I came accross this site: Blingo com And it seems a bit fishy to me. Basically what it does is use Google for search and let's people search for stuff. A winner is picked at random and awarded a prize for using the search function. I reckon this is just an interesting scheme to have people click on Google Ads that's displayed. Not against the ToS as far as I can tell, but still a sneaky (although quite brilliant) idea.
Prohibited Uses. You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) directly or indirectly generate queries... TOS: https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms
Whoops. Missed that totally. I'm more in the know with Adsense for content. My apologies. They are definitely in violation of the ToS then. Strange thing is that I can't seem to find any Adsense code (at least with a cursory glance. I thought I smelled something fishy.
Damn, if they're giving away stuff like Ipod Shuffles, that site must be making $$$. It's probably all lies anyway, G should suspend account soon...
Well Google is bound to notice something going on there due to the enormous amount of queries the site runs. I've read the ToS for search more thoroughly and they are actually breaching it in 3 ways. 1) Giving insentives for doing queries 2) Providing a search box on pages without any other content 3) Modifying the code (I'm not too sure on this point though)
I've actually seen different sites doing the same thing. Some even have 'quizzes' on site, where they use the google search to find answers, ie. 'What's a popular site for ice skating in Germany' ect Google will definitely need to counter this somehow
There are tons of sites that have daily quizes for prizes. Be it a ipod or extra food for some virtual pet. Seems like it could be a fine line when it comes to what is against the TOS.
Well I think in this instance the site was basically just created to drive people to generate loads and loads of search queries and thus generate revenue from people clicking on the ads. There's no real content whatsoever on the site itself, so I'm sure that this is against Google's ToS. At least if I understand the ToS correctly.
It doesn't use googe adsense at all.. It's a clever idea actually, they are using tradedoubler.com to run the sponsored ads and using google for the search results.. Dunno if tradedoubler have the same kinf of TOS but I doubt it to be honest..
Hmmm that is very strange.. Strictly speaking though they aren't using adsense for search, and if it is google adsense it appears to be the premier version which would lead me to think that google knows damn well what is happening..
They arent using adsense at all. not even a premium one. so google TOS for adsense doesnt apply on them. they are using google's Search feed only. which is something different and implies a different TOS. so nothing fishy.
Ok, it seems that they are partnering with Google. They give away free stuff, generate revenue through Google and then share the revenue with Google... at least according to an article about their site: