclose it to an outside buyer.
How about sites from a sister business which had / has the same Google Analytics code running as the problem site? Are those sites tainted too?
In summary, our experience has mean’t we have had to disclose a pretty troublesome sounding fact to outside investors right in the middle of a crucial financing. It has been very problematic for us and extremely uncomfortable.
I’d be very interested to hear from other people who have had similar experiences or could shed light on these questions. I can be reached through the website above…
Clearly it’s not an isolated problem…
Very helpful. However i have a comment on the last point. If anyone is familiar with the Adsense Beautifier for Wordpress, is that illegal too? I have removed it from my blog. I dare not reinstate it again if this is true. Its just some patterns next to the ad. However, i dont know whether its against the TOS.. Please assist. Thank you!
Thanks for the nice tips. I was doing few things in wrong fashion and after reading this blog I’ll certainly check the stuff. Thanks again.
My Adsense account was disabled today and I’m mad as hell. As soon as my site started making money they canceled it without so much of a reason. Are there any other ad companies I could use? Thanks keepup the good work.
I am with Adsense from about 2 years now
They are really helpful.I like their program
Do you know about any other such program
Very helpful. Inadvertently I had broken 1. Minor infraction but I’m glad to be able to fix it before I get into trouble.
hyee….emmm…i think your information give me some idea…thanks for that and keep posting good information..
thanks for saving my ass.
Hi everyone!
A couple of years ago my Adsense account was banned in my site htt://site.com then I created another site for my sister who has her own Adsense account. Her site though is hosted in a sub-directory of server, i.e http://hersite.site.com
My question is: Will b there any problem if I place her Adsense codes on my main site?
I most appreciate any help. Thanks!
thanks for the tips. now i know that i’am wrong, and i will improve my blogs. thanks again. ^^
Troubled > I wouldn’t recommend doing that as it violates Google’s TOS. If you’re looking for an AdSense alternative, I highly recommend Chitika.
Fortunately I have not done any of these mistakes (yet)!
that is interesting article you post here.
i am curently using adsense and adbrite, can anyone tell me is it ok to put adbrite together with google adsense?
thanks in advance.
Great post. Great guideline for new publishers. They will be benefited most.
I recommend you all to check Program policy+TOS+Adsense Blog regularly.
hi,
very useful article indeed… We have faced a problem, where someone (from other country) intentionally kept clicking the ads and our adsense account was closed for fraud clicks !!!!!
what can be done for this??? who is responsible???
Can someone please explain about not having Google ads next to video? What does this mean? What kind of video?
What about underneath a youtube video embedded on a page with content?
Thank you!
thanx for the tips, really a great post for newbie’s like me.
thanx again
Hi, I am new with google adsense, first time when i implement the code. I didn’t read much and so curious that i click on my own ad. I earn $1.41 on the day.
Since then, it earn $0. I know that i did mistakes in the past, but my account is not banned as yet as I have stop doing so.
How do I recover from having $0?
Thanks.
learning by mistakes… :)
You have write the most complete adsense mistake reference i seen so far. I will take a closer look.
Thanks
Very handy tips, interesting read. Thanks!
Hey Vic, it all depends on your site. You must have ‘earned’ that $1.41 from your own clicks.
If Google hasn’t banned you for that, then earning $0 has nothing to do with it.
If you didn’t read it all enough to know not to click your own ads, perhaps you should try reading all/most the info that Google provides for this.
There’s implementation, colors blending, channels for testing, etc.
You also need a good amount of TRAFFIC.
Good luck! :-)
Thanks for the information…
But there is more to it. Google strategically is shifting ad revenue back to its search results. Advertising on Google search result page is quite high so advertiser will end up paying multifold as compared to what he is paying now.
Also there method of detecting invalid click is also very funny, some of them I have listed on http://www.fixthegoogle.com
Some very usefull tips…I’ll try to use it wiselly thanx.
Google so complicated to get what you want
Thanks for the Info..
I switched to Yahoo Publishers.. It pays much better than Google Adsense..
thank you for this great informations , I am a new blogger and I think that these tips will be useful