This topic is taken from a post that I've previously posted on My Blog. But, I decided to copy it here to aware all the publishers because another friend of mine got his account disabled because of the same reason I’ve heard so much that StumbleUpon is against Google Adsense TOS, but i wasn’t sure until I found that StumbleUpon really against Google Adsense TOS and Your account could get a kick off because of StumbleUpon. The story begun 2 weeks ago when I’ve launched a new website in my websites network, The website is a Music Videos Portal. Everything was fine with Google, and I was getting CPC in the range of 20 cents per click although the website still has a little traffic. Everything was fine until 4 days ago when someone bookmarked one of my websites pages on StumbleUpon … I’ve received 1072 visits from StumbleUpon, I know for you this is considered a good thing, but it wasn’t. I’ve received 58 clicks from the traffic i got from StumbleUpon and earn 39 cents from it!!! Yeah, It’s only 39 cents, which means i got less than 1 cent per click! Could you believe this? From 20 cents per click to less than 1 cent! This happened with many publishers not only me. Google Adsense considered that clicks Invalid Clicks. I’ve a friend faced the same problem a few months ago and received this Email from Google Adsense Team: I know you want to know why this happened … I’ll tell you why. StumbleUpon drives the traffic to your website using a kind of strange way and sometimes display your page in an iFrame, The way StumbleUpon drive the traffic to you is considered by Google Adsense as Auto-Surf Traffic and this is against Google Adsense TOS. Thats why, you’ll get VERY LOW CPC rates! Be Aware Of That … Google Adsense is a Goldmine, and you could make a good living from it, So, Try to keep your Adsense account safe.
SU traffic is junk and dont convert to a penny. even if adsense account dont get banned, it will rise the impression and lower the earnings.
I felt worried for this person if he put the ads there... however, he cliamed that he didnt put. but others might get the wrong idea. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=922687
I wouldnt worry about it. There is no way to control it. Why would goog ban someone even tho someone else stumbled his site. If this was true, why doesnt every mad webmaster go and stumble thier competitors sites? Sounds like just an article hype, trying to get heard through all the communities,....
SU traffic is junk, but using SU is NOT against google TOS nor will it get your account banned. I've been using SU as a way of driving traffic to my sites for months with 0 problems.
No, it won't. Anyone can stumble a page, so by your logic I could go onto someones site who uses adsense, stumble it, and they would be banned if people from Stumbleupon clicked their ads. Shenanigans have been called.
I thought that all the social bookmarking sites were a good thing. A vote on stumbleupon, or digg is similar to linking to you directly. It says that that your site is worthy of consideration. It is unfortunate that AdSense devalues these "votes of quality" (if true). It seems kind of unfortunate, to be punished for being popular. No links were purchased, and it is not even reciprocal.
It's because stumbleupon traffic is so random that it doesn't convert for the advertiser. Adsense takes this into account and righteously devalues the clicks. Su itself is however in no way against TOS, as google could NEVER ban you for something that a competitor could do to you.
This thread is bull. Your friend got the email because he paid for traffic. It has nothing to do with Stumble. If your traffic sucks (mainly from socials) you may be smart priced, but you won't be banned. Someone Stumbling a page of yours would never lead to a ban alone. That's just dumb.
He hasn't paid for the traffic! It's not about Stumble. Google smart prices sites that receive big amount of traffic from Stumble because they consider clicks made by that traffic invalid clicks. And they BAN for invalid clicks
It's not always about the $$ I launched a site a few months back ... it got more than 60,000 unique hits within the first 30 days even tho it didn't bring any earnings but now after 5 months those POSTS are bringing me all the goodies because the posts got so popular on the internet that google sends the traffic itself now.... Please study a little about how important it is to get the post popular in order to get Organic Traffic...I'm trying out my technique and it's normal for me when I get 1k + hits from Digg/reddit or Stumbleupon.. they eventually pay off really really nicely....! Eyad Nour - your friend is really lucky that google actually emailed him...it was pretty obvious those were fraud clicks and its best if you inform google before they email you. ALSO you can always inform them about the upcoming traffic that you are expecting from anywhere... Lets say a DIGG EFFECT! I get some of them once in a while and it brings me about 70,000 visitors in a day and a few thousand for the next few weeks and trust me they convert really good for me.... Hope this helps... Stumbleupon doesn't have 5 million users for nothing
I agree. Too many websites are being stumbled upon. I can't believe Google would ban all these sites.
i been using stumble for couple month and got pay by G so be suprise if G banned your site for it he problable use others TE
My highest paying day was due to a joint Stumble and Digg frenzy. As far as I could tell, I got credit for all of the clicks and that was months ago. I didn't start either one. The key words in the Google policy is paid to click and paid to inflate the stats - with both Stumble and Digg there is no way to pay those visitors to click, as it should be. This is a perfect example of why this "make money online" blog explosion is so dangerous.
Thank you for sharing us the information, maybe that is the reason why I got 75 clicks with less than 50 cents yesterday (I already reported this unusual activities to Google). I know someone stumble some pages from my website.