Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Here's an idea: Maybe bidding on Adwords for your own pages that have Adsense on them is an area where "fraud" (according to Google) can occur. Perhaps there are certain scenarios that Google considers to be problem (like the ads displayed on your page are based on exactly the same keyword that you are bidding on).
Imagine a user going to Google.com and doing a search for "widgets". On the right, your ad appears along with several others. If the user clicks on any of these ads, Google gets 100% of the revenue. However, if they click on your link, the user will see the exact same ads on your site. Now if they click on these ads, Google has to share revenue with you. If most of your traffic is generated by the ad in Google, then they are effectively losing money by having you as a publisher. Therefore, Google could consider this as "theft" of revenue and use this to terminate you as a publisher, calling it "fraudulent".
Conclusion: Without any definitive answer from Google, I think it'd be safer to use a competing network (e.g. Overture) to send traffic to your Adsense pages.
BTW, from other threads it appears that Overture and other PPC's are not crazy about this practice. It looks like you might be able to use AdSense as a supplement to your website income, but if you're engaging in a kind of buy-low-sell-high arbitrage then those other engines are probably not going allow it.
So I would look at Adsense as an additional revenue source.
This is my point exactly, if there is a possibility of fraud, then Google may consider it so, especially in the scenario I gave. I have read many posts from webmasters on this forum saying they have been booted from Adsense for unknown reasons (i.e. unspecified "fraudulent activites"). They claim they have followed the TOS to the letter and have not clicked on the ads on their site (the #1 reason people believe Google is using, but which I think may be a wrong theory).
I can't prove that Google thinks this way, but I can't disprove it either ... so all I'm saying is that a prudent site owner should be "safe" and not do it.
I can't prove that Google thinks this way, but I can't disprove it either
As jomaxx pointed out, why speculate when you can simply ask Google?
I don't see how that conclusion is warranted. If they didn't like it they could simply say so in their T+C.
The problem is exactly that (they should simply say so, but they don't). They do not define what is fraudulent in their T+C ... but many webmasters are getting dropped for that reason, without any elaboration about what they did that was fraudulent.
Rather than engage in wild speculation, why not just ask them point blank?
Good idea. If I get an answer, I'll post it here.
As for using a competing network for PPC, some are declining PPC keywords [webmasterworld.com] when AdSense is being run on the same page.
In fact I have the same login email address and password, I think that is required, for AdWords and AdSense.
I can't imagine Google telling me that I have to choose between advertising my site with AdWords or generating revenue with AdSense.
Question: If I am a Google Adwords advertiser, can I sign-up?
The answer is blah, blah, blah... yes.
I know many publishers who also use Adwords to drive traffic to those pages - none of them have been suspended.
I know that it's allowed. I am a FAQ/TOS expert ... I must have read them a hundred times!
I'm saying that it could be a component that must be present along with other activities (unknown to me) in order to be considered fraud ... only a guess: 100% of your traffic comes from adwords AND the keyword you bid on is an exact match with the keyword used to serve ads to your site. This may be a fairly rare combination of events and that is why few publishers have been suspended.
If it is indeed rare, Google can determine this very easily. Someone with an intent to defraud could build many sites that suck revenues away from Google this way. You need to see it from Google's viewpoint and from the viewpoint of an unethical webmaster.
There may be other factors that I haven't thought of, so simply saying that you know of a site where this is true and they haven't been suspended still doesn't disprove the theory.
That's not specifically related to using AdWords to generate traffic, though. I still don't see why if they didn't want people doing it they wouldn't just say so.
If you have the content to sustain it - go for it!
> that pages cannot exist for the sole purpose of showing ads.
lol - then 75% of the pages in adsense should be booted. lol
brett_tabke: > that pages cannot exist for the sole purpose of showing ads.lol - then 75% of the pages in adsense should be booted. lol
As long as you don't entice people to click the ads there is nothing wrong. And Google should be happy; they get money from 2 advertisers..the one promoting his AdSense site and the one with ads that showed up on the AdSense site.
I designed a site with 50 pages, each page is specifically keyed for a particular key word. That is I took the 50 most common search terms used to find my main website and used them to create a 50 page funnel site.
I then hired Adwords (pd for each of the 50 words) to spread the word of my site and added Adsense to the pages.
I was paying Google when someone clicked on my key words and Google got paid if they clicked on the Adsense ads, if they clicked on my ad or if they returned.
Either way, Google got paid for sending people to my site and they got paid when people left my site.
I read the FAQ's and the Agreement that I agreed to and no where did it mention that this might be fraud.
Either way, I got booted (They won't tell me what I did that was fraud, just that they found it).
I think that Google has some pretty specific types of websites that they think their Adsense model functions the best, and I guess the above model isn't one of them.
The above technique was driving a substantial (for a brand new website) amount of traffice to my site and my google adsense ads were getting a lot of use. No where on the page did it mention, encourage, or even suggest that the ads should be clicked on. They were placed in the standard across the top of the page placement that most people use, and if they got clicked, they got clicked.
Because people want information, I built this site specifically for that purpose. If I can provide it to them, or if Google can, either way I want people who visit my site to be more informed and return often.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to try out my theory long enough to see if it really worked, or was about to explode.
I tracked my ROI and everyday it was increasing at a steady pace.
Rusty
<paraphrase>"We cannot reveal our algorithm, but we reviewed your account again and confirm that invalid clicks were generated with your account"</paraphrase>
I think it is fair to assume that the reason for Google canceling your account had nothing to do with using PPC to get traffic, I think a lot of us do that :)
And why would Google frown on this. Think about it. A user clicks on an ad that nets Google $0.50. If that user clicks on the ad for widgets.com which does not run AdSense they only make $0.50. If the user clicks on coolwidgets.com which does run AdSense and that user clicks on the ad (which I have found is a rather high percentage as long as ads are targeted well since they are highly targeted searchers) then Google splits an additional $0.50 with coolwidgets.com. Assuming a 50/50 revenue split, Google just earned another $0.25 and increased revenue on that searcher by 50%.
I have been doing this for 6 months rather sucessfully. Google has reviewed my site several times (at my request) for technical issues and I even received a warning to make a content change that didn't meet their standards. They have never commented about this. They clearly do not have an issue with it.
But I think you have something else to be concerned about. If AdWords is the ONLY place you are going to get traffic (you mean you have no natural traffic at all?) it sounds like this site is being designed specifically and exclusively for AdSense. And therein will lie your problem.
Spend some time developing a quality site with quality content like many of us here have done, work hard at getting some natural traffic and yea, go ahead and buy some traffic while you are waiting to move up in the SERPs. You aren't going to get booted.
