Adsense TOS Update

Google has announced an update to the Adsense Program Policy. (Take a look at the new version)

I can only imagine the uproar that’s coming with this from site owners that use other advertising besides Google.

Competitive Ads and Services In order to prevent user confusion, we do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.

So what does this mean for you? Any other advertising on your site cannot look similar to Google’s ads. What surprises me the most is that say you have AdSense on your inner content pages but not your homepage. Guess what? Even though you don’t have the AdSense on your homepage, you still cannot have advertising that resembles Google’s ads.

Let’s say you have YPN ads and Google ads and you run them 50/50. Your YPN ads cannot look like Google’s ads which means you have to change the color scheme, text color, border… whatever it takes to make them appear differently, and just changing the link color won’t cut it.

I can only sympathize with the publishers that will have to spend the next day or two making changes to be sure that Grand Puba Google is happy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007.
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