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Google discriminates against blogs

Google discriminates against blogs

There is much ado with the news of Google toolbar v2 with support for blogger posts, however little has been said over the snub to exclude most blogs from the Google adsense program. Despite Googles recent purchase of PyraLabs and the popular Blogger, Google only demonstrates here either a total ignorance of the reach blogs have, or do not take the medium seriously. And to rub insult to injury, some blogs have managed to sign up and others have been rejected.

A number of sites discuss the adsense terms and conditions and that there is a grey area:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies
Personal Pages
AdWords ads may not appear on personal pages.

But what is a personal page and not a personal page?
Steven Hatch’s weblog is one of my regular reads (and a great read at that) and quiet clearly is a personal site, and yet it has adsense advertising.
briansotrms is another blog running adsense without a lot of luck so far and even goes as far to say
Be sure to click early and often on any Google-generated text ads you see when reading blogs or websites. The bloggers and webmasters will be grateful. and this
Like many bloggers I’m giving Google’s AdSense a try

And yet there are others who have been rejected, including Jeremy Zawodny’s excellent blog, who also has received similar stories from other bloggers.

The Blog Herald has contacted Google for comment about this relatively bizarre policy; Google has strong support in the blogging community and it would be sad to see it bite the hand that helps feed it.

For the record the response from Google on the Blog Heralds application:
from: Google AdSense Support [[email protected]] subject: Google AdSense Account Status
Hello Duncan Riley,

Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. Our program specialists have reviewed your application. Based on our Terms and Conditions
(https://www.google.com/adsense/terms) and program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies), we are unable to accept you into our program at this time.

See Also
aged domain blogging

Sincerely,

The Google Team

View Comment (1)
  • When I first decided to get Google Adsense for my Cooking Journal, I requested the Google people to review my site to assess if I would qualify. I was especially concerned about the exclusion of personal pages from sites that could display Google Adsense. I knew that some blogs displayed Google Adsense and I wondered what personal pages meant. Hence, the initial request. This was the reply.

    “It would be difficult to estimate how well your websites would fit the Google AdSense program before they pass through our official review process. However, I encourage you to submit an application. Our online review process only takes between two and three days, and you will not be obligated in any way.

    Please note, however, that the Google AdSense program does not support domain paths at this time. You must be able to run ads on your entire site. In the future, however, we may offer this option to publishers.

    When you are ready to get started with Google AdSense, please visit https://www.google.com/adsense/application-1. If you have any questions about applying, please feel free to reply to this email.

    Sincerely,

    The Google Team”

    Alright, so I applied. I received an e-mail with a link to verify my e-mail address. I completed the process. Less than an hour later, I received another e-mail informing me that I did not qualify to participate in the program:

    “Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. After reviewing your application, our program specialists have found that the website currently associated with your account does not comply with our policies. Therefore, we’re unable to accept your into Google AdSense at this time.

    We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below. If you are able to resolve these issues, please feel free to reply to this email for reconsideration when you have made the changes.

    Issues:

    – Page type

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