Those of you who have been Google Adsense Ads on your websites and blogs should be informed that the TOS has been updated giving us a hint that all the traffic exchange programs are no more allowed. This is not a new update actually because this was something which was never allowed but after a note on the official Google Adsense blog.
Reasons why Google AdSense Accounts are Disabled
How to Avoid Google Adsense Account Ban
The program policies strictly prohibit any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs. These programs offer incentives for users to view web pages or click on ads, resulting in activity that is harmful to our advertisers.
2leep isn’t suitable for adsense. It generates traffic that can cause invalid clicks. I don’t know who 2leep was okay for adsense, but any site that sends you traffic just because have a code on your site isn’t the type of traffic adsense considers suitable. It doesn’t have to be “paid traffic” to be considered unsuitable.
Recently many Google Adsense Accounts were disabled and the main reason for this has been the Traffic Exchange Programs which were used on their blogs. There is no official statement on this but as a precautionary measure its suggested not to use any of them. Things to Avoid – Programs that may bring uninterested users to your site, such as traffic exchange programs where you purchase or trade user traffic, possibly generating invalid activity.
Some of them include :
MGID
2leep
zaparena
wahoha etc
Few reasons why these sites may be breaking TOS are :
- Traffic Exchange : You are going to click on one of those banners on a blog and visit another blog and visit another one through those banners again, this is nothing but a traffic exchange in a chain process.
Non-Converting Clicks : If someone visits your blog through one of those eye-catching the chances are that the person would be more interested in that banner related content rather than the advertisements. Hence, even if the visitor would click on the ad, the chances of any type of conversions are very less just increasing the advertisers costs for nothing.
Adult Content : You may not be directly publishing adult or non-family friendly content on your blog but the banners would have these adult thumbnails to ensure higher CTR and also the visitors would be lead to some bad website.
Recently another Adsense Publisher got his domain disabled from Google Adsense and the only issue he suspected was the usage of 2leep.com because the blog post has only content without Images and nothing else. As a publisher, YOU are responsible for everything that appears on your site pages. No matter where it comes from. Since you signed up for a service that really isn’t compatible for adsense users, and you have their stuff on your site, it is considered your responsiblity.
Adsense has disabled ad serving to your site – they won’t be returned unless you file a request for reconsideration. Unless you remove the 2leep stuff, that isn’t going to happen. The chances of getting a ban lifted up is also very less hence its always better to play safe rather than first trying out these illegal or inappropriate programs and then suffering from the ad network bans.
Always take the best decision for the long run! Decide now!
Well i think this is a very good step taken by Google…!!
hi amith ji this is my blog iam promting myself this blog by sending emails
to people who are working on c technology as it is based on c learning
i posted 73 posts and another 54 posts to be posted without no iamges
will i get banned………………..
As you said that now Google Adsense dont allow traffic from traffic exchange program sites……but what about the sites like topofblogs, ratings, blogrankers, linkrefferals, blogadda etc. As they are the ranking based sites which tell us the rank or rating of our sites and also gives some traffic…..will google adsense allow this websites??? or we have to remove this one also from our blogs/websites???
I recently removed MGID widget from my blog due to high bounce rate and came across adsense TOS which says third party traffic generation services are illegal and invalid…
I dont wanna put my adsense account at risk loosing them for such a crap of traffic!
Thanks for the alert and update!
thanks for the update,a good step from Google team!
I was using mgid in my blog.I’ve noticed that adsense CTR and CPC dropped after using it.Now I’ve removed it.I’l not use any traffic exchange widget in future.
I totally agree with you Amit. I have used one of those traffic exchange programs in one of my blog and surprised to see adult related content. I enabled it few days back and I am going to take it off today. Thanks for the valuable info.
these traffic are useful if you are using pop ads only…..
Amit,
Thank you for expressing your concern here.
I think it is worth pointing out that Google has issued no official statement banning the use of content exchange programs. The “note” you link to in the first paragraph of this article, which states “The program policies strictly prohibit any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs.” was published in April 2007, long before the existence of virtually all of the networks that exist today. The reference to “click-exchange” programs is most likely condemning the old style 1:1 traffic exchange programs where webmasters and users were encouraged to click around their own websites in order to earn credits. Google is correct in saying that this kind of activity is damaging to their advertisers. We agree with Google, and as a measure to prevent this on our own network, we have a click-fraud system in place which does not allow this to occur.
A network such as Wahoha does not create artificial clicks. The widget acts as a content discovery engine that is continually optimising itself to present relevant and interesting articles to visitors of our partner websites. Each visitor willingly clicks on the content that they are interested in. The content that has been clicked on is usually relevant to the theme of the underlying website, which through contextual placements can produce relatively low bounce rates and respectful average page views per user. This will quite often be better than that of other content promotion services such as social bookmarking websites. In terms of “Adult Content’, we categorically do not allow pornographic material in the network. However some publishing partners promote content featuring semi-nude content, but nothing that is not allowed on day-time television. If you feel this is not for you then we provide the option to filter this content from your widget, so it will only display wholesome, non-sexually themed content.
If anyone has any concerns regarding the role of a Wahoha widget on their website they can contact myself and the support team directly at support@wahoha.com and we will be more than happy to speak with you.
Martin Delaney
Wahoha Co-founder
http://www.wahoha.com
You mean I should not show MGID widget on my blog? Google has avoided to comment on any specific but it has clearly warned so i think I should remove it. I am using MGID widget moderately only four links and only technology related. I am also getting some extra page views but I think now it is time to remove it.
Thanks for information ,Before Account Disable
Quote: “These programs offer incentives for users to view web pages or click on ads, resulting in activity that is harmful to our advertisers.”
What incentive does 2leep, wahoha or any other similar site offer the users to click around? None that I am aware of, there is no money paid out to users, and no rewards of any other kind either. So does this not invalidate your entire argument?
Nice post 🙂 And, it would be informative one 🙂
Thank you a lot for this useful information!!! 🙂
I don’t think Google will ban anyone for using 2leep, Wahoha, MGID. If Google bans blogs that use these exchange programs which promote content, then by that principle websites that use Digg, StumbleUpon & reddit will also have to be banned as they promote content and accept paid clicks.
Hi Amit
Actually for nearly one month a executive of MGID was chasing me to update the widget in my blog.
Now that delay has really helped me. Thanks for sharing the information
its gr8 to learn all new things from amiths blog thank you sir………….
Thank Amit
I recently activated MGID widget to my blog but after reading your article i removed, thanks GOD i read your post on time 🙂
YEs this was the most needy think such blogs were eating out we hard workers
Amit,
Today i Received reply from MGID, they said :-
——————————————-QUOTE——————————————————————–
MGID program doesn’t break Google AdSense TOS and can be used together with Google AdSense. Our exchange program is not a paid-to-click program. The site owners do not need to visit any links. The visitors just read news they like and they don’t get paid for it.
We are not engaged in sending unwanted emails. We send the offers personally only to sites that have good and valuable content. Our widgets don’t redirect visitors without their knowledge or consent. People just click the news that attracted their attention on their own.
Most of our partners use the Google service and they are happy with the result of our exchange program as well.
So, Sadia, shall we implement that?
—————————————UNQUOTE————————————————————————
What do you think ?
Google doesn’t allow you to use any program where visitors are incentivized or tricked into going to or from your site. MGID doesn’t do that, and neither does 2leep or Wahoha, so I don’t see why Amit keeps saying these services are against the adsense TOS.
I agree. I know a lot of people that use MGID & AdSense at the same time and have never had any problems with Google.
I think we can get traffic but no big impact on earning cause when you apply MGID or zaparna you will get low eCPM.
Hi amit ,
Sorry but i dont think that using 2leep or mgid will be aginst the adsense tos as they are not doing any thing illegal ..all the visitors who come to site are willingly coming its not forcebly done right ?
And it seems that google has not written any thing official on this
How come you decided this one ?
its better not to use these widgets
you can earn more if you have an adsense account for years then for a few months with these widgets 😉
Wow, I’m just about to join one of those traffic exchange site. Thanks for reminding me with this article 🙂
Thanks for sharing this. Didn’t know about disadvantages of Traffic sharing programs before.
I find that many websites that is still use Mgid together with Adsense.
I used to think that traffic exchange is okay as long as the visitors who come to your site is a genuine visitors, not a bot or paid traffic.
It is not against TOS unless through use of the widget you somehow encourage or deceive surfers into clicking advertisements. Think about it, MGID is really just a glorified related posts widget and of course your CTR will go down because MGID-like traffic won’t generally click on advertisements and that will bring down the CTR. While bounce rates, may drop most of the time it’s a reflection of your website and it’s lack of ability to engage readers.
Those who have already got fooled by the flowery claims of MGID and have been using it for ‘doubling their traffic within a week’ will now have sleepless nights for sure. If you are still continuing your liaison with MGID faithfully then let me tell you, a time will come when MGID will result in high bouncer rates and you would die to wash your hands off this detrimental collaboration. Believe me; MGID generates traffic that is substandard and totally uninterested in your content! But you will never ever think of distrusting this bogus widget because it poses to be your cyber friend! The so-called MGID site administrators will initially opine that you have great contents which have the potential of generating good traffic. All you need is a highly tech-savvy widget for the purpose, and MGID will give you never before pleasure in this matter. Thus, you will get trapped! However, you will be shocked out of your wits to discover adult contents in the backlinks that MGID posts in your website in the name of authentic traffic generation after some days! What more, the people you will find in such explicit porn sites are minors, which will make your site get highly penalized by Google for unscrupulous promotion of illegal pornography!! But alas, you will know nothing about it in the initial stages until you take your site on the verge of getting banned by Google! As it is, Google hates traffic exchange programs. But when the quality of the exchange program is such a degraded one, just think what will be the fate of your poor site. Let me tell you one more vital thing, rather two now – the first one is that more than half the percentage of traffic generated by MGID is fake! The analytic reports on traffic activities in your site presented by them are nothing but cheap man-handled jobs to deceive you! Second thing is that the repetitive pop-up ads that will take the bulk of your site now will surely banish the handful of actual traffic that your blog has created on its own! Now decide what to do with this ‘promising’ widget.
There are innumerable reviews on the Internet that say mgid is a scam and a fraud. If there is so much smoke, there must be a big fire somewhere.
Positively harmful. The mgid widget installed ads with links to Indian sleazy sites. And to Japanese sites with child pornography! The entire web page was littered with so much ad content that my content on the web page was overshadowed. The visitors are tempted to click on images of semi-nude celebrities but instead land to porn sites somewhere in Asia. The traffic that mgid promises never converts as it goes to on to click further links in further ads. Click, click, clickty, clickty click. It goes on and on. To convert, the traffic has to stay on my page. But it never does. Not because my page content is bad but because the semi-naked photos in the mgid ads are more attractive. And so the story of clicking on innumerable ads continues. I myself clicked two salacious looking links to find out more. Guess what? I landed on to the following two pages:
http://www.suckx.net/mgid.html
http://www.indianpornv.com/porno-mgid_porn48353691.html
This is particularly disturbing to me, as I am not an advocate of pornography. Adult porn may be legal, but I think seeing it changes the mind. Innocent people become perverted and the society degenerates. I finally removed the widget. My experience with mgid was that they took my high-quality real traffic which usually converts, and gave me useless low-quality fictitious traffic that never converts. My page rank touched the floor and bounce rates touched the roof. But the main reason for my removing the widget was the links to pornography. This made me angry. No, angry is a soft word, it actually made me furious! I have kids in the house, who also use my computer and I faint just to think what would have happened if by accident they would have clicked and seen these sites! My experience with mgid was horrifying to say the least.
Using copyrighted images without the permission of the copyright holders is also breaking TOS. It actually is breaking the law. It is illegal. Almost all of the sleazy photos on ads of mgid are copyrighted and all are sourced from different xxx sites by simple cut and paste. The copyright holders can sue mgid for billions for dollars. But there is a catch here. The user agreement of mgid states that the legality of anything shown on the website is of the website owner. This is an obvious and a general clause. But in this case it is highly dangerous, as the legality shifts from mgid to the website owner. If you show mgid ads and if somebody sues, then you have to pay the damages, and mgid escapes. Thru such clever worded legal agreements, mgid escapes but innocent persons like you are fooled.
Mgid this now just a third party traffic generator and a really bad one!
It created a lot of trouble for me as well as my website i was charged a lot of money for teaming up with mgid for advertisements.After a while i clicked on the ad of mgid and my jaws dropped as i saw 4 tabs opening up one after the other and all of them were Asian porn site i was so surprised when i saw it for the first time.\
An entrepreneur is concerned with profit but here i was cheated and incurred heavy losses~!!
At the same time mgid must have created billion with this scam and cps tactic!
All trafic xchange give low trafic. Mdig link to porn site to get more trafic. Porn is legal. Mdig do no wrong by link porn. But porn trafic is down trafic. Your site value go down by mdig ads. Throw mdig and your site value go up.
I will better maintain distance from these tarffic exchange.