I would like to know if there are users here, who are buying popunder traffic which loads a landing page showing adsense code. I want to know if you had any problems with Google on that. Their TOS is not clear on this. Following scenario: My homepage contains adsense code. There are no popups or popunders on this homepage. Google adsense is placed as top banner on top of the content so this is perfectly normal. Now buying popunder traffic means that my homepage gets loaded in a browser popunder window at the users end. Following sections of Googles TOS adress this issue and I would like to discuss them here. Found on: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=48182 I understand this as follows: My site is showing the Google code. But as my site itself does not contain any popups or popunders and the latter, its perfectly fine with Google. (Even if there were popups and popunders it would be fine as long as they dont interfere with the site navigation) Here comes the interesting part: I understand this as follows: My page contains the adsense code. Using a popunder network to load my page in a popunder shall be considered as software. However here Google does not specifically forbid popunders. What the specifically exclude are: pop-ups, redirecting users to unwanted websites, modify browser settings. And everything else that interferes with the site navigation. As my page is loaded as popunder, it does not interfere with the site navigation. Thus it should be perfectly legal within the TOS. The last section is very interesting because Google is not against adnetworks or buying traffic. Only it must be ensured they dont use those methods specifically stated. And I dont think "popup" is used synonymously for popup and popunders in this caste as in my first quoted paragraph Google itself distinguishes clearly between a popunder and a popup. So after reading this you might come to the same conclusion: Either the TOS are not clear on that topic or it would be within their TOS to use popunder traffic to direct traffic to a website containing adsense. At least theoretically. Now is there somebody who can write about their experience on that? Anybody who got banned for this or webmaster who are using pounder traffic to their landing page with adsense without problems. I sent an e-mail to Google asking for clearification. They said everything is stated in their TOS but offered no further explanation. So what do you think.
Actually, the program policies say that the ads cannot be displayed in a pop-under either: You can also apparently get into trouble with purchased traffic because it can result in invalid impressions. From the Adsense help files: This is from the official Adsense blog:
Thank you for your great posting. I think you made a valid point. However this statement: As this quote is from the ad placement section I understand it that way that it only refers to the ad placement on the site itself as this is the context of the entire section. However the section about the invalid impressions seems to be relevant for my question. Without doubt, if a user is loading a website and at the same time a popunder is loaded without the users intention to do so, I would consider this as an automatically generated impression. (However I do not consider this as harmful for Google at all, because if its a very targeted popunder the user might have a genuine interest in the popunder page and the ads that are dispayed there, but this is up to Google.) So I think what you said about the invalid impressions is the main point here which could lead to a problem. So basically, if I want to keep buying traffic (which makes sense for certain secenarios) I have to direct it to a landing page without Google ads. Maybe if the popunder would not load the page itself but only an image of the page. And only if a user clicks that image, the page gets loaded. So a real impression would only be generated when the user is really interested in the popunder. Do you think this might be a solution?
Just don't do it. Many have tried but failed. Maybe you can find a hole in their TOS, but they can ban you regardless. And there's nothing you can do about it.
I'm surely you will have a problem with your adsense account. Google always monitor the source of traffics that generate click and I bet you will be caught for this one without a doubt.
Thats a really good post Kato and it made me think about one of my own websites. I own a real estate site which has adsense ads on it, no problem there. But I have a popunder that loads beneath it which sells a product that has nothing to do with adsense and also has no adsense code on it. If I took the TOS literally then I would be in breach the way I read it ...BUT and its a big BUT.....I am not causing or inducing anyone to click on any adsense ads. The fact that a page opens under the site should have no relevence at all to google as it has no relevence to their ads whatsoever. But as I said....thats not how it reads. I think its written poorly and without a lot of thought. Its a blanket statement written for a different purpose than what I am intending or you were intending. I like to think that they only ban people who are abusing the TOS rather than breaking it on a technicality. Thats my take on it but I guess the safest thing to do is comply fully or write to them and ask them...which I think I will do now you have raised this in my mind.
You are absolutely right. And this is what pisses me off a bit. For this particular website, buying traffic works to some degree. I am only interested in the visitors for the website itself, not at all do I want them to click on the Google ads. I want them to come to the website and browse it which they do. So I would be fine to construct a landing page without Adsense only for them. I have not thought about it technically but I am sure this can be achieved by some URL suffixes to distinguish between the different homepage versions. However and this is what has prevented me from thinking about this so far: If a user comes to the site via the bought traffic and he likes the page, he will use the suffixed URL for his browser favourites and maybe even put a link to this URL somewhere. This would mean, that this very dedicated URL would start spreading around, maybe even land on the Google index and becomes a regular entry URL for the page. And of course I dont want that at all. Thats why I fell stuck a bit.THANKS MR. GOOGLE!!!