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Google To blogs: Drop Dead!
June 21, 2003
This week, Google introduced a new advertising program called Adsense. the basic idea is to expand the reach of Google ads to sites that get less than 20 million page views. However, Google decided that it really did not make sense to include weblogs in the mix. Amongst the sites that are not covered are what Google considers as personal sites. This of course, is a very gray area in the case of a lot of weblogs as they may offer forums, discussions, and other features. For example, much of the work I put into TNL.net is now the result of feedback from people in the community asking for this or that feature. As a result, while I still consider the site my window on the net, it has evolved into a project that involves more than me, and is no longer just a personal site per say. So imagine my surprised when, after having applied, I learned that I was turned down. The automated letter read as follow:
From: Google AdSense Support
Date: Fri Jun 20, 2003 13:41:50 US/Eastern
To: Tristan Louis
Cc: Google AdSense Support
Subject: Google AdSense Account StatusHello Tristan N. Louis,Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. Our program specialists have reviewed your application and were unable to approve you for participation in our program at this time. The website currently associated with your account was not found to be in compliance with our policies (https://www,google.com/adsense/policies). The results of our review are outlined below with complete explanations for your convenience.
Issues:
- Page type
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Read below for definitions of the issues we found:
Page type: Your website is a type of website that we do not currently accept into our program. Such websites include, but are not limited to, chat sites, personal pages, search engines, sites that contain predominately copyrighted material, and sites that drive traffic through cybersquatting.
———————
If you manage or own another site on which you’d like to display AdWords ads, you may reply to this email and include that URL in the message. We will then reconsider your application. If the new site complies with our program policies, we’ll approve your application and allow you to run ads on that specific site.
Please contact us at Adsense-support at Google.com if you have any questions.
Regards,
The Google Team
As I mentionned earlier, I was surprised, so I sent them the following:
From: Tristan Louis
Subject: Re: Google AdSense Account Status
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 13:58:39 -0400I have received the following note about my site (http://www.tnl.net ) and would like to ask more questions. You are, of course, familiar with the concept of blogging (as the owner of blogger
) and, as a result, must realize that a lot of blogs might be applying to Adsense. Blogs are inherently communal sites, and as such, seem to be exempt from your policy. I would urge you to reconsider that portion of the policy as there is a lot of great content out there that could benefit the Adsense program. The reason I am asking for a review of the site is that, while it may be seen as a personal opinion site, the topics it covers are extremely specific and could easily be targeted with Google adwords. That will be the case for a lot of weblogs out there and I strongly believe that you are ignoring a valuable portion of the network.
Is there any way you could provide a logic as to why weblogs are not included?
Sincerely,
TNL
Just a regular inquiry, contesting their policy and asking for more details. However, it looks like mail is not really being read but passed to automated agents. Here’s the answer I received to my query:
From: “Google AdSense”
Date: Fri Jun 20, 2003 20:17:47 US/Eastern
To: Tristan Louis
Subject: Re: [#2674465] Google AdSense Account StatusHi Tristan,
I understand that your question our current policy on personal pages and blogs. We apologize for the inconvenience. However, we have certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the effectiveness of the AdWords ads for our publishers as well as for our advertisers.
We review all publishers according to our Terms and Conditions and program policies, and we reserve the right to decline certain applications. As we grow, we may find that we are able to expand our program to more web publishers with a wider variety of web content.
Thank you for your feedback, and please know that we are working hard to make the AdSense program available to as many web publishers as we can.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
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To access the Google AdSense home page or to log in to your account,
please visit: https://www.google.com/adsense
So basically the word is, if you’re a blog, don’t bother. Two things really bugged me about the answer, though. The first one is that they are trying to make it avaliable to as many web publishers as they can (their words, not mine) and yet discounting blogs. Why?
The second is the last, final touch of dropping in a signature that essentially says “you can’t login but here’s the URL that you won’t be able to use.”
Could it be that you are trying to make sure that all Google adwords based blogs are running on blogger instead of other services?
Come on, Google. I expect better of you.
