Things AdSense will allow you to do

I got a reply from AdSense

[Andrew Bassett]

In an earlier thread, I questioned about whether making certain changes were within the rules. Today I got a reply from AdSense, and they said that I could do the following:

1) Display AdSense ads only to logged-in users.
2) Limit the number of times that AdSense ads load (for example, 20%).

Maybe for reference, we can develop a list of OK AdSense practices.

[donovanh]

One thought concerning the first thing.. if you only display ads to logged in users, would the adsense bot try to access a protected page and be denied access to the content?

[Andrew Bassett]

Who said password protected?

Think of a message board like this one. Most people remain logged in, right? If you wanted to show ads only to the logged-in members, you could. The page content is basically identical between logged-in and logged-out users.

Of course mine isn't a message board, but the same idea applies.

[pldaniels]

It's interesting to see this converstion here - my brother in law is encountering this very thing from a different angle.

He setup a rather good set of pages, was getting a respectable click rate every day. Next he setup some user/passwd protected pages and *SPLAT* Adsense went dead (which he later realised was his own fault - especially after google kept showing Password related adverts :) )

Anyhow, what he ended up doing was writing code to look for the google adsense bot and allow it in - that seems to have solved that problem.

Paul.

[Green_Grass]

works well with logged in users.. have been using it for last 4 months .

Also if someone does not want to register and login, he/she can always click out using adsense on home page. I have been using this way of working and CTR on home page is consequently high and I get very serious potential customers into my site. Good way to filter useless traffic, for me.

I run an ecommerce site.

[Cakkie]

I'm running a community forum, and I'm seeing better results only showing ads to users who aren't logged in. I get a lot of inbound traffic from Google, and these visitors are usually only interested in that one specific topic they found using the search, not in the rest of the site. A well placed and relevant adblock will give those users a way out once they're done reading.

Registered/returning users tend to read more pages, or simply read new topics/post, without looking for a specific thing. Since they're not actively looking for something, they're less likely to click on an ad.