DNF members and google fraud - click fraud?

[iBizStart]

There is another thread in this category about click fraud and all. I agree with everyone, it is bad for the company, the industry, and everyone else.

What about googles policy about not creating pages/websites specifically from profiting from google ads? There are thousands of people, many from this forum who do this. Is this not fraud as well? Its a different type of fraud, it violates googles policy. They even have tons of sites like googler that tells you what keyword you can use to squeeze the most amount of money out of a company.

Any other opinions?

 

[RTM.net]

Interesting topic - I read that to in their TOS... I found it kind of "open to interpretation" since it almost sounds like they are saying "don't SEO for Adsense".... huh?

I think, again, the spirit of that part of the T&C or TOS is to prevent frivolous content sites with little or no value added ORIGINAL content to try and profit from particularly high value keywords. Take the popular pharmaceutical or health related domain names, such as mesothel, viagra, hydrocodone, sildenafil, tadalafil, oxycodone, ephedra, erectile dysfunction, whatever.

Sure, a new mesothel site with cloned content will perhaps generate some high eCPM numbers ... but in the long run, the reason why G states that the site shouldn't be ONLY optimised for Adsense is because... it should optimise content for the end user - the person who will convert from a lead (Adsense clickthrough on an Adwords block) into an *action* for that particular advertiser.

That being said, the beauty of this whole environment is that G now has a pretty sizeable chunk of both the SE (end user), SEO (publisher) and SEM (advertiser) market, they can pretty well do a lot of correlation between what they consider quality content (pagerank) and then highly target their Adwords SEM clients to the right pages.

I think that part of the TOS is more to prevent the casual site scraper who will simply put up cloaked pages and try and do a quick Adsense money run....

Just my $0.02.

Rob

 

[iBizStart]

Thats what thousands of people do

I think that part of the TOS is more to prevent the casual site scraper who will simply put up cloaked pages and try and do a quick Adsense money run....

Just my $0.02.

Rob

 

[RTM.net]

True... but thousands is a small number. While we don't know (or can't disclose because of NDA reasons) how many publishers are in the adsense program... remember that some publishers have many sites. So it may be thousands of sites, but necessarily thousands of accounts. If it is say, only 100,000 web sites that are pure AdSense getthemoneyandrun sites purely designed to optimise for CTR without any type of longevity.... they won't last. It's an environment where the long term players will ultimately win.

Like anything else in life, we can run around cheating and scamming... but eventually we get caught. It depends how much "we" push the envelope.

Rob

 

[mole]

When traffic and revenue become the lifeblood of a person's survival, then everything may be thrown out of the window to earn income. Spyware, PPC exploitation, scripts, viruses....

I'm not saying everyone does it, many don't. Those who preach that Internet growth is based on traffic while downplaying other growth techniques may have agendas to hide.

From day one as a "domainer", I have always believed that the key value in domain names lies in its branding and navigation recall value. These domains can and will command millions of dollars. It is all too apparent today that you can switch traffic on and off to any domain in hundreds of clever ways, many of them not necessarily ethical.

When a person has to say they have, and respect people with, "reputation" and "industry standing", what they are really saying is I have something to hide, imho. People who are truly respectable and have industry standing, are often the most quite, humble and unassuming people around.

 

[Edwin]

The Adsense terms are explicit about not incentivising clicks by e.g. asking people to click, but I've seen many DNF posters say stuff like "If you found the site useful, please click on a few of the ads at the top of the page" which BREAKS the TOS. No grey area, it's broken.

Personally, I'd love to see every last cheater thrown out of the Adsense program: incentivisers, scraper sites, php-powered sites that throw up different navigation but the same content, sites with no "exits" except the Adsense ads (also against TOS) etc. Why? Because they're polluting the system for everyone willing to make a decent site and a real effort... and over time they'll hurt everyone by pulling down bid prices and reducing advertiser trust!

 

[ParkQuick.com]

You make some good points, but I think that informational sites that feature AdSense links "front and center" actually create a much better user experience than PPC services like DomainSponsor. Compare, for example:

http://Autism99.org and http://YogaMedicine.com

The DomainSponsor version provides information only after you have clicked on a paid link - and lots of the links are generic. The "AdSense" site (created with a tool available in the Exclusive section here - and tweaked a little) provides free information as well as relevant paid links. If I stumbled upon both of these sites looking for information I would be much happer finding Autism99.org.

 

[LeftRightOut]

The Adsense terms are explicit about not incentivising clicks by e.g. asking people to click, but I've seen many DNF posters say stuff like "If you found the site useful, please click on a few of the ads at the top of the page" which BREAKS the TOS. No grey area, it's broken.

You'll get conflicting reports. The ads along the top may not be adsense ads but other programs and so asking people to click those ads is not asking people to click the adsense ads. I never ask people to click my ads so never needed a ruling from Google but a few others have claimed to get rulings saying it is ok to ask for clicks on non-adsense ads.

 

[Mr. Deleted]

http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=89388

Googlest.com - Helping Your Site Make $$$ with Adsense!!! - The unofficial and complete list of Top Paying Adsense Keywords - FREE!!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HERE's the Linky - Enjoy! Thanks and hope this helps yall out with your PPC sites


http://www.random9.com/Googlest-site/index.htm <- the complete list is here, all Free!

I kindly ask that you return the favor by clicking on a few of the sponsored ads at the top of each page.

Goes to show that some are in it just for the clicks... The site us useful, but to ask for clicks is not good.

Thank you! I clicked an ad for you.

...

huh!

The website you've just visited has tried to provide you with search results from Google. Unfortunately, the site violates our terms of service so your search could not be completed. If you would like to continue with your search, please click the link below, which will take you directly to Google and the results you've requested. We apologize for the inconvenience and encourage you to conduct future searches directly from google.com or through the Google Toolbar, which can be downloaded for free from this address: http://toolbar.google.com.

 

[LeftRightOut]

http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=89388

Goes to show that some are in it just for the clicks... The site us useful, but to ask for clicks is not good.
...

Yes and like I said some claim to have permission
http://www.dnforum.com/showpost.php?p=547111&postcount=8
I no longer seem to be getting adsense ads on his page, maybe they yanked it or inventory is all out?