Does STUMBLE traffic break AdSense policy??

I've bolded the parts that I think may be cause for concern.

I'm wondering if traffic from stumble qualifies as genuine interest?

If it does, then are the 'stumble trades' (see the BST forums) for pages with adsense ok? I mean, they it is a 3rd party, it is (in a way) a click exchange, and while I'm not sure what autosurfing it, that too sounds close to what Stumble does.

Opinions? Thoughts? Comments?

 

Yes, it is a violation of TOS and may impact your account. If in doubt, ask Google. I have found them always helpful in clarifying these types of questions and concerns.

 

Stumble exchange is not following TOS because you're not really interested in it.. however REAL traffic from stumble is okay.. this is tough since Stumble doesn't work with Adsense. (so if a stumble member is banned for misuse, the adsense account isn't effected).

 

Real traffic from stumble upon won't break the ToS but they also don't click many ads

 

It wouldn't necessarily violate or break the TOS. However, keep in mind that your ad revenue from AdSense could be dependent on how many people click on your adsense ads.

So, if you send a lot of traffic to a site and there are not many clicks, that will ultimately bring down your AdSense revenue.

 

This might have been adressed already, if so I apologize. I get a lot of traffic via stumble, and recently reading a thread about accounts being disabled for traded traffic, cheap traffic, etc. Was wondering if anyone has ever been banned, or frowned @ by google for stumble traffic?

LadyH

 

I don't think that will happen because you are not paying for the traffic. In fact Google promotes Foxfire so I can't imagine they are going to turn around and pentalize people for using Stumble.

As a plus I am starting to see backlinks showing up from Stumble Upon on Google.

 

Nothing wrong.. like we discussed, even though trading stumbles is kind of.. in a way artificial traffic, google doesn't work with stumble so they don't really find out..

 

plus, you can't really control whether or not someone else stumbles your site. So they can't really ban it, if it is not you doing something wrong.

 

umm but they don't work with the sites you refresh every 20 seconds either..

 

I mean those who trade stumbles (you stumble my site, I stumble yours) this applies to digg as well, in a way its kind of artificial traffic since the person isn't truely interested in the site..

 

Yah you should ganglick your sites too!! Pretty neat and growing. Check it out

 

Interesting idea but I don't want a ban I've heard people doing these circles of digging, etc get banned!

 

The people who do the digg thing get banned by Digg not Google. It is against Digg's TOS to advertise for exchange. I have yet to hear anyone being banned for stumble. You could say the same for MYSpace bulletins and so on.

 

Nobody may have been banned yet, but there is always a first time for everything with Google. The TOS is so vague in many areas that it really is anyone's guess on whether or not certain "traffic swapping" is considered legitimate traffic or if Google would even know. I choose to err on the belief that Google knows everything and they will flex their over-zealous muscles at you eventually.

 

Ok the true problem with stumble will be that now people are trying to get paid to stumble: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=312271

I am not sure why anyone would pay when they can just join one of the free threads. I think when you start to pay for them, that is where the Google Gods will step in and throw a lightning bolt at stumblers.

 

I found this on the adsense blog:

A note on traffic exchange programs
We understand that our publishers are always looking for ways to attract interested users to their sites. But using third-party tools or services to increase your site traffic may lead to invalid clicks or impressions and result in your account being disabled. For this reason, we'd like to provide you with some guidance about this.

As many of you already know, our program policies strictly prohibit any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs. These programs offer incentives for users to view web pages or click on ads, resulting in activity that is harmful to our advertisers.

We occasionally receive questions from publishers interested in using traffic exchanges to bring traffic to their site. While these services may help advertise your site, we don't recommend using them, as they may also result in similar invalid activity. We realize that you may have questions about a specific traffic service and whether it could potentially create invalid impressions or clicks. However, please understand that we're unable to comment on any particular third-party service.

As a parting note, we encourage you to read through our tips and guidelines and Webmaster Guidelines to help keep your account in good standing. These guidelines advise publishers to "Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first," and we feel this is ultimately the best way to attract more visitors to your site and build a truly loyal audience.​

SOURCE​

As you can see, even the official word is rather ambiguous, though it does seem to be frowned upon. Though, I do wonder how the expect to make money if publishers are not allowed to get the word out.

I think it would be awesome if they started an adwords/adsense co-op Circular advertising rocks!

Stumble charges 3 cents a hit, a "liked it" will generate at least a dozen hits. Charging 30 cents a stumble is likely a deal, especially if a review is involved.

 

There have been reports on here of webmasters with sites that don't get a lot of normal traffic yet - and some good stumbleupon traffic - that got a warning about not doing traffic exchange. In all cases so far they did not get banned, and rightly so: it's not really traffic exchange, since these are real people actually interested in your topic.

I'd say that it's a simple case of: if you get a warning, make sure to mail google to explain why their traffic pattern may have looked like it came from traffic exchange.

The general deal is simply that stumbleupon is valid traffic, so no worries.

 

I am confused. Stumble charges? It never charged me. Who do they charge? I am not sure what you are talking about. As far as a dozen hits per stumble, where do you get those numbers.

 

Its interesting to see what people thought about Stumble and the Google Adsense programs TOS. Especially after the fact that Google lost to buying out Stumble to Ebay just about a week or so ago.