The questions is will Google ban your Adsense account for stumbleupon traffic? Here are my thoughts...what do you think? Yes, they do ban for stumbleupon traffic. They dont call it that when they ban you though. It is called invalid impressions through users of third-party programs paid or provided with other incentives to visit your site. Such programs include, but are not limited to auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites. The visitors didnt really intend to go there or they are just surfing such as with social bookmarking with no intention to visit any of your ads. This in turn lowers your CTR. When your CTR falls below a certain average such as 1%-2% this will initiate the a the warning email. A second attempt at this or choosing not to cease these actions will get you banned. Hope this helps and if it does rate the posting. Your thoughts???
I am sure they won't ban. If anyone thinks they will ban would you please quote which TOS is the traffic breaking?
I voted no, because if they were going to, they would have done so by now. Stumble has been a reasonably steady source of traffic for my site for over a year now - but never did it account for anywhere near half the visitors. I do think that's key: when a large percentage of visitors come from sources like stumble, google may frown - it would certainly not be happy with the CTR rates, for instance. A strong site will have visitors from a number of places, perhaps including stumble. That's not a problem for google. But if the majority of the traffic is coming from a place like stumble, then google might well ban.
I voted no. It has been discussed many times here on DP. Some members has contact adsense about SU traffic. It is OK with TOS
How will they know it's from stumbleupon? wouldn't look like the same if the traffic was earned another way?
@terminator69 Google can see your referrals, they know exactly where your traffic comes from. The code you stick on your site to display ads doesn't do just that, it also reads just about everything there is to know about your site and visitors. @the question Voted 'maybe'. It really depends. In most cases, no it won't. But I believe that if the traffic somehow comes directly from one group of people, who visit your site through profiles, the forums, etc. then there is a possibility, although still unlikely. It's all about the situation. StumbleUpon is not forbidden from within the TOS, but if the traffic somehow breaches one of the other things that are, of course it will get banned.
I dont want to vote since i dont use SU or anything else to promote the site. However TOS are typically open ended questionaires. There is always a room to accept or deny a fact and take a stance. Although SU is not paid to surf traffic, Google can wake up some day and say they dont like that traffic since its not targetted. Now dont tell me that SU traffic is targetted. The guy who click on SU toolbar dont know F about where he is going to land. So its always better to ask yourself what you want at the end of the day.
StumbleUpon's traffic is not a targetted one and that could be the reason why adsense will ban our site. I don't know , let's hope they won't do that.
Let me rephrase my answer...there is nothing against there TOS for using Stumbleupon traffic...so no you cant get banned for that directly, but, when Stumbleupon traffic accounts for most of your traffic and you are not getting any clicks on your ads thats were the invalid impressions come into play that can get you banned. Just my opinion.