Advertising your site in other forums/newsgroups?

[serengeti]

Is this illegal per Adsense policies?

If not, why are there so many question on here about how to increase traffic to your website?

Can't you just post your web address all over the web (in related places of course)?

Or is that also against the infamous Adsense TOS?

[edited by: serengeti at 1:23 am (utc) on Aug. 27, 2005]

[dcheney]

I don't think that would be a problem with AdSense as long as you didn't include something like "go to site yyy and click on my ads".

That being said, spamming forums and newsgroups will get you banned from most of them rather quickly.

[Ossifer]

I'm a very regular poster to a couple of newsgroups. These fit my site content area exactly. Either I'd post the answer to the question, or refer them back to my site.

In either case, i have a signature with my site details. Occasionly I change the URLs a little to point to different pages.

In these cases there are no problems, but I do see enough spam with URLs in, that are totally off-topic & get removed.

[queritor]

Straight from the Adsense TOS:

In addition, publishers may not bring unnatural attention to sites displaying ads through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites. These activities are strictly prohibited in order to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs.

Besides that, it's going to be pretty much against every reputable forum's TOS. A signature is usually acceptable, but self promotion is often considered spam.