May 28 2007
Don’t mess with Adsense
A while back adsense changed the rules to clarify that you can’t place images beside your adsense content. A few years ago this really helped the click through rate so I still had some old run down sites kicking around that I never quite got round to updating when the new terms were put in place.
Last week I got an email saying that adsense serving had been disabled on one of these sites. I got my act together and updated it and then emailed back but the response was
Thanks for following up with us. However, as your site was found to be in violation of our program policies, it is no longer eligible for participation in the AdSense program.
It’s a shame but not a huge deal for me as my adsense earnings from this site were only around $50/month but it is worth taking note if you have important sites earning decent adsense revenue then you better make sure you comply with all the terms and conditions as there are no second chances! 
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May 28th, 2007 at 12:28 pm | #
Sad to know that..
May 28th, 2007 at 12:44 pm | #
I blogged about this in December – http://davidfiske.com/item/2006/12/change-to-google-adsense-terms – it’s a bit of a pain as it worked well but on the other hand, if the Adwords advertisers weren’t getting a good ROI from it, it was probably a good move. It’s difficult to come down on one side of the fence when you are a publisher and advertiser!
May 29th, 2007 at 9:40 am | #
David thanks for the comments – I knew about the changes a while ago but it’s entirely my fault since I was too lazy to change it on old sites that I no longer maintain!
May 29th, 2007 at 10:34 am | #
This is something that is easy to fix if you have one site, or a standard way to update multiple sites
May 29th, 2007 at 10:43 am | #
Thanks for the comment Andy. Yeah it’s not a big change and I’m not complaining as I should have done it ages ago so Google are quite entitled to kick out the site if they like.
I was just warning others that there is no going back if you are found to be breaking the T’s & C’s like my site was so don’t be lazy like I was
May 29th, 2007 at 10:53 am | #
I still use PHP includes rather than plugins for advertising on most of my blogs on whatever platform.
My biggest problem is slacking on updating links on things like Linkshare where I am less active, and occasionally find old links to products no longer working.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:56 am | #
That’s interesting Andy – so would you include a block of adsense code in one php file and use it across multiple sites?
I need to look at ways to make it easier to maintain some of my older sites.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:09 am | #
I have about 50 text files with adsense in different formats, even including code for Adsense backgrounds I have tested.
It isn’t as ideal as using a central management system with split testing, but on a lot of these sites I would actually be scared to try to improve the CTR
If I do move over to a central system, I would still only have to update the text files on each site.
It is much more time consuming making changes to a database or widget configuration, than just using FTP to upload a small text file, or complete folder.
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