After uniQlicks began spamming AdSense publishers with fake Google AdSense termination emails in an attempt to scare publishers into signing up for their “invalid click protection”, a lot of people asked me what they can do themselves to protect their AdSense account. The AdSense team contacted me and said they have a list of tips for publishers, and yes, they are all free :)
It is also worth noting that they do not recommend using any third party software or custom ad implementations.
Here are the tips from the AdSense team:
We’ve provided some points below to help address and clarify some invalid clicks issues:
We understand that it’s not always possible to control the behavior of your users, but you can be proactive about monitoring your traffic, and you can take steps to ensure that your site provides a helpful and safe environment for users and advertisers. Here are some top tips for keeping your account in good standing (which you may have seen before): https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23921
Expanding on the tip “Be aware of how your site is promoted.”, we’d like to remind you that, should you purchase traffic to promote your site, you do so at your own risk. There are many site promotion services out there that appear to be legitimate PPC advertising companies or search engines, but actually may be sending artificial traffic to your site for their own gain. (For legal reasons, we’re not allowed to disclose the names of such services.)To combat this, we highly recommend that you use channels to segment your traffic by source (e.g. a channel for your site’s Google AdWords traffic only). If one channel’s reports look particularly suspicious, you may want to consider unsubscribing from that traffic service. We also recommend using Analytics to slice and dice your traffic reports further to ensure that you’re receiving clicks from users who are genuinely interested in your ads.
Though we encourage you to be proactive about monitoring your site and ad traffic, we highly discourage the use of click tracking via third-party software or custom ad implementations. These methods may:
inadvertently disclose sensitive information about you or your site to a third-party
disrupt Google’s ad delivery or click logging in a way that violates our Terms and Conditions
In addition, click tracking may not provide you with significantly more information than you can already find in your AdSense or Analytics reports. We believe that the creative use of channels can help you gain detailed insights into your account.
Invalid clicks can come from many sources, as described at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16737. While we’re unable to go into the details of our monitoring system, you should know that invalid clicks don’t always mean clicking on your own ads or using click bots. Our Ad Traffic Quality Team looks for numerous types of activity that may inflate advertiser costs, then takes the necessary actions to protect our advertisers.
That said, we still find that many publishers are clicking on their own ads, possibly because they feel that Google is disregarding those clicks. Keep in mind that even though we filter the revenue from an invalid click, we don’t ignore it completely. If we detect significant invalid activity on your AdSense ads, we may take action on your account to protect our advertisers from inflated costs. Here are some examples of situations in which clicking your own ads is prohibited:
Clicking to ensure that Google is properly registering clicks on your ads (we log all ad clicks, but it can sometimes take up to 24 hours before your reports are finalized)
Followup from Jen: Anyone have any additional tips they use to protect their accounts? I think this pretty much covers most of what I do or advise clients to do in order to protect their AdSense accounts. The most important tip, in my opinion, is the one about being cautious when buying traffic (well, aside from the obvious one of never clicking your own ads!) Too many people get tempted with offers of cheap traffic, but always keep in mind you will never be sure if the traffic is legitimate or artificial. So while you are pretty safe buying PPC ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing/adCenter, definitely avoid third tier networks where you cannot judge the traffic quality first. Anyone had any horror stories with buying bad traffic?
And thank you to Google for providing this!
Press my buttons!
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It is probably the worst feeling for a publisher… checking your email only to discover a “Google AdSense Account Disabled” email from Google. That is what happened to an AdSense publisher Steve this morning (and presumably to others as well)… and it turns out that it was a fake termination letter done by a company that sells invalid click prevention services. And even worse, the company - uniQlicks - used a Google.com address as the From address, to fool even more publishers into thinking they’ve been terminated. If you haven’t received one, I am sure you can imagine your reaction thinking your account has been terminated, only to discover it is a bait and switch technique designed to sell their service to “protect” your AdSense account.
The company using this sleazy spam scare tactic is uniQlicks, a company that has been popping up recently with a bunch of paid blog posts / “guest blog posts” on a variety of making money online blogs.
Here is the complete letter Steve received this morning, with a subject line of “Google AdSense Account Disabled”:
While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our
advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.
Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance
for your understanding and cooperation.
Our apologies for scaring you. Your AdSense account is
fine, and we are not affiliated in any way with Google.
But the above email could very well land in your inbox
one day - this time sent not by us, but by Google.
We checked out your cool <keyword> <keyword> resource. <2 keyword specifics removed as per Steve’s request>
You are using AdSense, but apparently haven’t installed
any script to protect your site from invalid clicks.
This means that your AdSense account is at risk of
termination due to invalid clicks. AdSense bans are for
life, so your income would be wiped out forever.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that we can help
safeguard your site and your AdSense income from
invalid clicks. A basic account is free, why not try
it out?
Again, I’m sorry if I shocked you with this email. No
harm was intended. Our job is to help protect
livelihoods - and sometimes extreme measures are needed
to do just that.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.
I look forward to hearing from you!
So not only is uniQlicks sending unsolicited spam, they are doing it by impersonating Google as well. You have to wonder how many publishers don’t even bother reading down past what appears to be the end of the email to actually get the message as well. There have been some phishing click fraud warning emails sent out recently, but nothing to the effect where it was done by a company selling services.
This particular email was not send to the same email address associated with Steve’s AdSense account, so it is clearly not in any way associated with AdSense.
So if you receive an AdSense suspended email, first scroll to the end to make sure it isn’t a uniQlicks spam email. Second, go to login to your AdSense account, but by entering in the address manually - NEVER click the link from an email in case it is a phishing attempt. If your account is suspended, you will NOT be able to login to your account. Or you can check ad serving on any of your sites, if ads are running normally, there isn’t a problem with an account being suspended.
I would also NOT RECOMMEND using uniQlicks, since this is the type of spam scare tactics they are using on publishers. If unsolicited spam sent from “Google” with this kind of message is how they promote their company and service, you have to wonder if their invalid click protection is just as bad.
Update: Daniel Tsieh of UniQlicks has posted a comment claiming the emails aren’t spam since they are sent to a publisher’s site they visit (obviously a different definition of spam than the rest of us have!) and defends the “shock tactic” of sending an email impersonating Google AdSense. You can read my response below it. I would have expected to hear an apology or a “my bad”, instead of accusing publishers for not using their services since many were scared by the email. And not surprisingly, I still will not recommend it.
Update 2: Daniel from uniQlicks responds again, this time insulting bloggers, who make up a good portion of his target customer base.
Press my buttons!
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I have been on the road for most of the last two weeks, so I have been getting current events news on both CNN.com and Google News, particularly about the Air France plane crash. A couple of days ago I noticed Google News was now embedding videos from (what I believe are) “trusted video news sources”, such as the Associated Press. If you see a tiny YouTube icon, you click the news link, and the video pops up underneath and begins playing. Sunday morning I noticed that one of the news videos about the Air France plane crash was showing ads for a travel site, which popped up overlaying the bottom of the video, after the video ran for about 15-3o seconds.
Inappropriate? Yes, it is a plane crash and people are sensitive to the issue. As an advertiser? Well, I can’t speak for all advertisers, but I am pretty sure most would be extremely ticked off to discover their advertisement for a travel site were showing up on a video about a major air disaster.
Here are screenshots from Google News showing the ads on the disaster videos, the first advertising charter flights, the second advertising a Brazil photo gallery, targeted since the flight took off from Brazil. Click each for the full size version.
Now, it has been a week since the Air France crash, why hasn’t Google added that phrase to a stop word filter on YouTube when showing through Google News, similar to the AdSense stop word filter (which words pretty well). And it isn’t exclusive just to the Air France disaster either. Other world current events with human tragedy have also been showing inappropriate ads as well.
In my mind, news videos that have anything to do with disasters, loss of life, terrorism, etc, should never show ads… PERIOD. It doesn’t take much to know that inappropriate ads will appear on these videos. And since many do seem targeted, such as the Brazil photo gallery ad on the Air France crash video and solar panels on the collapsed roof explosion, why isn’t it being stopped? And for that matter, why don’t these video uploaders - particularly the major news organizations - have the ability to click a button or check off a checkbox stating that the video contains content that might be disturbing or upsetting to others, and that advertising should not be displayed.
Perhaps when they launched this feature, no one thought about the fact that both viewers and advertisers might be offended by ads overlaying on inappropriate videos. It is far better for Google to lose a bit of income with an over-excessive stop word filter (one that would trigger for any news stories featuring words such as bomb, crash, kills, deaths, explosion, terrorism, etc). But in my opinion, there is no excuse for this kind of situation to be happening period, especially when shown on Google News, and particularly when they want to be considered a trusted source of news information.
Press my buttons!
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In March at SES New York, I was one of the guest judges for Chitika’s SearchAppalooza, to find the best new search app for 2009 (and there was also a pretty hysterical Oreo cookie eating contest at the end). Chitika has put up a montage video of some of my comments on the featured search apps on their blog.
It was done American Idol style, where each person had a few minutes to demo and describe their search app, and we got to put on our best Simon Cowell with our comments… but I think my style was much more Paula
With the new AdSense policies that were released last week, there was definitely some confusion about what would and wouldn’t be allowed, particularly to do with blending ads. I have gotten some clarification from Katie from the Google AdSense team on some of the policies that has people confused.
First, if you haven’t read about the new policies, you should read the full AdSense policies update I did here, which also has full commentaries on each of the new changes that Google made.
Now, onto the clarification from Google:
On the “Enouraging Clicks” section of the new policies, Google added the following to the “Publisher may not…” part:
Format ads so that they become indistinguishable from other content on that page.
Format site content so that it is difficult to distinguish it from ads.
So that raised my questions about just how “blended” would be considered too much for Google and thus be in violation of the AdSense terms. So here is Google’s response:
I also understand you wanted some clarification on blending. I can assure you that all of our optimization tips are still valid, such as embedding your ad units within text and blending your ad colors. However, there’s a distinction between formatting the ads to fit your site and tricking users into thinking that the ads are your site’s content. For example, it’s OK to make the ad links match the color of the other links on your site, but it may be confusing if the ads are surrounded by lots of similar looking
links and there is no distinction between the two. (You can see an example of this here.)
The intent of this policy is to protect advertisers from accidental clicks made by users who are unable to distinguish the Google ads from other content on the page. We also want to make sure that our publishers are providing a good user experience with Google ads. If publishers would like additional guidance, they can look at this blog post and our Help Center entry regarding best practices for laying out their sites and ads.
So this clears up a lot of the confusion that many publishers were having about the blending issue. AdSense has actually been sending compliancy warnings to publishers doing this kind of thing for quite some time, so in this respect it is nothing new and is similar to Google giving warnings to those publishers using images next to ad units.
Next was the change in the Google Webmaster Guidelines section which included:
Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Now, we all know that there are completely legitimate uses for hidden text, although they are most often used for far more devious purposes. But there was the concern that those publishers using the technique for legit reasons could end up getting a compliancy warning over this. Here is Google’s response:
It also looks like you had a question about hidden text and hidden links (from the webmaster quality guidelines section). To clarify, this refers to any text or links that are solely for search engines rather than for visitors. As such, the spoiler TV site example would not be in violation of this, since that design is intended for the visitors.
So as long as a publisher is using hidden text or links for purely legitimate reasons, and not to trick search engines for example, publishers do not need to worry about running afoul of this one.
Lastly, there was an addition to the Ad Placement section, which saw this added:
Google ads, search boxes, or search results may not be:
Placed on pages whose content or URL could confuse users into thinking it is associated with Google due to the misuse of logos, trademarks, or other brand features.
Placed on, within, or alongside other Google products or services in a manner that violates the policies of that product or service.
Now, for sometime I have heard from publishers who had “AdSense” included in their site’s domain name who have had ad serving turned off on those accounts, and there were likely others as well using other Google trademarks who ran into this same issue. But this policy kind of brought everything into line. Of course, that could be interpreted many different ways, including whether this blog is in violation because the term Google AdSense is used on the page and in the URLs. Here is Google’s clarification on the new brand changes.
Lastly, in regards to the use of Google Brand Features, what we’re primarily concerned with are sites that use a Google Brand Feature as the most prominent element on the web page, or sites that display a Google Brand Feature in any manner that implies a relationship or affiliation with, sponsorship, or endorsement by Google. That said, mentions of the word “Google” in a blog post, article, etc, are fine, as is any Google branding that is naturally associated with our Google products.
And lastly, I commented on the fact that the policies were missing the time stamp, making it pretty difficult for publishers to be aware if there were any changes made, something publishers are required to check regularly. But fortunately (especially for me) this will be added back onto the policies page.
First, thanks for pointing out that the date stamp is missing from the bottom of the program policies. We do usually include this information, and we’re working on adding it back in.
This should help clear up some of the confusion last week surrounding the new policies Google introduced. What does everyone think about the new blending clarification? Now, it isn’t really that big of a deal for most publishers and most won’t be affected. And nice to know the blending technique that I (along with many other publishers!) have perfected will be perfectly within the new AdSense policies.
Press my buttons!
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If you have been waiting to get an invite into the Google AdSense / Google Analytics integration, you are in luck because they have just opened the entire program up to all publishers.
Over the past few months, we’ve been gradually inviting publishers to integrate their AdSense accounts with Google Analytics, and today we’re happy to announce that this feature is now available to all publishers. Integrating your account with Analytics will provide you with more detailed information about traffic to your pages and how users interact with your site.
I have used this for a few months now, and it is stellar for looking at things like revenue earned from individual referrers (how I discovered that StumbleUpon traffic tends to have a higher eCPM than most other traffic, at least on one site of mine) as well as on individual pages, which is pretty convenient if you don’t want to set up individual channels for each page or you don’t have enough channels to do it. You can also look at time of day stats as well with the trending data.
You should see an option within your AdSense account when you login to your dashboard which will start the integration process.
They also have a handy video with set-up instructions:
Of course, there are always those who have the Google tin foil conspiracy theories who probably won’t want to link Google AdSense with Google Analytics, but personally I find the added level of data for doing AdSense optimization is well worth doing it.
Press my buttons!
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It’s new AdSense Policies time. Remember, when you agreed to the AdSense terms & conditions, you automatically agreed to also abide by the AdSense Policies, even when they are changed, so be sure you aren’t in violation of the new policies :)
And some of the changes are pretty huge in my opinion, I just wish this was changed before I was able to grill the Google AdSense team last week at ADSPACE! Here are the key changes that are most important for publishers (and keep reading for the complete details about each).
Selling text links to casinos, gambling sites, prescription drug sites is now a violation of the AdSense terms, since publishers now cannot *link* to those sites (and many other types of sites).
Making your contents/ads blended enough that it is hard to tell them apart.
Very specific webmaster guidelines AdSense publishers must abide by, including no hidden text/links, that sites must be information-rich, and no doorways or cookie cutter affiliate sites.
Changes if you receive traffic from paid search
This took a lot longer to finish, because they completely reorganized how the various policies were split up into headers, which meant a lot of back and forth to make sure everything was accounted for and to double check for the additions and removals.
So, here is the rundown on what is new, removed and changed from the last policies update.
In the first paragraph, some of the wording has been changed around, including removing the reference to “While in many cases we prefer to work with publishers to achieve policy compliance” that appeared prior to the mention of disabling an AdSense account. The new paragraph reads:
Publishers participating in the AdSense program are required to adhere to the following policies, so please read them carefully. If you fail to comply with these policies, we reserve the right to disable ad serving to your site and/or disable your AdSense account at any time. If your account is disabled, you will not be eligible for further participation in the AdSense program.
In the second paragraph, it was split into two sentences with the addition of:
please check back often for updates
So this could be a sign that it could be updated more frequently than we have seen in the past. It is worth noting though, that this new version of the policies is NOT date stamped (the old one had a notation of the date it was last updated) so unless someone goes through line by line, it could be very easy to miss any updates and/or changes to it. So if Google is listening, please add an “Updated: April 28, 2009″ to make my life easier
Invalid Clicks & Impressions
This snippet has been added prior to the “Learn more” notation:
Publishers may not click on their own ads or use any means to artificially inflate impressions and/or clicks, including manual methods.
AdSense lists different “prohibited methods” but they have removed some of the methods from the list, and have added a completely new section later in the policies called “Traffic Sources”. So in this section, ”third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs” have all been removed to be added to the later section. So don’t get all excited that paid-to-surf is suddenly allowed
Encouraging Clicks
In this section, the following has been added to the snippet:
This includes, but is not limited to, offering compensation to users for viewing ads or performing searches, promising to raise money for third parties for such behavior, or placing images next to individual ads.
Under the “Publisher may not…” section they have removed (but added it to the later traffic sources section):
May not promote sites displaying ads through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites
May not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behavior
Then under the “Publisher may not…” section, they have added:
Compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behavior.
Place ads in a floating box script.
Format ads so that they become indistinguishable from other content on that page.
Format site content so that it is difficult to distinguish it from ads.
And wow, those last two additions are HUGE and can have major implications to many publishers who have perfected the blended technique, especially those who use blended with wrapping text around the ad units. The key will be just about how blended they can be. I will try and get followup from Google regarding this, because this could potentially put a lot of publishers in violations of the policies, depending on how much wiggle room there is in the “format site content so that it is difficult to distinguish it from ads”. Just wow.
Content Guidelines
Another MAJOR change here. Before, the Google policies stated that “Sites displaying Google ads may not include”. But now it says “Sites with Google ads may not include or link to:” (emphasis mine) There will definitely be publishers who fall afoul of this new change. It could even mean that a blog that has an imported RSS feed with a link to a news story about racial discrimination could be at risk. But it also means that anyone selling text links on their sites would also now be in violation of the new AdSense policies. So if you are selling text links to casinos/gambling or prescription drug sites in particular, you are now violating the AdSense terms. It is definitely one way for Google to reduce the number of text links sold, by making it a violation for AdSense publishers to link to a few of the key link buying areas.
Under the “may not include or link to:”, there were some changes. “Violent content” was split from “Content related to racial intolerance or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization”.
And there were several categories that included “sales or promotion of…”, but have all been changed to simply “sales of”. The ones affected are:
Sales of beer or hard alcohol
Sales of tobacco or tobacco-related products
Sales of prescription drugs
Sales of weapons or ammunition (e.g., firearms, firearm components, fighting knives, stun guns)
Sales of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods
This was likely to clarify the position of sites that were simply informational and not selling products, but which the “promotion” left a lot up to interpretation.
But now, it is a new section, which is mostly brand new, although some of the points (such as the deceptive or manipulative content) which was in a different section of the previous terms. It now says:
Do not place excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of webpages.
Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
Do not include deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site’s search engine ranking (e.g., your site’s PageRank).
Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
Worth noting is the fact that AdSense sites must be a “useful, information-rich site”, which ((cough)) we know some publishers will run afoul of, especially those with Made for AdSense type of sites. And it will also mean spammy publishers using hidden text/links will no longer be allowed to do it… although it does raise the question of sites like spoiler tv sites that tend to hide the text of extreme spoilers, requiring a user to highlight the text if they really want to be spoiled.
Traffic Sources
This is another new section, although many parts were pulled from other parts of the older version.
They have changed the part regarding those who are getting traffic through online advertising. It used to read:
Publishers using online advertising to drive traffic to pages showing Google ads must comply with the spirit of Google’s Landing Page Quality Guidelines. For instance, if you advertise for sites participating in the AdSense program, the advertising should not be deceptive to users.
Now it is changed to:
Receive traffic from online advertising unless the site complies with the spirit of Google’s Landing Page Quality Guidelines. For instance, users should be able to easily find what your ad promises.
However, the “users should be able to easily find what your ad promises” obviously leaves much open to interpretation! So if someone is advertising a Rachael Ray diet, does this mean the landing page must also say it is the Rachael Ray diet? Because as many of us know who are plagued with these kind of ads, the landing pages (many which include AdSense) definitely don’t. Same with those who are advertising on millions of random keywords ala eBay. Technically, anyone advertising on keywords leading to a very generic landing page could be affected.
Ad Behavior
Same as before, from other parts of the old policy.
Ad Placement
This section is primarily the same, with two key additions. They are :
Google ads, search boxes, or search results may not be:
Placed on pages whose content or URL could confuse users into thinking it is associated with Google due to the misuse of logos, trademarks, or other brand features.
Placed on, within, or alongside other Google products or services in a manner that violates the policies of that product or service.
Again, another one of those things that could affect a lot of publishers that have *any* Google product name or service in their URLs or on their pages. It will be worth watching to see how Google handles this, although this was covered in the previous terms, just not the policies, and we have seen publishers with AdSense or Google in the domain name have ad serving turned off.
Site Behavior
Same as before, from other parts of the old policy.
Competitive Ads and Services
The wording is slightly changed, but not affecting the meaning.
Google Advertising Cookies
Again, primarily the same, with the emphasis on the need of having a privacy policy.
Product-Specific Policies
The subsection about AdSense for Search has been changed quite a bit. It now reads:
A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed per page. Also, a single link unit or a search box, but no other Google ads, may be placed on pages with AdSense for search results. Queries must originate from users inputting data directly into the search box and cannot be modified. This includes pre-populating the search box with terms or hard-coding direct links to search results pages. AdSense for search code may not be integrated into any software application such as a toolbar.
This definitely clears up about using AdSense for Search in any kind of program, such as a toolbar or plugin. Worth noting is the search results page can also have an added search box.
Other removals from older policies
There were more parts removed from the older policy, all related to the now defunct AdSense referrals.
And that’s (finally) all, folks!
And because many publishers did not get a copy of the email from Google (including me!) about the new AdSense terms, here is a copy of it.
If you’ve checked the AdSense program policies page today, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve just made a few small updates. We’d like to take a moment to clarify what’s been changed.
The first thing you might notice when you visit the program policies page is that we’ve revamped the look. Based on your feedback, we’ve reorganized the content and updated the layout to make it easier to read and navigate. We’ve highlighted some key information for each policy, and added expandable ‘Learn more’ sections that you can click for more detailed information. Also, we’ve grouped together policies that are specific to only AdSense for content or AdSense for search.
There are also a few updates to the content of the program policies, which we’ve outlined below:
Google brand violations: This policy has always existed in our Terms and Conditions, but we’ve now brought it directly to the ‘Ad Placement’ section of the program policies page so that it’s easier to find. According to this policy, we don’t allow ads or search boxes to be placed on pages which misuse Google logos, trademarks, or other brand features in the page content or URL, and which could mislead users into thinking the page is associated with Google.
Deceptive implementations: We’ve clarified this policy a bit in the ‘Encouraging Clicks’ section of the program policies - ads may not be formatted in a way that makes them indistinguishable from other content on the page where they appear.
Ad placement in emails and email programs: This updated policy clarifies that Google ads , search boxes, and search results may not be placed in emails, as well as alongside emails.
Other Google products’ policies: With this new policy, publishers aren’t permitted to place ads, search boxes, or search results on, within, or alongside other Google products in a way that violates the policies of that other product or service. For instance, this would include placing ads on sites which allow users to download YouTube videos, which isn’t permitted by the YouTube Terms of Service.
Finally, we’ve added more information to the ‘Webmaster Guidelines’ section and created a new ‘Traffic Sources’ section. Whether you regularly review the program policies or haven’t reviewed them since you signed up for AdSense, we encourage you to visit the program policies page and check out the updates.
So what does everyone think of the new changes? I must admit when I started diving into them, I was surprised at a few of the changes, including the addition of the “Sites with Google ads may not include or link to” part. That could have huge implication for publishers, especially those who have already taken payments for those links to run for X months.
And the blending one is going to raise all kinds of questions about what is too blended and what is ok, especially since CTR is at stake.
Then the information-rich policy will be fun to watch to see how it affects the spammier “crap content” Made for AdSense (MFA) sites out there.
I am going to see if I can get some clarification from Google on some of the new policies that leave a lot open to interpretation, and I will post updates as I get them. I will also twitter @jenstar any updates. And if any AdSense Policy team member wants to contact me directly so I can get clarification, I’d appreciate it
I couldn’t find any forum threads on either WebmasterWorld or Digital Point when I posted this. Hat tip to netmeg for sending me a copy of the email that I didn’t get
Imagine being a publisher in Europe and everytime you login your AdSense account, you are greeted instead with a page similar to the one we see when AdSense updates their Terms & Conditions. Right now for European publishers (see note below on which European countries) it is considered optional to use local currency instead of the default US currency, but those publishers who prefer reporting in U.S. Dollars (USD), they have to decline each time they login - something sure to be annoying for those with an AdSense stat checking addiction
AdSense began asking publishers to change currencies at the beginning of March, and included some other terms changes aside from the viewing reports in Euros instead of USD. From the Inside AdSense Blog:
To make the switch to local currency reports, you’ll need to agree to a new set of Terms and Conditions. Here are the main changes involved:
The party that publishers are contracting with changes from Google Inc. to Google Ireland Limited.
Publishers are responsible for paying any local taxes in their jurisdiction. Google will only issue VAT refunds to publishers with an address in Ireland.
The governing law changes from California law to either English or local law.
It is also worth noting that AdSense also says that “We encourage you to update your account to local currency reports soon, as we may require this change in the future” (emphasis mine).
Obviously, there are plenty of reasons why some publishers don’t want to be forced to view their reports in Euros but to continue using USD too, one being that reports use the daily exchange rate but checks are sent out based on the exchange rate at the time the payment is processed. So depending on the exchange rate fluctuations, payment could be vastly different from what the reports were showing.
Another reason includes publishers choosing to hold payments until the exchange rate is more favorable and wanting to track earnings with market conditions in the US, particularly those who have the majority of their site’s traffic coming from the US. It also makes doing split testing with other ad networks harder, since many of them report in USD, meaning publishers also have to figure out the exchange rate and guesstimate what the exchange rate could be when payment is issued too.
From what I understand from the publishers I have heard from, the change covers all European countries in the AdSense program. (Update: Seems to be a subset of European countries, since one exception is the United Kingdom… feel free to post if your country is affected, so publishers know which countries are having this issue)
And being an international publisher myself who still has payments in USD, I would not be happy if I was forced to have my payments in Canadian dollars instead of USD, and yes, I would be pretty annoyed if I was forced to decline having my reports in Canadian dollars every single time I logged in.
There have been many threads and Google groups posted on the issue, but no response from Google on it yet:
I blogged earlier about the new Google AdSense category targeting that was announced earlier today. So, I asked the AdSense team plenty of questions while they were on the ADSPACE panel.
First, this is in a limited beta, meaning if you haven’t already been asked to participate, you won’t be in the initial wave of beta testers. They didn’t have a timeline for when it would be expanded, but I would expect that if the initial tests go well, it should become more widely available. If you have an account rep, you might want to contact him or her to see if you can get in on the next wave.
For those who are wanting the ability to block weight loss ads, you are in luck… weight loss is one of the categories. There are 11 in total including costmetic procedures & body modification; dating; drugs & supplements; get rich quick; politics; religion; ringtones and downloadables; sexual & reproductive health; sexually suggestive; video games (casual and online); weight loss.
I think the categories are pretty well chosen, and cover the biggest publisher pain points of the types of ads publishers don’t want on their sites.
Here is a screnshot of the new interface within the AdSense control panel (click for larger image):
As you can see, Google will show the percentage of revenue that has recently been earned in those categories, so you can be aware of the potential income loss by blocking. Remember, these ads are showing up because they would earn the publisher the most money, and however annoying the flat stomach weight loss ads were, they did drive significant revenue and was part of the reason they were sowing up everywhere.
Right now, ad categories can only be blocked on an account level, there is nothing in place to allow blocking on a site-by-site basis within the account.
Hopefully this will go in a wider beta soon, or go to all publishers :) There is also more on the Inside AdSense blog.
Press my buttons!
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I am at the ADSPACE conference where Brad Bender from Google is giving his opening keynote. And as I suspected, they did announce something new for publishers. AdSense has announced some new category filters for publishers.
Brad didn’t go into too much detail, but it will allow publishers to filter out ads by categories. I am hoping one of the categories will be weight loss, so publishers can effectively get rid of all those rules of a flat stomach ads
This feature will be in beta, so I will see if I can find out how publishers can get into the beta.
Google will be going into it in more detail later today at the Google Publisher Forum, at 2pm today at ADSPACE. As you can imagine, I will be asking some questions about the new category filtering, (I am the session moderator) so be sure to post any questions you have about it.
I will update as I get more information later today.
Press my buttons!
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