Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The new changes to the terms are all in the Payment section. And some interesting additions regarding invalid clicks and your IP address.
AdSense Terms updated
Google will no longer pay out all accounts at the end of the year, regardless of balance. Last year, Google paid out all balances that were under the $100 balance as part of the December earnings payment. But this has now been removed from the terms.
Also, Google will now only pay out on balances that are over $10, if an account is closed. Formerly, they paid out all balances if it was over the $1 threshold.
Also added:
In the event the Agreement is terminated, Google shall pay Your earned balance to You within approximately ninety (90) days after the end of the calendar month in which the Agreement is terminated by You (following Google's receipt of Your written request, including by email, to terminate the Agreement) or by Google.
This was never addressed before now, and it had caused concern with those who had to close accounts due to a name change, and apply for a new one. It is good to see a set policy in place now. It is an unfortunate waiting time for those who are simply re-opening accounts under other names, but pretty standard for those leaving a program.
This also makes me wonder how this affects those whose accounts have been terminated for fraudulent clicks. Perhaps this will mean they will now receive their payments, less the earnings for clicks that AdSense has determined to be fraudulent. Or if publishers who are suspended for fraudulent clicks are not really terminated at all. This could be interpreted that those who are suspended are not entitled to their balance at all.
Here is the most interesting part of the Payment section of the terms that was changed - I have bolded the most significant part (in my eyes) of the changes.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, Google shall not be liable for any payment based on (a) any amounts which result from invalid queries or invalid clicks on Ads generated by any person, bot, automated program or similar device, as reasonably determined by Google, including without limitation through any clicks or impressions (i) originating from Your IP addresses or computers under Your control or (ii) solicited by payment of money, false representation or request for end users to click on Ads; (b) Ads delivered to end users whose browsers have JavaScript disabled; (c) Ads benefiting charitable organizations and other placeholder or transparent Ads that Google may deliver; (d) Google advertisements for its own products and/or services; or (e) clicks co-mingled with a significant number of invalid clicks described in (a) above, or as a result of any breach of this Agreement by You for any applicable pay period.
They have added the IP address and computers under your control to the terms. This gives them a more concrete reason in the terms of why clicks from your own computer and/or IP address are discounted. What will be interesting to know is if they now have something in place to automatically discount all the "accidental" clicks people make.
They have definitely tried to make it clearer that any kind of solicitation for clicks are not allowed. The most interesting one is including offering money for people to click your ads - which would include all these "ad clickers" that seem to be periodically reported on in the news.
They seem to de-emphasize the former standing of fraudulent impression in the (e) clause.
Some other new things for publishers have also been added, and some which should save the AdSense team some of the endless support queries they receive such as "Where's my check" ;) And a hint to Google, please put a "last updated" date on the bottom of these pages too ;)
A new section all about AdSense payments:
[google.com...]
A new section about the URL filter
The AdSense URL filter page includes a handy guide of what is and isn't filtered depending on how you add a URL
Entering example.com will block ads to example.com and example.com/subEntering example.com will also block ads to www.example.com and forums.example.com
www.example.com will block ads to www.example.com but not to forums.example.com or example.com
example.com/sub will not block ads to example.com/products or example.com/sub/index.html
A new section on Alternate Ads:
Includes some nice step-by-steps on how to create alternate ads, as well as the collapsable ad unit information, which was previously only accessible within the AdSense FAQ (and always seemed to be hard to find).
[google.com...]
AdSense Quickstart Guide
A step-by-step guide for AdSense newbies to get started:
[google.com...]
Again, no earth shattering changes were made to the terms this time, just some interesting changes, along with the addition of some new pages for publishers to find the information they need easier, without having to weed through the entire FAQ.
AdSense is still down for me, if I note any new changes, I will add to the bottom of this post. There are a couple things I still need to check on for changes.
<added>
Google AdSense Policies updated
Under Fradulent / Prohibited Clicks, they have added "incentives to click" as something that is not permitted.
Under Site May Not Include they have made a change to the part where publishers must comply with the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Before, they had a link to [google.com...] and now they have changed it to just [google.com...]
They have also added an entirely new section Webmaster Guidelines
In addition to the standards above, AdSense participants are required to adhere to the webmaster guidelines posted at [google.com...] Some relevant items from the guidelines are included below for your reference:
- Do not load pages with irrelevant or excessive key words.
- Do not employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Do not create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
- Do not participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your website may be affected adversely by those links.
Google AdSense FAQ
The FAQ was also updated, am still waiting for AdSense to be up enough for me to grab it, I will add the FAQ changes shortly here ;)
[edited by: Jenstar at 10:46 pm (utc) on Oct. 25, 2004]
