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Google Grants Adsense Violation Notices Go Out

by Robert Coats on June 7, 2013

The Google Grants team sent out violation notices today to Google Grants participants that had been identified by the system to have Google AdSense ads or affiliate advertising links on their website – a violation of the Google Grants policies and guidelines.

There have been some false positives where the system detected ads when there were not any and those grantees affected by these false positives have posted concerns on the Google Grants Help Forum that they may be loosing their $10,000 per month AdWords grant.

I spoke with the Google Grants team earlier today and they informed me that for now they were just giving a warning if the system detected AdSense on the grantees site and that they are not taking action yet. 

Here is a copy of the notice:

Dear Google Grantee,

Per Google Grants policies and guidelines, nonprofits enrolled in the Google Grants program cannot display Google AdSense ads or affiliate advertising links on their website while participating in the Google Grants program:

https://support.google.com/nonprofits/answer/46035?hl=en

Your organization’s website was found to be in violation of this policy. We kindly ask that you remove the Adsense ads from your website by July 2013.  Google Grantees who continue to be in violation of the Google Adsense policy after July 2013 will be subject to removal from the Google Grants program.

As noted in the Google Grants guidelines, Google reserves the right to grant or deny an organization’s participation at any time, for any reason, and to supplement or amend these eligibility guidelines at any time. Selections are made at Google’s sole discretion, and decisions regarding Google Grants violations are final.

For information on Google Grants guidelines, please visit:

www.google.com/grants

Sincerely,

The Google Grants Team

And while the Grants team is not taking action yet, this should serve as a warning to those grantees that are not following the guidelines to become compliant or face loosing participation from the program.

For those affected by a false positive, keep in mind, this is just a warning and the Google Grants team is not taking down accounts at this time. This warning just gives grantees a chance to address any issues that may exist before a further review takes place.

 

5 Comments
  1. Thanks for investigating this.

    I’ve never been able to get clarity on the AdSense rule. It says you cannot have it on your website–does that mean only the website domain to which your Google Grant is attached?

    For example, we have AdSense on our YouTube channel but not our main website for which we have the grant. Can you have no AdSense whatsoever to remain enrolled in the program?

    Having received this warning as well, I don’t want to deactivate an unrelated AdSense property if in fact I only received this warning as a false positive on our main website.

  2. Hi RW,
    Thanks for posting. As long as you do not have any Adsense ads on the website you are promoting through the Google Grants program you will be fine. YouTube channels are counted as separate items. Here is what the Grants team says specifically about Google Adsense:

    Google AdSense
    If your organization hosts Google AdSense ads on your website, you aren’t able to participate in the Google Grants program. If you would like to apply to Google Grants, you will have to remove AdSense ads from your website. If we find that you are in violation of the AdSense policy while participating in Google Grants, we reserve the right to remove your organization from the Google Grants program.

    If you’re required to link to an AdSense account to receive payments for the Android Market, please note that you are still eligible for Google Grants as long as you don’t display AdSense ads on your organization’s website.

    All the best,
    Robert

  3. Thomas permalink

    Hi Robert, thanks for your post.

    I have a client who have received a warning but aren’t aware of any AdSense ads on their site. They do however have it on their YouTube and they have embedded these videos on their site. They have also embedded videos from other people’s YouTube accounts which have AdSense.

    Do you think this could be considered an issue? Depending on how you interpret Google’s wording these could be considered to be “on the site”.

    T

  4. Hi Thomas, Adsense on Youtube should not pose a problem, however I have reached out to the Grants team for further clarification on this since this may be one of the issues causing the “false positives” that many grantees are reporting.

  5. Thomas permalink

    Thanks Robert, I would be very interested in any reply you receive. I’ve asked also but as yet I’ve received no reply.

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