Basically what I caught first was the order in which a Googler listed mentioning a penalty for promoting clicks of your AdSense ads.
Many of you may remember our December post on the placement of images near ads. In that spirit, we'd like to remind you of a general policy issue: encouraging clicks. As many of you know, our program policies prohibit any means of encouraging users to click on Google ads or bringing excessive attention to ad units. For example, sites may not contain phrases such as "click the ads," "support our sponsors," "visit these recommended links," or other similar language that could apply to the Google ads on your site. In addition, publishers are not permitted to label the Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements."
In light of this policy, you may be wondering if you're allowed to recommend your referral products to your users. As explained in Dan's post from February, unlike with AdSense for content ads, you can endorse your referral products by calling attention to the button or text link.
If you believe in the quality of the product that you're referring, feel free to let your users know. Generally, visitors should only click on Google ads if they're interested in the services being advertised. Encouraging them to click on your Google ads, either directly or indirectly, can lead to inflated advertiser costs -- and can cause an account to be disabled. If you'd like to improve the performance of your ad units and attract more interested users, check out our Help Center's optimization tips to take full advantage of what AdSense has to offer.
So it's okay to say whatever you want to get people to sign up for AdSense but not to click an ad. Oh, and "inflated advertiser costs" is a priority over accounts being disabled... what about the refunds to the people whose ads were clicked?
Since ads rotate it would be hard to work out... well not really since any clicks attributed to this partner should be refunded (never happens that way though). And while it is nice to hear the concern about 'increased advertiser costs' once the accounts are disabled the money should go back to the advertisers... though I have a tendency to think it is just money Google lumps into the rest of their overfilled pockets....
Or this condescending gem: Still, making sure that your site stays squeaky clean policy-wise can sometimes take a little more mental effort than most of us might be willing to spare.
I hate when someone makes themselves as stupid as they are calling everyone else...
I know I am not that dumb... I may be able to convince you that you are, but sooner or later you are going to come around and then just feel sorry for the 'dumb' person who thought you were part of the dummies.... meanwhile they have you until it clicks and any time they gain is a plus for them.
Google's "Do No Evil" matra is wearing thin just like that. But they had a good long run where everyone belived in it... guess they will ride that one into the ground.
