Have I found a large site cheating Google Adsense?

I don't want to jump to conclusion especially as I am not a premium publisher myself but I don't believe that Dictionary, Thesaurus and Reference have anything to do with "student loan consolidation". What they have done to the code if you search for anything on the Thesaurus function is to add a little code to the adsense script:

google_hints = (unescape(document.location.search).search(/.*q=([^&?]*).*$/) == -1 ? "" : unescape(document.location.search).replace(/.*q=([^&?]*).*$/, "$1") + ",") + "online degree,language training,student loan consolidation,job training";

It seems to replace the keywords Mediabot uses with these ones, which are totally irrevelant to the actual content of the page. Does anyone know if Premium publishers can do this or is this a violation of Google's TOS?

 

I noticed this myself,
I think its kinda questionable myself.. but I really higly doubt if it was cheating that Google woulnd't have cought them yet.

They may have got special permission from Google.

Josh

 

Do you think Google would have found out? I'm not too sure because if you just look everywhere you can see websites with fake content but Google isn't busting them or would it seems have a tool to find out. because of the nature of the code, the mediabot would not realise anything like that would have happened. Should we notify Google or leave it?

 

My bet: such a big site with such (likely) huge revenues, Google knows they do this.
They are most likely premium advertisers, so they can help adsense out a little bit, because really most people using dictionary or reference . com have a high probability of being students of some sort.

 

That's a great answer!! I suppose that is true, and if that's the case I can't wait until I'm a premium publisher! If its user-targeted and it generates more revenue for adsense but also benefits advertisers it's good for everyone!

 

Also it would be good for everyone if I put on my little site the ads that I want.

 

I can second with EdenView. They are most likely a Premium Publisher and therfore they have the google_hints option.

 

What is premium publisher?

 

if they ever cheating, they should be banned right now though me too i got some unrelated keyword such as japanese av , etc in my technology blog

 

They will be banned.

 

lol still bumpin this old thread?

 

Are we short of new posts to comment?? Diggers paradise Lol.