Good Question, if someone has experienced it please answer. I think google knows this happens, but I don't know if the ban.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with arbitrage. Who would mind this? You are buying click and selling them to people who want them. Done correctly the traffic is targeted and converts well, the advertisers are happy, you're happy, Google's happy.
At first I wondered if the domain could be de-indexed due to low quality content. But then I realized that it REALLY doesn't matter, because you're buying traffic anyways!
There is always a pleasure doing things as it spoused to be done, if you buy cheap traffic and earn money you don't deserve, you are taking other quality clean publishers money, and that's really wrong ...
who says you don't deserve that traffic? If you're concentrating on long-tail queries, then no one else is usually competing for that traffic anyways...
Dude if you buy traffic from Adword you will get targeted traffic which is fine, but the chance to lose will be 60%, if you buy random traffic you will get un-targeted visitors, no one will click specially if you but traffic from auto surfers, you may get smart priced ... I did it once, the traffic cost me 10$, I got about 3.07$ for 65 clicks and loads of impressions, and I will never do it again ....
Well obviously, if you buy random traffic for anything you'll lose money! That's what arbitrage means, taking advantage of a price differential, not letting a price differential take advantage of you!
The problem is not arbitrage, but the way arbitrager places adsense ads in MFA sites is the problem. Arbitrager needs to have very high CTR like %60 to make a profit. Less than that, they're making a loss. So they has to format the ads to confuse visitors. In MFA site, visitors click the ads because they thought those ads were page content. Not long before they realize that, they have left the advertiser's site already. And that upsets advertisers; therefore, Google has to do something about MFA. There's nothing wrong with arb. In fact, every business on earth makes profit with arb. Factory turn cheap raw materials into expensive products. Retail store buys products at wholesale price and sell at higher price. Bank borrows your money at low interest rate and lend to others at higher rate. These are arbitrages! Then what's wrong in forwarding traffic to advertisers to make a profit?
You think it's crap and that's fine with me, next time keep your personal opinions to your self, it doesn't matter to us are you the president or something ? everyone have a view point so don't get out of the subject .. read the rules ....
So far I have seen numerable persons being banned for invalid clicks but only one webmaster being banned for arbitrage. Instances for being banned for arbitrage are not many, at least, not known in large numbers, if various forums are to be believed. The webmaster (name withheld) was banned for arbitrage as he had no content to offer at his site and only keywords were stuffed on different landing pages using same color as background and other such means. Reading between the lines, using arbitrage when you have nothing to offer is against the TOS adsense
Huh what has that got to do with anything? Ive been going hard at arbitrage for the past 6 months and i've never been smart priced, but hey i've also never bought traffic from auto surf and sent it to an adsense page. If you think thats what arbitrage is about then damn you obviously don't put much work into anything. I'm averaging 5 figures for the past few months now and i'm still a noob to the game, if you've got time to put into research and testing and focus then its not brain science.