Understanding Google’s Policies

If you’ve read anything at all online about AdSense, you’ve probably seen the
phrase “familiarize yourself with the AdSense Program Policies” at least as
many times as you’ve seen the moon. There’s good reason for that.
Google is very strict about AdSense users (publishers, in their jargon) following
the guidelines set forth in the AdSense Program Policies document. If you
don’t adhere to the program policies, Google reserves the right to disable
your AdSense account. And Google will — faster than you can say “What did
I do wrong?” They’re that serious about the guidelines because the appearance
of your site and your adherence to their guidelines determine how
people view the advertisements. Google wants to be in users’ good graces,
and your cooperation helps to accomplish that.
The program policies aren’t filled with quite as much legalese as you might
find in other policy documents, but you’ll encounter ten-dollar words like pursuant.
Here’s a quick list of what you’ll encounter in the policy document:
Legalese
Invalid clicks and impressions
Encouraging clicks
Site content
Copyrighted materials
Webmaster Guidelines
Site and ad behavior
Ad placement
Competitive ads and services
Product-specific policies
In the next few sections, I deal with each of these points in greater detail.
(Remember: This is just an overview. Read the document completely before
you agree to the policy requirements of the program.
Legalese
The document starts with an explanation of Google’s legal rights. Basically,
the Google lawyers are telling you that you need to be nicer and follow the
guidelines Google sets forth or Google can — and will, if it becomes necessary
— disable your AdSense account. The rub here is that after your
account is disabled, you’re just finished. You can’t use AdSense anymore.
(Yes, you could try to cheat fate by creating a new account, but if Google
finds out it’s you, they’ll just shut you down all over again.)
Invalid clicks and impressions
“Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest.”
That’s the first line of the most highly debated section of the program policies.
This section of the policy lays out the guidelines for what constitutes a
valid click. If you click your own ads, those clicks are invalid. If you program
(or purchase) some piece of software to click your ads, those clicks are
invalid. And these types of invalid clicks are click fraud. Click fraud is fraudulently
clicking your own or someone else’s ads with the intent of affecting
AdSense revenues or AdWords costs and is enough to get you banned from
AdSense completely, no questions asked — and please don’t re-apply.
A valid click or impression has these qualities:
It’s initiated by a real user to your Web site.
The actual click is performed by a real, live person.
The click is the result of genuine interest in the content of the advertisement
by the real, live person.
Any clicks that don’t meet these requirements can be (and usually are)
considered invalid clicks. Clicking your own ad even one time could get you
banned from AdSense. It’s not worth it.
You don’t have to say it. I hear your objection: How are you supposed to
know how the ads apply to your site if you can’t follow them? Or how will you
know how the ads will look or how they will integrate into your Web site?
Well . . . it’s half about trust and half about testing. Trying to view every
single ad that’s shown on your Web site probably isn’t prudent. Because ads
rotate constantly and each site visitor might see a different ad set — also
called an ad group or an ad block — you probably couldn’t view all the ads,
even if you wanted to.
Instead, AdSense has a testing capability — the AdSense preview tool. It’s a
small application you have to download and add to your computer’s registry,
which allows you to see what the ads look like and how they behave without
having to click your own ads.
Download the preview tool from the AdSense Help Center at https://www.
google.com/adsense/support/. In the Help Center, search for preview
tool. You should be taken to a search results page where the top result is a
link to the page from which you can download the preview tool. The directions
on the page walk you through downloading and installing the preview tool.
Here’s one catch: If you’re a Firefox user, the preview tool won’t be much
help. It only works with Internet Explorer. For the purposes of previewing
your AdSense ad blocks, it might be wise to keep Internet Explorer as a
backup browser. You don’t have to use it all the time — just when you want
to preview your AdSense ad blocks.
Encouraging clicks
The next section of the AdSense Program Policy document addresses the
kinds of things you shouldn’t pull in an attempt to encourage people to
click on your ads. I know this is a little negative, but it’s important that
you pay attention to these no-nos because ignoring them could have dire
consequences.
You can’t point out ads. You can’t pay people to click your ads. You also
can’t use any kind of misleading titling around the ads (for example, using
a Favorite Sites title when the ads really are just advertisements), and you
must be cautious about the graphics you include around ad blocks. If they’re
at all misleading and appear to be associated with the ads, that’s more fodder
for the banning machine.
In short, all you can really do to encourage ad unit clicks is to place the ads
in the best possible locations. Make them appealing with the design tools
that Google provides and then leave them alone. Much more than that and
you run the risk of landing on Google’s black list.
Site content
Here’s where the program policies begin to get interesting. Okay, not really.
There is rarely anything interesting about program policies. But a lot of meat
is in this section of the program policies, and you should pay close attention
to what’s here.
Google’s requirements for site content are basic: no violent content, no adult
content, nothing related to gambling, and nothing associated with any type of
illegal activities. But that’s not all. Google also frowns on Web sites that are
related to anything that could be construed as controversial — tobacco, alcohol,
prescription drugs, and weaponry of any kind. Google stops just short of
disallowing ads on political pages, though that might not be a bad idea.
Think of it this way: If you were Google, what would you not want your name
associated with? Just about anything you come up with will probably be on
the restricted list that Google’s created. Read the list closely. Google doesn’t
accept I didn’t know as a good excuse for violating the policies.
Copyrighted materials
This should really go without saying, but plagiarized content will ensure that
Google pulls your AdSense access. Copyright infringement is a serious crime;
one that’s more prevalent on the Internet than grains of sand on a beach.
Many people mistakenly believe that because articles and other content
on the Web are on the Web, they’re free for anyone to use. That’s not the
case, and Google is a bulldog in the copyright protection arena. The Google
crawler, which is the program that looks at your Web site to determine the
main topics, or keywords, that are relevant to the site, can determine if the
content on your page is original or if it appears in another place on the Web.
If it’s not original and you can’t prove you have permission to use it, you’ll
pay the price. So, be kind; use original content.
Take the time to read about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and
Google’s stance on that piece of legislation. The details are on the Web at
www.google.com/adsense_dmca.html. Not only will copyright infringement
and plagiarism get you banned from AdSense, but they can also get you
thrown in jail, so use original content. You not only protect your investment
in AdSense, but your Web site will probably rank better in search results, too,
because search engines — and site visitors — love fresh, original content.
Having fresh, original content would naturally make your site more popular.
Webmaster Guidelines
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines tell you everything you need to know about
what the company expects from the design of a Web site. The document is
pretty complicated, but it can be summed up in one word: simplicity.
Keep your Web site simple, easy to use, and relevant to your site visitors, and
you shouldn’t run into any problems with Google where site design is concerned.
Of course, it still doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with and follow
the Webmaster Guidelines. Read them here:
www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality
A more in-depth discussion of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines can be found
in topic . There’s even a bonus to using this set of guidelines — Google is
the search engine to rank in. Following these guidelines helps ensure that you
rank well in its search results.
Site and ad behavior
Need a few more guidelines for how your site should be designed? Not necessarily?
Well, tough because Google’s giving a few more anyway. In this section
of the program policies, Google outlines yet more no-nos. You can’t use
pop-ups or pop-unders in your site design. (Pop-ups are those annoying little
windows that pop up out of nowhere when you click a link leading to a Web
site or when you click away from the site. Pop-unders are the same except the
window appears under your Web browser so you don’t see them until you
close the browser window.)
You also can’t try to deceive your visitors into clicking through ads by disguising
the ads or hiding them within text, behind graphics, or in the background
of the Web page. The ads must appear as ads and not as sponsored
links of any kind.
And to take it all one step further, Google also has Landing Page Quality
Guidelines to help ensure that your landing page — the first page that site
visitors land on when they click into your Web site — is designed well and
adheres to the AdSense Program Policy requirements. These guidelines ask
the following of you and your site:
That you have relevant and original content on your site
That your site is clear in your intent and the nature of your business (if
that’s relevant)
That it’s clear how your visitors’ information will be used
That users can find their way around your site, or navigate the site,
easily
I recommend checking out the full set of Landing Page Quality Guidelines at
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=
46675&hl=en.
The real key to staying in Google’s good graces (for both search engine ranking
and the AdSense program) is to design your Web site with the end user
in mind. If you’re designing a site strictly to collect ad clicks, you might get
a high number of visitors for a short time, but that number will fall like a
penny dropped from the Empire State building as soon as users figure out
what you’re up to. Or worse, Google will figure it out first and ban you from
AdSense and probably from search engine rankings, too.
A much better idea is to design your site for site visitors. Provide the information
that visitors are looking for. They’ll spend more time on your site,
which means more exposure to AdSense ads, which means ultimately more
clicks. And Google will leave you alone to make your money. Not a bad trade
for doing things the right way instead of trying to deceive site visitors.
Ad placement
In case there was any doubt, Google set up guidelines for how and where ad
units can be placed on your site. The policy document lists the particulars,
but it’s safe to say that Google wants ads tastefully displayed and in context.
Google also doesn’t want visitors overwhelmed by the number of ads on a
page, so, you’ll also find guidelines for how many ad blocks of each type you
can have on any given Web page.
More information about how to actually place ads on your Web site — as well
as information about creating appealing ads — can be found in topic .
Competitive ads and services
This isn’t about your competition; it’s about Google’s competition. Like any
good contender, Google doesn’t want competitors competing for its share of
the prize money. So, you can’t display ads from any competing services that
could be confused with AdSense ads.
For example, it’s okay to include ads on your site from Amazon or other retail
services. And you can even include other pay-per-click ads, as long as they
don’t mimics AdSense ads. Ads that look like they belong to AdSense but do
not are a real no-no — that could really stir Google’s pot!
Google stops just this side of saying you can’t use other advertising services, but
only because denying your freedom to use any program without thought of how it
could be misconstrued as a Google capability is creating a monopoly. And monopolies
draw the attention of Big Brother. He’s a sibling no one wants to spend time with.
Product-specific policies
AdSense has a few different divisions, such as Internet ads, video ads, radio
ads, and a massive variety of content ads. Google is slowing working into
many other types of advertising as well. Because there are so many different
types of media in which you can use AdSense, and all those media differ in
some way, there have to be policies that directly address some of the differences
for each medium. You can find those guidelines at www.google.com/
adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=71600.
The AdSense Program Policy document seems pretty tame on first glance.
But as you look closer at the contents of the policy, you can quickly see that
there are additional bits and pieces about those program policies scattered
behind several different Web links. And after you start getting into those
links, you can truly see how complicated Google’s policies get.
Don’t skip anything, though. Read through all the policy documentation and
then read it all again. And read it again as you need to, to stay on the right
side of Google’s good graces, because if you get booted, it’s hard to reestablish
your presence on the Web.