Email from AdSense promoting Adwords to drive more traffic

[avalon37]

Did anyone else get this email from AdSense which is basically an Adwords offer to drive more traffic to your site where you have AdSense ads? Thought that was pretty much against terms & conditions? It's a $100 free Adwords credit when you spend $25 first. Is this Google officially selling out? Seems like a desperate move by Google.

[piatkow]

Had them in the past but as a pure freebie not with a minimum spend - the odds are that they will then reject your ads under their "quality" rules.

[netmeg]

I get them in email, I get them in snail mail, they call my office. It's not against TOS if you do it right; problem is most people don't know how to do it right, and Google is no help at all there.

[icedowl]

I too have been getting them for years, both in email and snail mail. I just toss them.

Just checked my email and there was another one!

[Sally Stitts]

I too, have been getting AdWords offers for years, both in email and snail mail. I have received maybe 20 in the past 2 years.

Since my site is purely informational, any Ad Words buying I do would be PURE ARBITRAGE, by definition. I have combed Google forums, and not found ANYTHING to suggest that Google Search has changed their strict policy about arbitrage - do it, and you are dead meat.

Since I don't know anything about "doing it right" (a contradiction of terms? - I don't see how it can be done "right"). I wouldn't touch the offers to buy Ad Words with a 10-foot pole. I see them as invitations to commit AdSense suicide. Which is pretty annoying, when you think about it.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 8:34 pm (utc) on Nov 18, 2013]

[webcentric]

It's not against TOS if you do it right; problem is most people don't know how to do it right, and Google is no help at all there.

Any insights on the topic of doing it right because you're right, Google is no help where this is concerned. I've never used Adwords for the FUD around getting caught up in an arbitrage purge but would love to know if there's a way to do it correclty, just in case I actually ever decide to try it.

[netmeg]

Well I've done it, but not recently (cause I haven't had to) Basically your site has to LOOK like you're not just trying to turn a click (as it were).

It's considered arbitrage if your landing page doesn't contain enough content for a user to do anything BUT click on an ad link, or if the ad placement is such as to make the entire landing focus the ads (think two 338 blocks next to each other at the top of the page, with content way down below the fold)

On the other hand, if you want to "do it right" you can send the user to a landing page with no ads on it (and hope they visit other parts of the site), or you can in fact send users to pages with ads on them, as long as the ads and navigation and other rote stuff doesn't vastly outweigh the percentage of content.

It's a judgement call, but if you use common sense, it's pretty obvious.

If your site is fairly sticky - i.e. people come, they bookmark, they visit a lot of pages, they share it with their friends - it might work for you. If not, it's probably a risk to try it.

I wouldn't hesitate to use it for most of my sites if I needed to, but after I built enough traffic, I didn't need to.

And ultimately, you may not want to be in the position of spending money on traffic to your site just to have them leave your site by clicking on an ad.

Judgement call.

[ken_b]

I've got a snail mail version on my desk and a email "offer still valid" came today.

Just the latest of many offers over the years.

Never tried it though.

[Sally Stitts]

The only problem with common sense is that it is not defined.
One man's common sense may not be another's.
(One man's meat, another man's poison, etc.)

Several years back, I was dinged by a gung-ho newbie AdSense "cop". I was told that my ads did not have enough space between them and the following text, and I was threatened with termination if I didn't change it in 3 days. MY common sense told me it was JUST FINE. But, of course, I started changing all my pages right away.
The bottom line? MY ads are now closer to the following text than they have ever been, and I have not heard a word about it for years. Nor do I think I ever will.

So, when MY common sense is adjudicated to be BAD by Ronnie Reviewer, how do you think I am going to react with my common sense to arbitrage? When it is someone else's common sense that calls the shots, I am forced to be EXTREMELY CONSERVATIVE. I don't want to be eliminated, when how I am judged is arbitrary, and beyond my control. I am forced to follow the safe track.

[netmeg]

Then that's what you should do, by all means.

[nomis5]

Agree with Sally S 100%.

I did try it a few years ago though to some of my pages without AdSense on them. The thought behind it was to gain an insight into how Adwords people controlled when and where their ads appear on different sites. I learnt a lot from that and definitely learnt that it was probably too complicated for me to make it work properly. As far as I know it's 10x more complicated now.

[martinibuster]

I believe that Google's hiring practices and their trust in data is part of the reason for the shortcomings of this outreach and it's message. I doubt few in the AdSense department have ever created a site and SUCCESSFULLY monetized it themself. A masters in computer science and data do not give you insight into what web publishers do on a daily basis.

I know that some Googlers publish sites on their own. That's great. But unlike many of us, at the end of the day their earnings security comes from their day job, not their web publishing adventures. I may be wrong, but I doubt even Matt Cutts understands what it's like to be on the other side of Google creating sites.

Thus, web publishers have good reason to be skeptical about marketing advice from Google because in my opinion, based on all the Googlers I've ever met, those at Google handing out the advice have never been on our side, doing it themselves. You can't become an expert at playing baseball by reading about it in a book. Same with being a web publisher on the other side of Google search.

I advertise for traffic, not arbitrage. Keywords used are not on the sales funnel so they are not likely to produce clicks. Keywords used are likely to produce links, citations and repeat visitors. As long as you stick to keywords related to the kind of niche you're in but not product focused then the traffic will help raise mindshare.

It has been noted, particularly for newer sites, that it is difficult to gain traction because nobody knows about your site. Well, advertising is a way to get people to notice it. I call it mindshare building but it can also be referenced as relationship building, brand building or traffic building. I prefer to call it mindshare building because what it does is reach out to those into your niche and puts your URL within their attention span. Some link to it. Some refer it. Some share it on social media. Etcetera.

The days are over when a publisher simply creates a site, submits to a few directories, web rings, reciprocal links and purchases a few text links to promote a site. Sitting around waiting for traffic to come has never been viable, regardless of what anyone with a low traffic but high margin niche site will tell you. Inertia eventually catches up to everybody, regardless of niche.

If you want to be successful, leap ahead of competition, or improve your situation then advertising, mindshare building, social media relationship building and traditional public relations marketing (media and email list trading), giveaways, listening to your site visitors needs- they're all on the table.