Ads on protected pages?

Can I post ads on parts of a web site that need a password for entry?

[wildfiction]

Does anybody know if I can put AdSense adverts and code on pages that are on a protected part of the web? i.e. part of the web that users need a user name and password to get to?

Thanks.

[gamiziuk]

I believe this is not permitted. Read the Adsense TOS.

[kodaks]

I am not sure about legalities of it, but the adsense spider would not be able to access that page's content, therefore giving you PSA ads.

[lammert]

You could set up your system in such a wat that the mediabot crawler has access to protected pages without a password. In that case relevant ads are displayed. But Google has something to say about this issue themselves on their website:

At this time, pages that require a login can not be easily visited by our crawlers. Additionally, since these types of pages are not easily visited for approval and it is difficult for our AdSense specialists to verify that pages behind a log in follow Google AdSense policies, we are unable to offer support for these pages.

So they do not say NO, but they say that it is not really supported.

[wildfiction]

<<You could set up your system in such a wat that the mediabot crawler has access to protected pages without a password.>>

How does one do that?

[lammert]

To allow the Google media bot to attach to protected pages you have to adde some lines to your .htaccess file (if you are using Apache server). The user-agent is called "Mediapartners-Google/2.1". Known IP addresses of them are 66.249.64.1 - 66.249.79.254, but maybe other addresses are used also.

[miracle]

I treat spiders as guests on my forum and they cannot access certain forums, available only to members. Could I still place google ads on those forums? Would they be able to crawl those topics in those forums? Please advise.

[helleborine]

Would you mind giving out the actual lines of code I should be putting in the .htaaccess file?

I'm just a beginner.

[rogerd]

Miracle, you would have to code your access control so that Mediabot can access the members-only pages if you want to place ads on those pages. If you treat all spiders (including Mediabot) as guests, Mediabot won't be able to view your member content and hence won't be able to target ads. Welcome to WebmasterWorld, by the way!

[miracle]

Ok, so is it against the TOS if mediabot can't crawl those topics in the restricted forums?

[lammert]

It is not agains the TOS to have ads on password protected pages, because AdsensAdvisor - who is the spokes person for Google for this subject on WW - told some months ago here that you can ask their support if you want to do it. This specific thread is found at [webmasterworld.com ]

[Jenstar]

You can have it on password protected pages, but you get themed ads. So don't complain if the ads aren't targeted ;) They also don't want you to give special access to the mediabot for restricted areas, but if you do, they probably wouldn't notice until you get quality checked and they see they get something different than what the mediabot gets.

[wildfiction]

I've just tested a Google AdSense banner on a protected part of my web and from what I can work out it appears that the bot scans the page for words when the user opens the page and then serves the ad to the page. The ads were targetted to the content of the page.

Does this make sense?

[tommyleebyron]

I found on the web the answer:

Here is what google had to say:

Hello #*$!x,

Thank you for your email. If you would like to display Google ads on pages
behind a login, you will need information about our crawlers.

The user-agent 'Mediapartners-Google/2.1' is used by our crawlers when
indexing content for Google AdSense. Requests from our content crawlers
can come from any of the IP addresses in the following range: 66.249.64.1
- 66.249.79.254 .

By allowing our crawlers to gain access to your pages behind the login,
you will be able to display relevant ads targeted towards your content.

Please feel free to reply to this email if you have additional technical
questions or concerns. For general program or account questions, please
email [e-mail].

Sincerely,

Mike
The Google AdSense Team

[wildfiction]

I got the same email back from Google. I have subsequently tried to give the bot access but it turns out that I can't because of some restrictions that my host puts in place.

However, the strange thing is that the ads on these protected pages are still highly targetted like the ads on the rest of the site. Note sure if it's because the site just has 1 theme and they use that theme for those pages that have not yet been crawled?