The AdSense Arbitrage Loophole
One of the concerns I’ve had with the AdSense Resurrected business model is the reliance on pay-per-click (PPC) traffic. The idea is simple enough: place AdWords ads (targeting the content network only) that direct traffic to your AdSense sites. Visitors will sign up for your freebie/newsletter/course and/or browse through your site. The problem is that this model looks a lot like the AdSense arbitrage model.
AdSense arbitrage is something we’ve discussed here before. It’s a tricky and risky way to make money by sending low-cost traffic to an AdSense page/site with higher payouts. It’s not for the feint of heart, trust me.
Not so long ago, though, Google decided that it didn’t like the AdSense arbitrage model and started terminating AdSense accounts using that business model.
As usual, though, Google’s never explicitly announces what it’s doing in these situations, so I thought I’d go ahead and ask Google myself. I was already having a conversation with them about a site of mine that was having some issues, so I thought I’d ask them if it was OK to use AdWords to send traffic to a page displaying AdSense ads. Here’s what they told me:
It is acceptable to use AdWords or other advertising programs to drive traffic to a site with AdSense ads. However, the site must contain what the ads promise and the site must be compliant with Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines and Landing Page Quality guidelines.
So there we have it. It is perfectly fine to send traffic to your AdSense sites via AdWords as long as the ads are relevant and the site is a quality site — good content, good navigation, etc. Which means that the “AdSense Resurrected” model is fine, assuming the sites you build meet adhere to those guidelines and the ads are relevant and correct. So if you’re offering a freebie to entice visitor to sign up for your list, mention the freebie in the ad and make sure the landing page has a subscription form on it.
AdSense arbitrage isn’t dead, it’s just more regulated.
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Eric Giguere is the author of several printed books and knows a thing or two about content monetization. Subscribe to his AdSense blog today and never miss any of his insightful comments. And the not-so-insightful ones, for that matter.
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Comments
4 Responses to “The AdSense Arbitrage Loophole”
AR seems to advocate the arbitrage model, but even more disturbing was their track record.
Looking through the 385 or so sites that came with the book, I wasn’t able to successfully find any of those articles on the web - apart from an article directory. That’s right, they were PLR that came from article directories.
If you are buying traffic for websites that have been removed from search engines because all their content is deemed duplicate, then as soon as you quit buying AdWords, the traffic stops.
Regardless what was said by the AR team about long-term success and SEO, you won’t get any. They claimed 600 customers and several success stories shortly after the book was launched using the included websites, but none of those seem to appear in Google SER from my limited research.
If you are going to use arbitrage, I would say use original content so that as your site ages you will at least get some search engine traffic.
Hi Eric,
I wrote an article about this, you can read it at goarticles: http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=599636
I did however not publish it on ezinearticles, because their publisher guidelines do not allow anything related to AdSense arbitrage.
There’s a lot of confusion about this topic. Google AdSense arbitrage is not against Google’s TOS. What they don’t like is sending cheap traffic to a MFA site. You know, the kind of sites you can generate with software and what you find there are nothing but ads, but no quality content. In fact you could generate hundreds of those sites in a matter of minutes.
Google however likes it when you offer value to the visitor. So, when a visitor types in a query on the search page, then the visitor expects to find RELEVANT content on your website.
It doesn’t matter if they arrive there via the natural results or the Sponsored Links.
In fact, what Google does is all about arbitrage.
Even the merchants, affiliates who advertise via Adwords use arbitrage: pay cheaper clicks to generate dollars. If Google would not allow arbitrage, then they would have to close their business.
Just wanted to make this clear.
Finklestein: I never saw the sites that came with the larger AR package, I only ever saw the book. I really doubt they’d give away the same content that they use for their own sites, however, I’m sure this is just stuff they grabbed from somewhere. Yes, I think the AR model depends a lot of PPC traffic. If you do it right (which means not paying too much for the traffic) then in theory your profits can keep on paying for more traffic generation…
Eric
Rudy, I agree that Google is all about arbitrage… I just wanted to hear from the horse’s mouth as to what was legal and what wasn’t. It’s always good to get some clarification.
Funny how some advertisers try to get away with irrelevant ads. Google’s been clamping down a lot on the content network and it seems to be having positive effects with advertisers, though.
Eric