Key policy takeaways from AdSense in Your City

If you follow our AdSense blog you may have heard about our AdSense in Your City events. We love the opportunity to meet publishers in person, hear first-hand feedback and gauge reactions to new AdSense features. At one of the most recent events in our Zurich office, we offered workshops on the Google AdSense program policies where we gained a deeper understanding of your concerns and questions around our policies and policy enforcement processes. To help spread the message to those unable to attend, we wanted to share a few things from the workshops on the Inside AdSense blog:

• We enforce our program policies on a site and account level. It’s definitely worth reading this ‘AdSense Facts & Fiction: Program Policies’ post to learn more about our policy enforcement processes.
• We have a lot of information in our help center regarding some of the notifications we send publishers. These help center entries also contain links to forms, which you can use to get in touch with us:
  
  • Received a notification asking you to make changes within three business days: Here is a detailed overview on what you need to do and know. Please keep in mind that you don’t need to let us know if you have simply fixed the violation.
  • Ad-serving has been disabled to your site: Read our Help Center article for more information on why this may have happened.
  • Received a notification stating your AdSense account may be disabled: By reading this information you may be able to get your AdSense account back in good standing.
  • Your AdSense account has been disabled: AdSense accounts can be disabled for different reasons. If you’d like to appeal the decision, be sure to use the right appeal form.
  • You’d like to report a policy violation: Our team is happy to investigate any policy violations submitted through these forms.
• We send email notifications whenever we need to enforce our program policies, so make sure to check the email address associated with your AdSense account regularly. Alternatively, you can also view all policy notifications by visiting the Messages page, under the Home tab when you sign in to your AdSense account.
• Some publishers have been contacted because AdSense ads had been placed next to comment spam entries on their blogs and forums. While we understand that no publisher intentionally allows their blogs and forums to be spammed, we ask that you ensure no ads are placed on these pages - as you can imagine advertisers don’t want their ads shown in this context. Check out the Webmaster Central blogpost and this help center article to learn how to combat comment spam effectively.
• Make sure you use the right AdSense product! We have a range of AdSense products these days, from the traditional AdSense for content to AdSense for feeds. This might seem obvious, but in the past, for example, we’ve seen publishers use AdSense for content ad code within mobile applications. If you’d like to understand why this is important, please read this blog post. Here is a complete overview of all of our current AdSense products.

We’d like to thank all of your for your great feedback and questions, and look forward to meeting many more of you. Make sure that you’re opted in to ‘Special Offers’ in your email preferences under the ‘My Account’ tab within your AdSense account so we can let you know about future events in your area!

Posted by Dan Zilic - AdSense Policy team

The do's and dont's to increase cost per click

In previous blog posts we’ve explained what RPM is and how it's influenced by what users do when they come to your site. We want to take this conversation a step further today, and discuss some strategies that can potentially increase the cost per click (CPC) of your ad units.

Though we can’t quantify a good or bad CPC, there are several things you can do (and a few that you shouldn’t do) if you’re trying to increase the CPC of the ads on your site. Take a look at some of the best practices outlined below:

DOs:

• Enable all of your ad units to show both text and image/rich media ads. By increasing the number of advertisers competing for your ad units, the ad auction will make sure that the highest paying ad will be shown. Learn more from one of our publishers who made this change, and edit all your units in bulk with the new AdSense interface.
• Keep your filter list small so you don’t lower your revenue potential by blocking the highest-paying ads. Watch this video to better understand the ad auction and how to enable the most competition for your ad space.
• Increase the number of ads competing for your site by setting up your custom channels for placement targeting. Read this post for more details and instructions on how to set these up.
• The top-paying ads will be shown in the ad unit that appears first in your HTML code. To take advantage of this, you will need to understand which of your ad units has the highest clickthrough rate (CTR) by using custom channels. Then, you can easily change the code of your website to make sure that your top performing unit is the one with the highest-bidding ads.

DON’Ts:

• Some publishers believe that by writing about high paying keywords they will be able to improve the earnings on their site. This is not a practice that we encourage. In fact, we always recommend to write about subjects that you know well and that you are passionate about so you can continue to create the compelling, original content that attracts visitors to your site.
• Don't use scraped content. It’s a violation of our policies.
• Don’t create multiple accounts. Publishers are not permitted to maintain multiple AdSense accounts under the same payee name, and having the ad code of different accounts on the same website will not affect your CPC in any way.
• Finally, don’t try to manipulate the standard behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads in any way that is not explicitly permitted by Google. In case you have any doubt, read the AdSense program policies.

We hope this helps you optimize your AdSense implementation and maximize your CPC. Leave us a comment with the results!

Posted by Marco Viappiani - Inside AdSense team

AdSense Facts & Fictions Part VI: User-Generated Content

Fiction: I shouldn’t be held responsible if users post content on my site or network that violates AdSense policies.

Fact: You are responsible for ensuring that all of your content, including user-generated content such as forum posts, blog comments or outside feeds, is in compliance with AdSense policies on any page or site for which you’ve enabled AdSense ads.

As we’ve discussed in previous posts in this series, we regularly review the content in the AdSense network to ensure that it's safe for advertisers, users, and publishers, as network quality is of premium importance. Just as you, our publishers, expect us to do all we can to remove undesirable ads, our advertisers expect high standards to be maintained; for example, a company using AdWords to market baby clothes doesn’t want their ads to appear next to violent or mature content. In order to be transparent about what kinds of content violate our policies, we’ve published a complete list in our Help Center.

Making sure content complies with our policies can be complex when factoring in user-generated content. Keeping tabs on the hundreds (or even thousands!) of videos, blog posts, photos, tweets, and comments that can come in every day is a massive undertaking. However, you are ultimately responsible for all sites on which you have placed your ad code, regardless of whether you own or have produced the content. This blog post provides a few suggestions to help you prevent and monitor potential content violations.

In most cases, our first step after a policy violation is found is to issue a policy notification for the site. Exceptions include DMCA and egregious policy violations, more details here. After the initial notification, you need to take action, not simply respond to the warning, but implement solutions to proactively ensure that violating content is removed and new content added to the network or site complies with our policies.

We understand that it can take time to find the best solution to prevent problematic content from appearing on your site and we want to work with you to give you the time needed to find a fix. If it becomes evident that a publisher is unable to do so, or if the violation is continuing or egregious, then we will disable an account. We offer an appeals process, but the bottom line is, we can’t partner with publishers that pose a risk to our advertisers (just as we won’t partner with advertisers that could compromise you).

We know how hard you work to make sure that your sites are of the highest quality and free of adult content, unoriginal content, or anything else that may violate policies and we thank you for your efforts. When advertisers, publishers, and users know they can trust the integrity of our advertising environment, everyone wins.

Posted by Hannah Schlesinger - AdSense Policy team

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this post implied that an AdSense publisher has to proactively screen all content on his or her site. While publishers are required to take steps to keep the pages on which ads appear free from content that violates our policies, there are various methods that publishers can take to do this (see here for tips).

AdSense Facts & Fiction Part V: Unoriginal content

Fiction: Publishers can put ads on auto-generated pages or other copied content that was not created by them.

Fact: We don’t allow sites with auto-generated or otherwise unoriginal content to participate in the AdSense program. This is to ensure that our users are benefiting from a unique online experience and that our advertisers are partnering with useful and relevant sites.

In the past, we’ve talked about tips for maintaining an AdSense-friendly site with user-generated content (UGC). Today's topic is not only applicable to UGC sites, but also to all websites affiliated with AdSense for content.

Sometimes we come across sites that are using software to generate automated content. These sites might look like normal news sites, but the information is completely plagiarized. Scraping content and passing it off as one’s own is not only wrong, but it also happens to be a serious violation of our policies. AdSense depends on maintaining a balance between user, publisher, and advertiser experience. We strive to protect that ecosystem as much as possible by encouraging and protecting unique and relevant content.

Obviously publishers and Google are concerned with revenue generation, and when original traffic encounters quality content, it’s a match made in heaven. The best way to engage users in the long term is to engage users. Provide your opinion on the news, offer a different service, organize your site in a way so that a user is captivated and moved.

Take some time to familiarize yourself with these webmaster quality guidelines, and if you find sites within our network that are clearly violating these guidelines, feel free to report it to us.

One last thing: a quick, but well-deserved thank you to the majority of you that continue to inspire us with your great, unique, and creative content. Keep up the awesome work!

Posted by Cecelia Choi - AdSense Policy team

AdSense Policy webinars are coming to Asia and Australia

Have you ever received a policy notification from AdSense? Do you sometimes worry about your account security? Are there any particular policies you still don't quite understand and want to know more about?

In order to help you better understand our policies, the AdSense team will be holding a series of online seminars in Asia and Australia, covering mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Austraia, New Zealand, India, Japan, and Southeast Asia on the schedule below. During the seminar, Google AdSense policy specialists will explain the details of AdSense policies, debunk popular myths, share inside tricks and tips, as well as answer any questions. The agenda will cover the following materials:

• Website content and ads implementation guidelines
• Account violation and account safety
• What do I do if I get a policy notice?
• Live Q&A

Publishers located in the regions below should have already received our invitations. If you live in a different region, you’re still more than welcome to join! Just check the schedule below and sign up for the time and language that are most suitable for you.

Region	Regional Date/Time	PST Date/Time	Language	Registration
China	2:00-3:00PM Beijing Time Dec 15, 2010	10:00-11:00PM PST Dec 14, 2010	Chinese	Register
Hong Kong	2:00-3:00PM Beijing Time Dec 9, 2010	10:00-11:00PM PST Dec 8, 2010	English	Register
Taiwan	2:00-3:00PM Beijing Time Dec 8, 2010	10:00-11:00PM PST Dec 7, 2010	Chinese	Register
Australia/ New Zealand	3:00-4:00PM Sydney Time Dec 8, 2010	8:00-9:00PM PST Dec 7, 2010	English	Register
India	11:00AM-12:00PM Mumbai time Dec 7, 2010	9:30-10:30PM PST Dec 6, 2010	English	Register
SEA (Thai)	12:00-1:00PM Singapore time Dec 14, 2010	8:00-9:00PM PST Dec 13, 2010	Thai	Register
SEA(English)	3:00-4:00PM Singapore time Dec 14, 2010	11:00PM-12:00 PST Dec 13-14, 2010	English	Register
Japan	5:00-6:00PM Tokyo Time Nov 25, 2010	12:00-1:00AM PST Nov 25, 2010	Japanese	Completed

Posted by Peggy Chen - AdSense Policy team

Avoiding accidental clicks Pt. 2: Use the right product

We hope you found our last post on invalid clicks useful. Today we wanted to give you more advice on this topic and talk about ads on pages containing interactive media, such as videos and games.

We understand that video content pages aren't as easy to monetize as regular text-based pages and that publishers are interested in experimenting with different ad placements, but we’d like to clarify some of our policies addressing AdSense for content ads in interactive media environments:

• We don’t allow publishers to overlay AdSense for content ads on video content.
• We don’t allow publishers to implement AdSense for content ads as in-stream video placements.
• We don’t allow publishers to implement AdSense for content ads on interstitial pages. So if a user has decided to watch a video, you may not implement ads on pages saying “your video will start in 15 seconds." We’ve also seen this placement on Flash gaming sites in the form of an ad being shown to the user while the game is loading in the background. However, even if you allow users to skip these ads or close them, this placement is not allowed.

Now for the good news: If you are interested in monetizing overlay or in-stream placements on your video content, please check out AdSense for video. Similarly, if you are interested in placing ads on interstitial pages on your Flash gaming sites, read about AdSense for games. The key difference between using these products and AdSense for content is that with AdSense for games and AdSense for video, we only show ads from a pool of advertisers who specifically target these kinds of placements and have optimized their campaigns and creatives towards them.

Think about your users and advertisers when implementing AdSense ads on your sites. Make sure that ads are separated enough from the content to prevent accidental clicks, and that ads are always recognizable as such. Remember that AdSense is an ecosystem that will continue to thrive as long as all parties remain happy within it. Users are happy to see relevant and useful ads that are not obtrusive or misleading, advertisers are happy to reach their target audience and get good returns on their investment, and you - the publisher - will be happy to have an AdSense account in good standing.

Posted by Dan Zilic - AdSense Policy team

Avoiding accidental clicks Pt. 1: Keeping the right distance

In the past, we've talked about ad placements that are prone to generate invalid clicks. In a past post, for example, Mike noted that publishers should be careful about placing ads too close to navigational controls or other clickable page elements.

It's in the best interest of the user, advertiser, and publisher to avoid implementations that lead to invalid click activity. As you can imagine, users aren't very happy if they accidentally click an ad instead of a link on your page and are directed away from your site. Advertisers also don’t want to be charged for a click that a user made accidentally (though of course we do not charge advertisers for invalid clicks that we detect). And why should publishers care? Well, if we see that most of the clicks coming from your pages are invalid, we may need to disable your account to protect our advertisers.

One type of site we wanted to talk about are Flash-based game sites. Playing games on these sites, you'll notice that ads are often placed very close to the Flash player where the game is played. Publishers may reason that they're providing maximum value to advertisers by placing their ads very close to the area where their users are focused. However, many of these Flash games are played with a mouse, and the action in the games can lead users to do a lot of rapid cursor movements and clicking. We've seen many cases where ads were placed too closely to where the action was taking place, generating many accidental clicks.

Since each game and site are unique, we can't advise publishers on an exact distance between ads and games, but we do recommend a minimum distance of 150 pixels between the Flash player and ads.

We've worked with publishers on these issues in the past and noticed that increasing the distance between Flash player and ads has had, on average, a positive long-term effect on CPCs. The reason for this is smart pricing. As you may know, the revenue you receive is based on the amount an AdWords advertiser pays for each click on their Google ad. The amount the advertiser pays varies per ad and from website to website, based on the likelihood that a click will result in a conversion for the advertiser. If we determine that clicks on a site are less likely to lead to business results for an advertiser (e.g., an online sale or registration), we reduce the price that an advertiser will pay for those clicks.

So, in short: Moving the ads further away from Flash games decreases the likelihood of accidental clicks and increases the number of clicks leading to business results for advertisers. A good deal for all involved.

Posted by Dan Zilic - AdSense Policy team

AdSense Facts & Fiction Part IV: Program policies

Fiction: AdSense disables accounts and issues warnings at random.

Fact: We rely upon a detailed set of guidelines when looking at policy violations, and these policies are published in our Help Center. Our intent is to keep Google's content and search networks safe and clean for our advertisers, users and publishers. We seek to be as transparent and consistent with our decision making.

Part of our job of monitoring the AdSense network involves working with publishers to identify and address potential issues. We understand that there are a lot of policies to take into account, and so for minor policy violations our first step will be to issue a warning. The reasons a publisher might receive a warning will vary, but in general they tend to be for violations that can be fixed fairly easily. Examples of these violations range from deceptively labeling ads “Today’s hot deals” to having a minimal amount of adult-content comment spam in a forum. Publishers, after receiving a warning, are given three days to fix their violations. If changes are not made in that time, ad serving will be disabled to the violating site.

There are some situations when we would need to disable ad serving to a site without first sending a warning. We usually reserve this action for egregious violations like adult content, copyright infringement, as well as cases of extreme violence and gore. We may also disable ads to a site when we find a violation that we’ve already contacted a publisher about in the past.

The final and most severe action that our teams can take is to close down an account completely. This normally only happens when we find that a publisher’s entire network consists of violating sites or for repeat policy offenders. If you have received a policy notification from the AdSense team, please visit this help center entry for additional information.

We want to point out that notifications that result from the previously mentioned policy violations are different from notifications sent because of issues with invalid click activity, which are monitored by Google's Ad Traffic Quality Team. Invalid click activity consists of any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings, and for which we decide not to charge the advertiser. For more information about invalid clicks and impressions, please refer to this page, which includes a link to our FAQ page for accounts disabled due to invalid activity.

Lastly, we highly recommend reviewing these guidelines to help avoid policy violations, and to help keep your AdSense account in good standing.

Posted by Andres Schabelman - AdSense Policy team