There is much ado with the news of Google toolbar v2 with support for blogger posts, however little has been said over the snub to exclude most blogs from the Google adsense program. Despite Googles recent purchase of PyraLabs and the popular Blogger, Google only demonstrates here either a total ignorance of the reach blogs have, or do not take the medium seriously. And to rub insult to injury, some blogs have managed to sign up and others have been rejected.
A number of sites discuss the adsense terms and conditions and that there is a grey area:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies
Personal Pages
AdWords ads may not appear on personal pages.
But what is a personal page and not a personal page?
Steven Hatch’s weblog is one of my regular reads (and a great read at that) and quiet clearly is a personal site, and yet it has adsense advertising.
briansotrms is another blog running adsense without a lot of luck so far and even goes as far to say
Be sure to click early and often on any Google-generated text ads you see when reading blogs or websites. The bloggers and webmasters will be grateful. and this
Like many bloggers I’m giving Google’s AdSense a try
And yet there are others who have been rejected, including Jeremy Zawodny’s excellent blog, who also has received similar stories from other bloggers.
The Blog Herald has contacted Google for comment about this relatively bizarre policy; Google has strong support in the blogging community and it would be sad to see it bite the hand that helps feed it.
For the record the response from Google on the Blog Heralds application:
from: Google AdSense Support [adsense-support@google.com]
subject: Google AdSense Account Status
Hello Duncan Riley,
Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. Our program specialists have reviewed your application. Based on our Terms and Conditions
(https://www.google.com/adsense/terms) and program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies), we are unable to accept you into our program at this time.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
