Posted on September 26, 2006 - by John

10 things you should NEVER do with Google Adsense

I must admit some of these points are a little basic, but it would surprise you how easy it is to make these mistakes.

Most people who blog, and most certainly people who blog for a revenue, know, or need to know, what not to do with their Google ads. I, way too often notice blogs that fail to follow the Google Adsense rules, and in turn loose out in any earnings they have made with the Google Adsense program. Especially, it is very hard on those who have expended much resources both financially and in ‘blood and tears’ on their site, only to realize that they misunderstood the rules, or even worse did not take the time to follow them correctly (this regrettably seems to be the most popular excuse). So here is a list, it is not exhaustive however, and I may have missed some important points, so please feel free to comment on this, as with all my posts (well 90% anyway) they are interactive, via comments.

I would  love to hear any feedback and any additional points, which I will add to the article if relevant.

1. Do not use other contextual ads with Google Adsense
2. Do not tell people or encourage them to click your ads, “sponsored links” or “advertisements” are allowed, but no other terms.
3. Do not modify the Google Adsense code.
4. Do not click on your own ads, if you do by mistake - tell google, they love feedback from their customers, and will appreciate you telling them this information.
5. Do not use tools like ‘traffic generators’ with Google ads, or systems that you pay to have people visit your site  these may be seen as FALSE IMPRESSIONS, and thus the clicks generated by this will not be valid, and may result in Google suspending you Adsense account, or removing the funds involved.
6. Do not place your ads in a location where they might be seen to be part of another ad service you may use.
7. Do not place your ads on empty pages, for example if you are updating your site and you have Google ads on your header, and say for example you have created a section, which will be very popular soon, but is currently empty, by placing your Adsense code on the page now you may end up with ads that are not targeted correctly, as Google sends out it’s ‘bots’ as soon as it can, usually within 30 minutes, and after that they may not come back for another 3 weeks, so you could be left with non paying ads (public service ads) for they entire period, whilst you may have had high traffic during that time.
8. Do not place more that 3 ad units on your blog/site ( they usually wont show anyway, so you will just be wasting your time - and space)
9. Do not e-mail your Google Adsense code, (yes people try to place them in newsletters), but it does break Google’s TOS, so a big NO NO
10. Do not - not ask questions, when in doubt always ask before you act!
    Tags: Google Adsense  Blogs