Discussing stats openly

Is Google now more forgiving?

[berto]

Especially since Google changed the TOS to permit publishers reporting their monthly incomes, it seems to me that more and more posters (newbies?) are brazen/foolish enough to post other specifics--their daily, weekly, and monthly Impressions, CTRs, CPMs, EPCs, and other stats.

I'm not a member of the TOS Police, just making an observation.

Has anyone ever received warning from Google about violating the TOS in this way? Has anyone ever been booted from the program for openly discussing their stats?

Is being coy and cryptic about our stats now passe? May we now throw all caution to the wind?

[hunderdown]

I'm not throwing all caution to the wind. On the other hand, I doubt that Google is actively policing this rule. If you semi-anonymously post a snippet of data here, where it's likely to be seen only by other webmasters, why would they bother to chase you down? If, on the other hand, you're issuing press releases in which you recite your statistics, then you're be waving a red flag at a bull...

[berto]

I agree that Google has better things to do than to punish publishers for discussing stats openly in a semi-public forum.

I'll just sit back and enjoy all the useful specifics now being posted here.

[ken_b]

In my opinion, there are good reasons, other than the Adsense TOS, not to post specific Adsense stats here, or anywhere online.

Competition springs to mind... :)

Generally speaking you can get the message across just fine without hard numbers.

That said, others may have a different opinion.

[gamb]

Google is doing a terrible job of stopping click fraud, I pray they aren't focusing their efforts on message board postings.

If you don't mind showing your hand, post away folks. Just be ready for the "adsense police" to chase you off the board....

[KrazyKid]

why is/was it against the tos in the first place? what's the point?

[Powdork]

why is/was it against the tos in the first place? what's the point?

They were afraid that, armed with that information, some people might be able to easily come up with a way to game the system by creating computer generated profit pages using scraped content from authoritative sources mixed with pay per click listings such as Adsense in a sort of search engine arbitrage.
Now that it's clear that noone would ever try to game the system [webmasterworld.com] like that they have relaxed a bit.;)

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Where does the terms of service mention this?

[mediawatch]

I dunno, Jason Calacanis had originally posted a bunch of specific stats in this post about how his network was making $1000 a day from Adsense, but then took it down.

[calacanis.weblogsinc.com...]