Google Shuts Down AdSense Arbitrage

Friday May 25, 2007

There's a bit of a stir among AdSense arbitrageurs lately. It seems several of them have received letters stating that their accounts are being suspended. This is only worth mentioning, because it seems that sites earning $10,000 per month or more were targeted. 10k per month? I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for them.

Arbitrageurs take advantage of inexpensive AdWords campaigns to drive traffic to Web pages optimized for expensive AdSense campaigns.

The practice isn't explicitly forbidden by Google, but many practitioners may be creating low-quality pages developed solely to hang ads, and that is a violation of Google's Terms of Service:

No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant.

In the end, this was probably a wise move for Google. It means that AdWords advertisers will know that the price of their advertising campaigns aren't being driven up by arbitrage, and it means that users clicking on ads are more likely to be taken to relevant content.