AdSense and Privacy Policies
Thu, 6 March, 2008 – 8:54 am
So with the new terms and conditions at Google AdSense, you need a privacy policy on every site displaying AdSense. Thankfully JenSense has written up and released a general one for free.nnKnowing how Google will suspend accounts at the drop of a hat especially if you fall foul of their terms, I'd recommend getting this on to any site running AdSense as soon as possible.
Hi Sarah. Do you know you are in pretty elite company justby writing about this? A surprisng number of self-style 'experts' haven't yet gotten round to noticing this chnage yet, and the clock is ticking.nnThanks for letting people knownnThanks to Jen for providing a written policynnAnd you may want to take a look at Eric's all in one Privacy Policy plug-in … it's very convenient and makes this onerous task go pretty quickly.nhttp://www.memwg.com/adsense-privacy-policy-plugin/
By Dave Starr on Fri, 7 March, 2008
Hey Dave, I always keep on top of AdSense changes in their terms etc. via JenSense as I don't have the concentration span to read them in full! I had noticed that not many people had mentioned the need for a privacy policy but didn't want to repeat what had already been said.nnThanks for the link to Eric's plugin, will take a look at that too
By Sarah on Fri, 7 March, 2008
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Sarah. I had no idea about this new requirement. I'll get that on my site this weekend.nnI have some AdSense ads on my forums – would you have any idea where best to place this notice on there? Would creating a new topic (called Privacy Policy) and making it a sticky thread be okay, do you think? Wasn't able to find any info about that on the other site.
By Sam on Fri, 7 March, 2008
Sam, I think providing you have a privacy policy available, even a link in the footer, that's fine. This is all I'll be doing.
By Sarah on Fri, 7 March, 2008
Cheers Sarah
By Sam on Fri, 7 March, 2008
Good find Sarah, Not sure that I understand the thinking behind essentially forcing sites running adsense to display a privacy policy though.nnIt could be made a little simpler if Google could provide a boilerplate privacy policy that folks could just copy and paste onto their site.
By HB on Fri, 14 March, 2008
Hi HB, I completely agree. Okay if the site is a business site and accepting visitor's information, fine a privacy policy is a good idea, but it shouldn't be down to whether you have adsense or not that decides that. The idea of Google supplying a general template is a good idea, it's strange they've not thought of that really.nnAlso does the privacy policy be in your language? It's a daft idea if you ask me. I've already dropped adsense off a few sites, not just because of this but it helped to tip the balance.
By Sarah on Mon, 17 March, 2008
Sarah, interesting point on the required language of the privacy page… That seems to be one of many really difficult enforcement issues that Google would have with instituting this change. For instance, how would they determine that a site now has a privacy policy? Spider the site for the term "privacy" in the URL, navigation, keyword frequency on a specific page?nnIf I was being particularly cynical, I think it may be an easy way for Google to boot out a lot of poor quality Adsense publishers under the auspices of this new policy as they seem to have a lot of ad arbitrage and splogs showing adsense at the moment and these type of operations are unlikely to bother with adhering to privacy policies, etc.
By HB on Tue, 18 March, 2008
To be honest your thoughts on filtering out unwanted account holders is something that a few others have mentioned and I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. It just gives one extra reason to kick people off their network and keep hold of any unpaid earnings.
By Sarah on Tue, 18 March, 2008