I don’t know how many AdSense publishers are also members of the Inside AdSense Google Group, or how many of them read the Inside AdSense blog. In one of their latest posts, the AdSense guys reinforce their policy regarding encouraging clicks:
“Generally, visitors should only click on Google ads if they’re interested in the services being advertised. Encouraging them to click on your Google ads, either directly or indirectly, can lead to inflated advertiser costs — and can cause an account to be disabled.”
In the latest “Policy Thursday” post of the Inside AdSense Google Group, the AdSense team makes it clear that letting your readers know that part of your income goes to charity is forbidden by Google AdSense TOS.
“While we do appreciate your charitable efforts, this practice is not permitted by our program policies. We want users to click on ads because they are interested in the products or services offered by the advertiser, not because they are interested in supporting a site or a charity. Using this type of language can draw undue attention to the ads, and we aren’t able to verify whether earnings are actually donated to the third-party mentioned on each site. As a result, we don’t allow publishers to offer these types of incentives.”
This does not mean that you cannot use your earnings in any way you wish. It is just that you are not allowed to manipulate your readers’ emotions in such a manner.
I think that some bloggers will have to check and adjust some of their past posts in order to comply with the AdSense TOS, in the light of the new specifications.
8 Comments
Hey .. I just checked I made 16 cents off of adsense :=) I think I’ll just spend it on me haha
no seriously, I do agree with their policy.. there is no way to check if people are doing what they say they are doing so why to announce it? also, just my personal feeling that we humans have a tendency to let the world know when we do a bit of good, and not any bad
so even from that perspective, I don’t feel comfortable saying I am supporting such and such charity via my earnings!
Hey, you can spend it on whatever you wish, as long as you don’t mention it on your blog. What can you buy with 16 cents in your country? I can almost buy one bread here (I still have to add 1 or 2 cents to your amount).
one piece of salt water taffy or something?
nothing more than that.. wow you can buy bread with that money? wait, where are you? I’m in US..
This is funny. I’m in Romania and yes, I could buy the cheapest sort of bread available. I suppose there are other places where you could even buy something else to go with the bread.
Simonne,
This is a great post. I’ve seen some blogs do the charity claim, so this is good FYI.
I suppose you are right. May be I need to work harder at my blog.. will be visiting your other blogs - you really are into blogaholic
is that the right word? 
made a typo and couldn’t correct it…
Thanks, Ronald. I’ve also seen such blogs, so it might be good that people find out before they get their accounts suspended.
@pearl: I don’t earn too much from this either, and it is almost 10 months old. When I wrote that About page, I was doing this blogging stuff almost all day long, because everything was so new, and my time was just not enough to read all the things I wanted to know about. In my opinion, if you are serious about blogging, you should buy your own domain. Wordpress has a function of importing posts from Blogger, so you won’t lose them. I did it too, last year.