Firefox reveals a adsense trick

Neat but shady

[roycerus]

Turns out that firefox does not require a scrollbar to scroll a iframe set to have no scrollbar.

Recently I visited a website which is ranked number one on many search terms related to a industry and they have employed this neat but forbidden trick to target ads. Here’s how they have done it:

*They have placed an iframe on the page. This iframe calls a HTML file [file1].
*The HTML itself has an iframe that calls another HTML file [file2].
*The second HTML file has a rectangular google adsense box and a lot of text related to a high paying keyword.

Now the trick is that if on the main page you put the iframe calling HTML [file1] by setting the height and width to exactly the google adsense box, the text underneath never shows although it helps display the ads that you want to display.
The neatest trick implemented on this site is that they do not load this iframe in iframe page on our first page load. Since most of the usual ads are targeted they will load this high paying keyword adsense page randomly eg. 1 out of 3 page views.

Something tells me this is NOT correct but it doesn’t really violate the TOS. What do you guys think? Any comments from Googleguy?

Regards,
R

[jetteroheller]

I thought on the same iframe trick.
Not for high paying keywords, but to show at certain screen sizes dynamic more ads.

I did not do it, because I came to the conclusion, that it violates TOS.

Google wants to know where the ads appear. If some software cames to the conclusion the content could be critical, only a PSA is shown.

The iframe trick would make it possible to place AdSense on any not appropriate page.

So it clearly violates TOS.

[oddsod]

jetteroheller, which part of the TOS do you believe it violates?

[jomaxx]

There are other rules which could be interpreted to apply, but for starters: "If your page uses Frames, make sure that the code is pasted into the frame that contains your page's main content."

[rfung]

i think i've read somewhere that's its okay to put an adsense banner in an iframe. In fact when you create the banner, tehre's a checkbox for that.

[jetteroheller]

[
There are other rules which could be interpreted to apply, but for starters: "If your page uses Frames, make sure that the code is pasted into the frame that contains your page's main content." ]

Exactly this part.

This page shows only the ad, nothing of the content.

[jomaxx]

Yes, that's the way to us a frame/iframe: check the checkbox and the contents of the AdSebse frame will presumably be ignored. But IMO using hidden text to trigger certain AdSense ads is an obvious no-no.

[oddsod]

This page shows only the ad, nothing of the content.

Wouldn't that exclude the use of SSIs?

[jetteroheller]

SSI is part of the page, the spider sees all the content.

At the iframe trick, the page where the ad will be displayed is unknown for the spider