Google Responds to AdSense Sharing

[Help Desk]

I previously posted that I've created an phpBB Adsense mod. Nothing in Google's Terms of Service indicated this is wrong. Besides I was just stealing DigitalPoints good idea in the first place. Well an email was sent to Google to find out their thoughts on the matter.

Here is the original email sent to Google.

From: <NAME REMOVED> <ADDRESS REMOVED>
Subject: Other
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 11:53:48 -0700

Does Google have any current qualms about me showing adsense ads using
other people's AdSense ID?

Before any decision is made please just look at my points.
1. My site is approved to show Google Ads.
2. I have the People's permission to use their ID as they get the payment
(If there is one).
3. This 100% NOT a "You click on my ad and I click on yours" deal. This
is just a way for me to reward my site users.

I know that Google is very open to new and different ideas as long as they
are ethical. Seeing as how the same ad will get displayed regardless of
who's id is used, there is no difference Google's AdWords customers or to
Google itself.

Thanks for your time.
<NAME REMOVED>

Here is their response...

Hello <NAME REMOVED>,

Thank you for your email.

Currently, it is not against AdSense program policies to display ad code
from other publisher's on your sites. You can review our complete program
policies at https://www.google.com/adsense/policies.

The AdSense ad code on the 'Ad layout code' page is valid for any page in
any site that complies with our program policies. Please note AdSense
publishers are only allowed one set of Google ads (one copy of the AdSense
ad code) on each page.

We constantly monitor all of the web pages displaying Google ads. If we
find that one of your web pages violates our policies, we will notify you
and ask you to remove the AdSense ad code from that page.

Please feel free to reply to this email if you have additional questions
or concerns. For technical support, please email adsense-tech@google.com.


Sincerely,

Christine
The Google Team

It is perfectly acceptable to share your AdSense revenue. In fact if there is ever a problem, Google will notify you first instead of just shutting you down.

[disgust]

I think that depends on how severe the violation is (and how much money you're making them, probably). if they find out you're soliciting clicks, my guess would be that you'd be straight-out booted from the program. if it's something minor I'm sure in most cases you'd definitely get a warning.

I could've sworn there used to be part of the TOS that mentioned that you need to actually own the site to display ads on it, though.. hm.

[schlottke]

He is saying if the problem happens to be the revenue sharing not all situations.

[anthonycea]

Google themselves solicit clicks by ranking sites that carry Adsense high in the SERP's, do they punish partners for the practice?

Google is weird science. No one heard of the Porno deal Google made, have they?

[compar]

Originally Posted by anthonycea

Google themselves solicit clicks by ranking sites that carry Adsense high in the SERP's, do they punish partners for the practice?

Bullshit Anthony. You can't prove it. And, many of us who are long time AdSense publisher have never seen any evidence of it.

Quit making claims you can't substantiate. You just look like a fools.

[anthonycea]

It was proven a long time ago Bob, even Danny Sullivan is writing about it now.

Do you need more proof, I can provide it!

You seen it last night, do you need more?

[compar]

Originally Posted by anthonycea

It was proven a long time ago Bob, even Danny Sullivan is writing about it now.

Do you need more proof, I can provide it!

You seen it last night, do you need more?

Where did I see it last night? Give me a link to anything Danny Sullivan has written that supports this claim.

We have been asking you to provide proof for a long time and all you do is send us to some site that talks in the same bullshit conspiracy theories and vague allusions as you do.

Show me one AdSense publisher's web site that ranks in the top ten, and that absolutley has no reason to be there other than the fact that they publish AdSense ads.

I have a page from my InfoPool that is number one in the Serps for a popular search term: http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...animals+online. It was number one for several years before AdSense ever was thought of and it's still there. But I have lots of pages that don't rank that well and they certainly haven't improved since I started publishing AdSense.

That is just crap and you have no concrete evidence.

[anthonycea]

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3358551

[GuyFromChicago]

Originally Posted by anthonycea

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3358551

LOL, Danny wrote an article that talks about how Yahoo is accusing Google of being biased towards Adsense publishers - that's not even close to saying he believes or supports that claim.

[compar]

Originally Posted by anthonycea

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3358551

Anthony,

I just read every word of that article and I don't see one word that talks about Google giving anybody, under any circumstances, a favored position in its SERPs. Are you just lying when you make a statement like "even Danny Sullivan is saying so" or can you not read?

Find and publish here, where Sullivan says anything at all to support your wild claims. In fact he say exactly the opposite. He says Yahoo tried to used paid inclusion and Google won the Public Relations war because they DON'T use paid inclusion.

Yours is the oldest con trick in the world. Tell a bald face lie and then claim that some authority figure to substantiate it. I personally don't think Danny Sullivan is any great authority figure, but in this case he absolutely does not say anything that would substantiate your malicious rumours and conspiracy theories.

[anthonycea]

Bob is seems that you might have missed the following part of the article, your selective memory is kicking in again, the one that favors your original opinions on this subject.

Below is cut and pasted from the article.

I'll also cover the "level playing field" myth Google has so effectively employed. Google's results aren't necessarily "purer" than Yahoo's because Google lacks paid inclusion. Plenty of commercial sites vie for position on both. It's just that Google doesn't earn money directly from its editorial results.

I expect Yahoo will fight back against charges it's less pure than Google by pointing out Google's AdSense program potentially gives that company as much incentive to skew results as does Yahoo's paid inclusion.

AdSense puts Google ads on external Web pages. Obviously, if Google drives traffic to pages carrying its ads, the company may earn more. That's something Google strongly denied it would do when AdSense launched. It repeated the denial recently, when I looked at allegations Google favored sites with AdSense content. As with Yahoo, an incentive for favoritism is there.

I'd planned to cover the AdSense issue in this series. I was particularly surprised when Yahoo raised the issue itself, when I spoke with the company recently. I don't recall Yahoo ever employing a "Google has incentive to be bad" argument before. I suspect it may emerge as a new line of defense if paid inclusion criticisms continue

[dazzlindonna]

First point: anthonycea said "even Danny Sullivan is writing about it now"
...yes, he WROTE about it, so technically, the statement is true. WRITING about something, however, is not necessarily condoning or supporting it.

Second point: "incentive to skew results" and "incentive for favoritism" does not mean a company DOES skew results or shows favoritism.

Third point: "allegations Google favored sites with AdSense content" is just that...ALLEGATIONS...again, not necessarily true.

Summary: Suspicion, allegations, incentives...none of these provide PROOF. Any allegation could prove to be true in the long run...or it could prove to be false. Until such time as an allegation is proven one way or the other, keep the opinions as just that...OPINIONS. Don't label opinions as facts.

[digitalpoint]

Originally Posted by disgust

I think that depends on how severe the violation is (and how much money you're making them, probably). if they find out you're soliciting clicks, my guess would be that you'd be straight-out booted from the program. if it's something minor I'm sure in most cases you'd definitely get a warning.

I could've sworn there used to be part of the TOS that mentioned that you need to actually own the site to display ads on it, though.. hm.

Well that's two different things... Displaying ads with someone else's publisher ID and soliciting clicks (regardless of who's publisher ID).

Anyone should be booted from AdSense if they solicit clicks (of their own own someone else's ads).

[Will.Spencer]

Originally Posted by anthonycea

Google themselves solicit clicks by ranking sites that carry Adsense high in the SERP's, do they punish partners for the practice?

Quoting from the Google AdSense FAQ :

6. How does participation in this program affect my site's position in the Google search results?

Participating in Google AdSense does not affect your site's rank in Google search results. Google AdSense will not affect the search results we deliver. Google believes strongly in freedom of expression and therefore offers broad access to content across the web. Our search results are unbiased by our relationships with paying advertisers and publishers. We will continue to show search results according to our PageRank technology.

Adding the Google AdSense ad code or WebSearch code to your site will not queue your pages for crawling by our main index bots. While our bot (Mediapartners-Google/2.1+) does crawl content pages for the purpose of targeting ads, this crawl is not associated with our main index crawl.

[megri]

They are also blocking or banning sites for Adsense.We have seen the cases.They say our policy are different from google main Index

Megrisoft
submitshop.com

[Foxy]

Originally Posted by GuyFromChicago

LOL, Danny wrote an article that talks about how Yahoo is accusing Google of being biased towards Adsense publishers - that's not even close to saying he believes or supports that claim.

Absolutely


This is a subject that I have had a long history on [with mixed reception from others] and what you are saying, Anthony, is, as Compar says, "absolute bullshit"!

Just stop and think about it. Difficult I know!

Would you as an publisher [ie Google] promote pages to the top of the tree where those pages had on them your [Googles] very same ads where you only get 50% [or whatever %] of the money, when you could actually do the opposite [downgrade] or whatever? The answer must be no from a commercial point of view.

I think the real question must be what do other search engines do with those pages - that is, the ones that we know are not at the top in Google [but sometimes previously used to be] but are in other Search engines displaying those adsense ads?

[anthonycea]

Lets put it this way Foxy, SEO folks are the most lost on these issues because of their bias, they can not see the forest because of the trees now can they.

Maybe these folks need to fly over the forest so they can see the big picture.

I know they will never see it from a different angle since some are stuck in the Google muck.

You can quote Bob on this issue, but Bob has been wrong on this since day one when we met on IMR about 8 or 9 months ago.

I have great respect for Bob, but he is wrong about this one, it is time that Compar looks at the issue here as it is in reality.

Some want proof, some want proof that we landed on the moon to this day also. If you want proof open up your eyes and your mind and look at the issues without bias, don't keep asking for more proof, you may get hit with a sledge hammer one day.

Some members here like to quote Google PR Hype and want the community to take it to heart, that is great Will, but a lot of murderers are sitting in jail that claim that they never killed anyone also.

(the Google toolbar is not spyware, Google told me so)

[compar]

Originally Posted by anthonycea

You can quote Bob on this issue, but Bob has been wrong on this since day one when we met on IMR about 8 or 9 months ago.

I have great respect for Bob, but he is wrong about this one, it is time that Compar looks at the issue here as it is in reality.

Anthony,

I did miss that section of the article. I was looking for somewhere where Danny actually said that he believed this to be the case. Not just that Yahoo was saying it in as a public relations ploy to counter Googles attack on them for a flagrant paid submission scheme. That part of the article is reporting, not exegesis.

However here is what I recommend. You are never going to change you mind on this and neither am I, and many of the rest of the members of this forum. So why don't we agree to disagree and stop this stupid battle.

I'll quit if you will. There are lots of other thing we can discuss and agree on most of the time. Why don't we just do that and avoid all the vitirol.

[Help Desk]

Originally Posted by disgust

I think that depends on how severe the violation is (and how much money you're making them, probably). if they find out you're soliciting clicks, my guess would be that you'd be straight-out booted from the program. if it's something minor I'm sure in most cases you'd definitely get a warning.

I think you may have misread my post. There is NO solicitation of clicks. It is not ethical to solicit clicks and I have never done so in the past.

A few months ago I received a PM, on my forum, from somebody saying if I click on their AdSense ad, they will click on mine. I chose to not even dignify the request with a response.

[Help Desk]

Just because a corporation has incentive to do something, it does not mean that they will. If Google secretly gives better results to the sites that have AdSense on them, they will get more money in the short term and then lose credability and money in the long term.

I have motive to track down Anthonycea and slap him about the head and face, but that would mean that he would just come back with twice as many conspiracy theories in the long run and then EVERYBODY would suffer.

The reason that I like Google is because of their work environment. It breeds great results when employees are happy and causes them to take the ethical high road. Where else are engineers required to spend 20% of their time working on personal technology projects?