Engadget Blog Appears to Break Google AdSense TOS
Popular Weblogs Inc. Network blog Engadget appears to be breaking the terms of its contract with Google's AdSense program. The AdSense program allows website publishers to place up to three ad units on a single page. Blog Herald points to self professed blog comment spammer David Naylor who says he found six placements on an Engadget page. Our research on this page show similar results. We found 5 standard ad units and one, we think, text link.
A very large scrolling screen shot of the entire Engadget page is here for review. We've asked Weblogs Inc. Network President Jason Calacanis to comment but have not yet had a reply. Recently, Calacanis claims the blogs in the Weblogs Inc. Network were on track to reach $1 million in Google AdSense revenue this year. Perhaps, now we know how.
Upon further reflection, some speculation in is order. It would be silly for Weblogs Inc. to jeopardize $1 Million by breaking Google AdSense terms. In fact, another Weblogs Inc. blog, Autoblog, is running far more than 3 ads on a page. Keeping that in mind for a moment, Weblogs Inc. was the first company to run Google's RSS AdSense ads before it was offered to the general market. Make your own conclusions.
UPDATE: In Comments, Jason Calacanis explains and claims, in fact, Weblogs Inc. is not violating Google AdSense terms.
Comments
My official statement:
If you would like information on Google Adsense running on our sites please contact Google’s press or Adsense departments. I can assure you we are not violating any terms with them.
I can not discuss the issue beyond on that.
PS - NEver got your email... ping me on IM next time jasoncalacanis or call me at my desk 310 828 8284
Damn, that's some serious walking around money. Even Denton's got to be impressed with those numbers.
I'm willing to be that vault.com makes far more money in Adsense revenue than Weblogs Inc. I noticed some time go that content that was in vault.com's archives are now showing up in google search results. Vault.com has to have 10 times more content than Weblogs Inc. has.
I can't figure out why Vault.com is not advertising this. They actually seem to be trying to keep the whole thing a secret.
This is not violating Google's TOS. They have special customization services for sites that receive over 1 million hits a month. Engadget, being one of the most popular blogs in the land, receives many times that.
Yeah, like you read Dave Naylor?
You could have only gotten that link from Threadwatch or Blogherald - have some manners eh?
Blog Herald to answer your question, Nick. If I neglected to link Blog Herald that was my error while including all the other links in the post. Thanks for pointing that out and I will add a link to Blog Herald. And yes, I do stumble upon Naylor from time to time:-)
I cant uderstand that you are not allowed o have more than 4 ad units on a single page when there is standard boxes of 4?
Kim
I mean no more than three, when they have standard ad units of 4 ads in one section.
Sorry for the typos.
Perhaps if anyone cared to read about the "Premium AdSense" program Google offers to large publilshers, This little spat wouldn't have started in the first place.
I think its more than fair to say that the Weblogs, Inc. network receives more than 20 million+ content page views a month.
Good point, Arun. And KIm, I mean more the three separate ad units...not the individual text ads within a given unit. A unit being the space containing multiple text ads.
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