Showing more AdSense ads as alternate ads.

Does this violate the TOS in any way?

[killroy]

It occured to me, that PSAs are often shown for other reason then no ads for this page, because site wide topic ads could ALWAYS be shown. Those reasons are hard to get right for an algo, such as bad news and poison words. Often if you modify the url (by adding a query string) and google shows it's best guesss ads, they are a great match (on a focused site, that is) and far preferable to PSAs.

With the new alternate ads, we could force our own ads. As we all know, google uses the URL for first matching and ad. So imagine having a BLANK page with only your adSense code on it. Now set up your server to map all URLs n this format:

www.domain.com/adsense_ads/gibberish

to

www.domain.com/adsense_ads

Next, you create a page

www.domain.com/ads

which redirects to

www.domain.com/adsense_ads/some-keyword/big-20-digit-random-number

And viola, whenever AdSense would normally show PSAs, now it shows ads for "some-keyword". You can choose to show site wide ads be leaving out some-keyword, or for a database drivven site, you can send the right keywords for that page (use referer info on the /ads page) and post targeted ads.

I'm sure this doesn't fitwith google, as it's almost the same thing as showign ads on search results (because of the URL cahnging all the time) and wastes googles bandwidth with useless mediapartner bot crawling, but stricktly speaking its a win-win-win situation for advertisers, google and publishers IF and ONLY IF used responsibly.

I don't think currently, strictly and to the letter it violates the TOS, but it probably will be adjusted soo to read that alternate ads cannot themselves use AdSense.

What does everybody think of this?

SN

[acidic]

Maybe you should ask Google about this. Would be very useful if they do allow it.

[Shak]

IF and ONLY IF used responsibly

:)

Shak

[killroy]

I read ya shak. Currently I have alargish database of affiliate links, with keywords, link text, target, description and so on.

I grab the referer on the alternate ad, work out what page it was, workj out hte keywords and then grab related aff links for the DB. Fromat them similar but different from Google ads, and post them in the space.

SN

[hyperkik]

Forcing even generic AdSense ads where Google's filters would otherwise result in PSA's defeats the purpose of the filters. I think that, if asked, Google is likely to express that this violates the TOS. And if they determine that this is not technically a violation, I expect that they will update the TOS to make it a violation.

[killroy]

Exactly. Problem is intent. The filter is far from perfect. So this method would manually correct hte imperfections of hte filter. But of course google CHOSE not to give us this kind of power, so to take it through the backdoor can only be undesirable. I wish in future the will let us post our own keywordsper page.

In fact, this method can be used to easily force ANY ad on ANY page just as easily. In fact I expect unscrupulous folks already do this.

SN

[Jenstar]

In fact, this method can be used to easily force ANY ad on ANY page just as easily. In fact I expect unscrupulous folks already do this.

Yes, and that is why they have now closed this keyword loophole [webmasterworld.com] ;)

[killroy]

Hehe, I'd be vain to hope my lil' post had anything to do with it ;) But perhaps the method did.

Anyways, on to method two: The Page shown in hte adSense window has TARGETED content of a specific type, TO THE LEFT OR BELOW the visible 120 by 600 pixel area. Mediabot spiders, pronto, a page of your choosing, ads targeted to THAT, and now that always shows those ads instead of PSAs.

Of course this is a partial LOSS situation, because youcan still choose what ads to show on your site, but hardly targted to the page where it appears anymore (as that page's content would show PSAs.)

Now to create the same win-win-win scenario of befor You'd have to crate mini pages like this:

<h1>keyword</h1>
<p>This is about keyword.</p>

for every page where you currently show PSAs. Of course these PSA busting pages would be easy enough tpo auto generate, but they still need to get media-botted.

So 1:0 for Google vs Spammers but 0:1 for Google for advertisers and visitors.

SN