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A couple days ago I got an email that informed me that it was against the TOS of Google Adsense to use traffic exchanges and adsense. I was floored by this because I didn’t see anything about that stated in the TOS. I actually went back and checked! That being said, I actually agree. It doesn’t seem fair to waste someone’s ad money on a page that is being loaded in return from credit. It just makes sense. I certainly wouldn’t want to be taking anyone’s money.
So, that being said, all traffic generated from traffic exchanges now have ?te=1 at the end of them. I already have a php script that stops trying to display ads after they’ve been shown the max of 3 times. I simply added in a bit of code that searches for that query. If it exists (with any value, not just 1), then no ads are displayed. If a reader decides to navigate to some other page on my site, then the query is taken off and the ads display as usual. This way everyone is happy. I still get to gain traffic from Traffic Swarm and not violate Google Adsense’s TOS.
This info is not really all that important, but I figured that everyone should at least know that for all the touting of free traffic exchanges that I make, that they know that using them with adsense is a no-no… unless they can set it up such that the ads are not displayed under certain circumstances.
Here’s the code I use:
First I define a variable early on in the page:
<?php $adsensecount = 0; ?>
Then I insert a little simple bit of code to tell whether or not the ad has been shown more than 3 times or has been sent from a traffic exchange:
<?php if ($_GET['te']!=”")
{
$adsensecount = 3;
} ?>
<?php if ($adsensecount <3) : ?>
<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
google_ad_client = “youradsenseaccnt#”;
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = “468×60_as”;
google_ad_type = “text_image”;
google_ad_channel = “”;
google_color_border = “adddff”;
google_color_bg = “000000″;
google_color_link = “adddff”;
google_color_text = “ffffff”;
google_color_url = “008000″;
//–>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”>
</script>
<br />
<?php $adsensecount++; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
And that’s it. Keeps me from getting in trouble, keeps my ads showing otherwise.
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel
Sharon:
I just find it really funny, that Google’s okay if you actually paid for the traffic exchanges, instead of getting it for free….
That’s why I have stopped using Blog Explosion. But then, Blog Explosion has no tolerance for Blogs generating revenue from Google Adwords.
So I guess that evens it out…..
5 November 2007, 2:18 amNathaniel:
and here I was going to check them out in the next couple of days. I suppose I still can so long as I have to manually add urls to advertise I can inject the ?te=1 query. I’m just afraid that all these blog specific traffic exchanges will use RSS feeds… which I don’t have much control over… yet.
And no, google is not OK with paid traffic exchange. Not so far as I can see. They still see it as people being encouraged to give false impressions. I don’t agree completely. Maybe if it was an autosurfer and not one where they are probably interested in the content.
5 November 2007, 2:24 amScott - 3D Metropolis:
The great thing is that the Ads by Google on this page are showing me two ads for traffic exchange programs right now :-)
5 November 2007, 10:03 pmSharon:
Advertising - I mean paying for ads for Google Adsense, Yahoo or Adbrite. Those they are okay with, of course, after you start paying the big bucks.
Traffic exchanges it doesn’t like period….
5 November 2007, 10:52 pmNathaniel:
Now you can’t get much more ironic than that! Advertising on something that doesn’t support your method of advertising! Actually, I see them too. They’re both affiliate links. Someone is trying to buy their downline through adwords.
You’re right, funny how they’re OK if you actually pay for your impressions but not OK if you get them for free. Sounds pretty silly to me.
6 November 2007, 12:59 amRay White:
The reason Google does not like Adsense displayed in Traffic Exchanges is they cannot distinguish that the ads are being seen by different people.
When a site is placed in a traffic exchange, it is shown within a frame, all coming from the same IP address. Even though there may be thousands of people seeing your site, Google only sees it as one IP and therefore will ban your adsense account.
They cannot comprehend yet how traffic exchanges really work. :)
6 November 2007, 3:53 amNathaniel:
That does make sense. I’m sure there’s a way around it.
The way they explained it to me was that they didn’t like the fact that people had an incentive, other than my content, to visit my site… and thusly see the ads. Which would produce ad impressions that no one is really going to pay attention to, thusly wasting people’s ad dollars.
I get both reasons though. I’m sure that one day they’ll sort all that out. For now, this is the only fair solution I can come up with.
6 November 2007, 11:02 amSsharon:
of course, why wouldn’t Google be cashing in on it?
7 November 2007, 8:07 pm