adsense tos

Do not employ cloaking or sneaky redirects?

[StuntasticAudi]

Adsense TOS says: "Do not employ cloaking or sneaky redirects."

What does that actually mean? One of my domain names redirects you randomly to 2 different sites. You come to a.com and you are redirected randomly to either b.com or c.com. Is that ok?

[jomaxx]

As always, it kind of depends. If someone tries to go to a "free-mp3s" domain and you sneakily redirect them to a "mesothelioma-lawyers" domain, then I predict you will get into trouble very quickly.

OTOH, if you had a reason for doing this that wasn't about funneling cheap traffic to high-value sites, then it might not cause a problem with G. I'd probably ask first, because offhand I can't think of a valid reason for redirecting users at random.

[jomaxx]

P.S. If you're simply sending users to a mirror site, that's a redirect, but IMO not "sneaky". I'm sure they're referring to redirects that are deceptive or that otherwise subvert the intentionality that is needed for AdSense targeting to be of any value.

[wheelie34]

Google knows what the surfer is or WAS looking for, if they end up somewhere else its unfair, I hate it and you probably do too, why do you (stuntastic) redirect them?

[StuntasticAudi]

It's not sneaky...they are going to the site they wanted to go to. I kind of explained it wrong above. If you go to a.com you go to either a.com or b.com not b.com or c.com like i said above. So you still go to the site you wanted to go to but you can also be send to a mirror site. Both sites are the same.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I think that redirecting to a mirror for load-balancing is legit, but possibly confusing for SEs and users, so I do load balancing later on, eg when the user creates a cookie/session. Others do it earlier, at the DNS level.

Rgds

Damon