jatiN mahindrA doT coM

There is an interesting Google AdSense Help thread on the topic of specific words that seem to cause Google to show PSA (public service ads) that do not earn the publisher money.

One example I can show you is a blog post on my personal blog named Went To The Pizza Store Naked…. The word “naked” trigged AdSense to show a PSA in the ad slot, because it is against AdSense’s TOS to show ads for adult content. If you read the blog post, you can clearly see that no one was naked but the toy troll.

Here is a picture of the PSA near the content:

The ad in the top right position is a PSA.

The AdSense publisher said her site, which is about politics, uses words like this all the time. She calls them poison words, because they kill her potential to make money with Google. She also said that the following words are considered “poison,” death, prison, drugs, gun, funeral, shot, killed, war, terrorist, and jail. I have tested some of these on my personal blog and not all meet those requirements.

What I find even more interesting is a point Gracey made in that thread. Gracey said that there is a double standard here. When you conduct a search for naked in Google, ads do show up, but at the same time – content with the word naked in it, prevents ads from showing up. Publishers want to know why is there one set of rules for AdWords and another for AdSense?

Here is a picture of ads that show for the keyword [naked] in Google:

The original thread creator summed up her frustration, saying:

Rather than pretending this doesnt exist, how about helping those of us who are not running porn sites or gambling dens or are crackers, hackers and hate sites… But we who are just writing about history and the news of the day. Help us overcome what Google, in good faith, is doing trying to deal with the bad boys. We are not bad boys!

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help.

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