Top 10 Adsense Publisher Mistakes

September 13th, 2006

I’ve worked very hard out of the office recently on some personal projects, made a bit of money too. You can imagine my dissapointment last night when my Google Adsense stopped showing. On further investigation I found my account had not been banned but Google had deactivated it for some borderline Terms Of Service (TOS) violations. I’m not complaining however as it is rare for Google to deactivate an Adsense account, they usually just ban them outright and once that happens you are outcast. I have never heard of one successful Adsense appeal where somebody has had their account reactivated after being banned. (Please comment here if you’ve had a successful appeal!).

As both an Adwords advertiser and an Adsense publisher I see both sides of the coin. Successful Adsense publishers are constatly on the lookout for ways to increase their revenue and Click-Thru Ratio (CTR) while staying inside the Adsense TOS. Unfortunately, there are more than a couple of “grey” areas in these terms of service so I have decided to compile a list of the most common errors of Adsense Publishers.

Top 10 Adsense Publisher Mistakes

1. Clicking your own adverts
Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason. You know this one very well. This is a surefire way to close you Adsense account. Never tell your office associates or friends to click on them. Keep a check if your family or children are busy increasing your income by clicking your ads and indirectly trying to stop your income. Dont even think of offering incentives for clicks, using automated clicking tools, or other deceptive software. Adsense is very smart to detect fraudulent clicks. Check the ads which appear on your pages by the Google Preview tool if required.

2. Never change the Adsense code
There are enough means of adsense optimization & customizations available to change the colour, background or border to suit your needs. Do whatever you want to do outside the code, never fiddle within the ad or the search code. They know it when you do. The search code has more limitations to colour and placement, but you should adhere to the rules. The code may stop working and violates the TOS.

3. AdUnit limit
Do not place more than 3 ad units and 1 ad links or 2 adsense search boxes on any web page. Anyway, ads will not appear in those units even if you place more ad units. But this is the limit they set, so it is better to stick to it.

4. Competitive contextual ad serving
Do not run competitive contextual text ad or search services on the same site which offer Google Adsense competition in their field. Never try to create link structures resembling the adsense ads. Never use other competitive search tools on the same pages which have Adsense powered Google search. They do allow affiliate or limited-text links.

5. Account information
Do not disclose confidential information about your account like the CTR, CPM and income derived via individual ad units or any other confidential information they may reveal to you. However, you may reveal the total money you make as per recent updates to the TOS.

6. Advert headings/titles
Label headings as “sponsored links” or “advertisements” only. Other labels are not allowed. I have seen many sites label ads with other titles. Dont make your site a target in a few seconds gaze.

7. Opening new windows for adverts
Never launch a New Page for clicked ads by default. Adsense ads should open on the same page. You may be using a base target tag to open all links in a new window or frame by default. Correct it now as they do not want new pages opening from clicked ads.

8. Multiple Adsense accounts
One Account suffices for Multiple websites. You do not need to create 5 accounts for 5 different websites. One account will do. If you live in the fear that if one account is closed down for violation of TOS, believe me they will close all accounts when they find out. You can keep track of clicks by using channels with real time statistics. They will automatically detect the new site and display relevant ads.

9. Image Borders
It was a common policy to increase CTR by placing same number of images as the number of text ads, which falsely gave the impression that the text ads represented an explanation to these images. Insert a border when placing images and text ads in such a manner, to avoid confusing readers to falsely click ads.

10. Ad Rotation
Several services like Burstmedia allow you to place alternate urls, when a targeted paying ad cannot be displayed. This involved creating an simple html page and putting the ad to be displayed instead. Even Adsense allows an alternate url feature instead of displaying public service ads. But never use Adsense ads as alternate urls.