Does it violate Google AdSense policy if I promote my blog or site through the emails sent through Yahoo Mailing List (yahoo groups)? I don't ask the mail recipients to click on the link taking them to my site nor asking them to click on the Google Ads AT ALL, I just put it as a 'source' of the article or news I put in the emails or as signature or reference. I'm confused about this issue regarding the Google AdSense Policy below: To ensure a positive experience for Internet users and Google advertisers, sites displaying Google ads may not: * Use third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf and click-exchange programs. * Be promoted through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites. So.. does it mean that I can't use Yahoo mailing list to drive traffic to my site? Please kindly let me know... Thank you for your valuable answers
You are allowed to promote your site through emails - as long as they are not considered unsolicited emails or "spam". Sending a message with a link to your site to a mailing list can be risky, because if you are reported for spamming you could lose your Adsense account. https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115983
Hi Nonny, thank you for your answer. Yeah.. I think it a bit risky too.. However, even if I WERE reported as being spam (hopefully never), how would they do that? I mean, how does a yahoo mailing list moderator report it to Google? How is the procedure to report my emails as spam to google? I'm just curious. Another question, so Google will only take action regarding my sending mass emails ONLY if someone reports my mails as spam? And if noone does that, I'm safe? I'm so worried now.. But honestly, I won't do it again.. Thank you so much for your answer
Well it can be reported by clicking on the "Ads by Google" link on the Adsense ads displaying on your site - "this site is promoted by unsolicited mass emails" is one of the report form options. As for whether Google would only care if someone reported it, I don't know. If they see that a lot of your traffic is coming from emails (e.g. mail.yahoo.com, hotmail.msn.com, etc) the bots that monitor AdSense sites might flag it. If most of your traffic is coming from other sources - especially organic search engine results - I would think that some traffic from emails would be OK.
Hello Nonny, Thank you again for your valuable advice. Now I've stopped promoting my sites and blogs using yahoo mailing list. It's because 97% of my tons of sudden traffic were from yahoogoups.com. Now I'm really worried about it. I've checked my email box, and (thankfully) I don't get any email from Google. Hopefully I won't. Usually my traffic before I used yahoogroups.com was around 50 to 200. But when I used mailing list, it easily reached up to 1500 per day! Thank you again. Now I just hope that I'll just pass
I cannot be 100% sure about this, but I would think that as long as your emails were relevant and were not spaming the mailing list, they would be considered solicited emails, thus not in violation. I honestly think that that provision is only to prevent people from literally spaming email addresses randomly from benefiting from Adsense. I wonder if there is a better way to get Google's stance on this issue?
I suspect Google wouldn't comment beyond what they've already said because "unsolicited email" is partially in the eye of the beholder. If the mailing lists you are promoting on are OK with it, you are probably OK, as long as some recipients don't choose to report you for spam. Just on general principals it's a good idea to diversify your traffic sources, so if you aren't getting many visitors form search engines you might try working on getting that number up.
Yeah, that is what I am trying to get at. I mean if you got on a mailing list and only posted "CHECK OUT THIS SITE!!!", then that is spam. But if you include it in your signature and you legitimately reply to messages, then that would not be as big of a deal.