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Adsense Expert Needed- Will I Get Banned?

by TheTinHat
8 replies
I have a blog in which I write original articles and also share other sites articles. I've recently found a way to use Facebook's boost to make (for my site) a ton of money. I basically look at all of the shared articles and look for the ones with a high CTR, share them on Facebook, and "boost" the post. I'm basically making $5 on Adsense for every $1 I invest into the boost.

At this point I have a decent amount of money invested into this and I am getting a bit nervous. I am not trying to deceive adsense or do anything to trick folks, but the CTR's on these articles is hovering around 20% and since so much traffic is being diverted through the boosts to these articles my site CTR is 11-13%, depending on the day.

I am running 3 ads, each has "sponsored links" above it. The content I provide on these shared articles is generally a paragraph or so, then the link. I place a picture at the top of the page, a 728 ad, then the paragraph with the link in bold at the bottom, and then either a 336 ad or another 728. There is a 40px spacing above and below each ad. The ad between the picture and the article is getting the lion's share of the clicks. I am trying to do everything above board, but am still worried. Do you see anything in my description that might get me banned?
#adsense #banned #expert #needed
  • Profile picture of the author vishwa
    As you have said that you have only one paragraph in the articles which is consider as loww thin content. If yes! Than probably you are violating their terms and may risk your account. Better make your article minimum of 500 words and also place your Adsense ads below the fold of your site.
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    • Profile picture of the author TheTinHat
      Originally Posted by vishwa View Post

      As you have said that you have only one paragraph in the articles which is consider as loww thin content. If yes! Than probably you are violating their terms and may risk your account. Better make your article minimum of 500 words and also place your Adsense ads below the fold of your site.
      Define "fold"? Different screen resolutions will yield a different fold.
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  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    This sounds like it would be okay if the FB "boost" is sending traffic to your FB page with the articles and then the traffic comes from your FB page to your AdSense site.

    A few things:

    - Google AdSense does not like sites where traffic comes from a single source. If this is your only source of traffic then it may raise a flag over if you also use Twitter, YouTube and SEO (Google).

    - Paid traffic is okay as long as you are not directly sending paid traffic to a landing page with ads and doing "arbitrage". Sending relevant paid traffic (Outbrain/Infolinks) to a website is okay.

    - Your account likely wouldn't get banned but AdSense may stop displaying ads and send you a warning if they feel a page is not compliant. It depends on other factors with your AdSense account.
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    • Profile picture of the author TheTinHat
      Originally Posted by onSubie View Post

      This sounds like it would be okay if the FB "boost" is sending traffic to your FB page with the articles and then the traffic comes from your FB page to your AdSense site.

      A few things:

      - Google AdSense does not like sites where traffic comes from a single source. If this is your only source of traffic then it may raise a flag over if you also use Twitter, YouTube and SEO (Google).

      - Paid traffic is okay as long as you are not directly sending paid traffic to a landing page with ads and doing "arbitrage". Sending relevant paid traffic (Outbrain/Infolinks) to a website is okay.

      - Your account likely wouldn't get banned but AdSense may stop displaying ads and send you a warning if they feel a page is not compliant. It depends on other factors with your AdSense account.
      The site normally generates 2000-3000 page views a day from all sorts of sources. Facebook has always been a primary source of traffic for the page, though. We've done these "shared articles" for a long time, usually three a day to keep our facebook fans happy and because our very limited staff (myself and 1 other person) cannot generate the volumes of original content my niche desires. We've always noticed that certain shared articles have high CTR's, usually because they have an enticing ad. For example, the website focuses on emergency preparedness. One of the recent articles featured an ad from Cabelas, touting a giveaway. This is something I might click on myself. I could see our fans clicking on it. This page had a 20% CTR.

      The problem is with driving the traffic with the boosts. I spent a few hundred dollars on Facebook boosts yesterday and got 10K page views. Since the site generates 2-3k in traffic, 7 k or so was from the boosts to just 4 pages. These 4 pages had CTR's ranging from 11 to 20.5%. Because so much traffic was to these 4 pages, the whole site's CTR was 13.83%.

      All of these pages have one thing in common, the are a brief description of the article we are linking to. A paragraph. It looks like this:

      Title
      Picture
      728 ad
      Description of consisting of ~100 words or so
      Link to article in large bold text
      336ad

      The link is to the original content on someone elses website. The site also features original content from us, ranging from 500 to 10k words per page, videos we've produced, and other forms of original content.

      Other than the "short" description, I don't think we are doing anything wrong, but my concern is that we will get banned for making too much money. I've got a lot of money, not to mention time (2 years) invested in this site. It is just too tempting not to make some real money finally.
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    • Profile picture of the author TheTinHat
      Originally Posted by onSubie View Post

      This sounds like it would be okay if the FB "boost" is sending traffic to your FB page with the articles and then the traffic comes from your FB page to your AdSense site.

      A few things:

      - Google AdSense does not like sites where traffic comes from a single source. If this is your only source of traffic then it may raise a flag over if you also use Twitter, YouTube and SEO (Google).

      - Paid traffic is okay as long as you are not directly sending paid traffic to a landing page with ads and doing "arbitrage". Sending relevant paid traffic (Outbrain/Infolinks) to a website is okay.

      - Your account likely wouldn't get banned but AdSense may stop displaying ads and send you a warning if they feel a page is not compliant. It depends on other factors with your AdSense account.
      Also, what do you mean by "sending relevant paid traffic (outbrain/info links) to a website is ok?
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  • Profile picture of the author TheTinHat
    A couple of additional things, we've never been dinged by adsense, have about 1000 pages of content (1/6th is all original/the rest is shared), and the site has been active for almost two years.
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  • Profile picture of the author mgoodin
    Originally Posted by TheTinHat View Post

    I am running 3 ads, each has "sponsored links" above it. The content I provide on these shared articles is generally a paragraph or so, then the link. I place a picture at the top of the page, a 728 ad, then the paragraph with the link in bold at the bottom, and then either a 336 ad or another 728. There is a 40px spacing above and below each ad. The ad between the picture and the article is getting the lion's share of the clicks. I am trying to do everything above board, but am still worried. Do you see anything in my description that might get me banned?
    Good to hear you are doing well!

    I have not visited this forum is a long time and decided to get my feet wet again. At one time, I was doing GREAT with adsense. I implemented all white hat techniques and thought I was good to go ... so good, I considered doing adsense full time. One of the updates hit and overnight and my sites were turned upside down. I had a great run and discovered that Google was not a good long term play for me. What might be good today, may not be good tomorrow. I did not like the fact that Google could shake-up the listings by changing the algorithm and adversely impact so many people.

    One quick thought from your post ... remove anything referencing 'sponsored links' - I am relatively certain that Google does not like this. Best of luck!
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    • Profile picture of the author TheTinHat
      Originally Posted by mgoodin View Post

      Good to hear you are doing well!

      I have not visited this forum is a long time and decided to get my feet wet again. At one time, I was doing GREAT with adsense. I implemented all white hat techniques and thought I was good to go ... so good, I considered doing adsense full time. One of the updates hit and overnight and my sites were turned upside down. I had a great run and discovered that Google was not a good long term play for me. What might be good today, may not be good tomorrow. I did not like the fact that Google could shake-up the listings by changing the algorithm and adversely impact so many people.

      One quick thought from your post ... remove anything referencing 'sponsored links' - I am relatively certain that Google does not like this. Best of luck!
      The Adsense TOS explicitly say you can put "sponsored links" above the ad. I'm not relying on SEO to get the traffic I speak of, I'm "boosting" on Facebook.
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