Thread: New Adsense TOS - Must have privacy policy!

Goog just rolled out an update to the Adsense Terms of Service Agreement.

For those that did not read it and simply clicked "yeah, i read it (lie) and agree, just l'me go check my earnings pleez" you missed a very important change.

ALL PUBLISHERS ARE REQUIRED TO HAVE A PRIVACY POLICY!

here it is from the TOS;

You must have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy that clearly discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website. Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management.

Ok everybody, run off and write yourself a privacy policy page.

*runs off to write one*

Good job you read it, I didn't...

Got an example of what a privacy policy should look like?

Originally Posted by tsdesigns

Got an example of what a privacy policy should look like?

Try this one.

Free Privacy Policy Template

Jennifer Slegg over at Jensense is going to be creating one that applies to adsense and other publishers can use.

She goes over all the changes to the TOS here Tell your visitors they are being tracked with web beacons & cookies as AdSense terms updated - JenSense.com

She should have it available over the next few days I think.

Wow, nice catch you made for all of us! I will have to get on that before google gets mad at me... I don't need that :P

Wow this is insane! I don't even know what all pages have adsense on it!

^I know what you mean.
Most of my credit cad sites have privacy policies for their TOS, but I doubt there good enough for google. I am not in the mood to go through all my sites and add PP,(although I guess I have no choice) what a pain!

Originally Posted by GRIM

Wow this is insane! I don't even know what all pages have adsense on it!

Yeah, I don't know if it needs to be on every page that serves ads or just your home page. I suppose sticking it in a footer is the thing to do.

No-follow the links to your privacy policy page. No need to pass any PR to that junky page.

err I meant 'pages' as in 'sites'

Originally Posted by axemedia

Jennifer Slegg over at Jensense is going to be creating one that applies to adsense and other publishers can use.

She goes over all the changes to the TOS here Tell your visitors they are being tracked with web beacons & cookies as AdSense terms updated - JenSense.com

She should have it available over the next few days I think.

Thats good

I'll be sure to keep checking back there for it.

My goodness, gimme a break! I have got 1096 sites!

Originally Posted by GRIM

I don't even know what all pages have adsense on it!

Same here, I have a couple of 10 year old sites with some 4,000 pages between them and no footer included :bawling:

Not for each page.
Just a privacy page is all you need.
That would cover your entire site.

since I'm adsensing with wtf I hope they have a pp

And I hope you are not expecting to make money when I am on?
LOL

Wow, I totally didn't see that part... Thanks for the heads up, I think my sites all have privacy policies, but am not sure...

Great catch, i dident read a word of it.

errrrr.... i dont wanna write a PP lol

Apparently, there are other important changes as well. This is from a thread in DP

1. you can put adsense search and referral ads on pages without content.
2. you can put adsense on error, registration, and thank you pages.
3. you need privacy policy on the site with says cookies are used to get some info.
4. you can show more than one adsense ads from more than one account on same page.
5. you can now run contextual ads from other companies like yahoo on the same page.

Originally Posted by zxpro168

Apparently, there are other important changes as well. This is from a thread in DP

4. you can show more than one adsense ads from more than one account on same page.
5. you can now run contextual ads from other companies like yahoo on the same page.

I thought these were already true?

Originally Posted by zxpro168

3. you need privacy policy on the site with says cookies are used to get some info.

Ok, so I admint I'm too lazy to read the new rules, so I'm counting on all you :P Does this mean, any PP will work as long as it includes the fact that google puts cookies on you?

anyone come up wtih some privacy page jargon

There are a few sites out there which have a privacy policy creator. It basically helps generate a generic policy which works for most sites. Just google privacy policy creator quick and you will get tons of sites to choose from.

Originally Posted by mick535

There are a few sites out there which have a privacy policy creator. It basically helps generate a generic policy which works for most sites. Just google privacy policy creator quick and you will get tons of sites to choose from.

Here's one http://www.the-dma.org/privacy/creating.shtml

This generator was created specifically for the cause: Adsense Privacy Policy Generator - Create a Privacy Policy Adsense

This is going to suck, trying to find all sites with adsense on them and finding a way to code it in!

Well, WTF has updated their privacy policy. We already had cookie information but I've added more using the help of the above generator. I took what I wanted and edited it in for my purposes.

Webmaster Forum - FAQ: Legal

First server somewhat done!

thank god i never use adsense, id probably go nuts

mick535, be very careful of auto-generated policy creators!

A well-known IM guru by the name of Milk Filsaime used one, and promptly received a warning from a well-known Internet attorney called Bob Sibler. It transpired that the auto-generated policy was based on a copy of a privacy policy drawn up by Bob Sibler.

Bob Sibler warned Milk Filsaime that he was liable for over $100,000 in damages. In the end, Milk Filsaime agreed to pay a few thousand dollars to Bob Sibler.

Originally Posted by GRIM

This is going to suck, trying to find all sites with adsense on them and finding a way to code it in!

I think we have till May to comply

I wonder whether it will be possible to have the policy just under one website, and link to that url from all other website? I am concerned that there could be further requirements down the line and it would be a drag to update them all again.

Originally Posted by zxpro168

I wonder whether it will be possible to have the policy just under one website, and link to that url from all other website? I am concerned that there could be further requirements down the line and it would be a drag to update them all again.

You could use a php include that pulled the text content from one source yet showed as a unique page for each domain.

Originally Posted by zxpro168

I wonder whether it will be possible to have the policy just under one website, and link to that url from all other website? I am concerned that there could be further requirements down the line and it would be a drag to update them all again.

I thought about that but each site is different, plus I'd worry about taking a hit on the seo end.

An include might work for the majority of it.

Originally Posted by GRIM

I thought about that but each site is different, plus I'd worry about taking a hit on the seo end.

An include might work for the majority of it.

Use NO INDEX in the robots meta tag on that privacy policy page. It's not relevant content anyways so the search engines done need to index it. Also NO FOLLOW the links to that page so your not wasting and link juice to it.

That should prevent any sort of SEO hit due to duplicate content with the same privacy policy on every site.

Originally Posted by axemedia

Use NO INDEX in the robots meta tag on that privacy policy page. It's not relevant content anyways so the search engines done need to index it. Also NO FOLLOW the links to that page so your not wasting and link juice to it.

That should prevent any sort of SEO hit due to duplicate content with the same privacy policy on every site.

I would not trust a no index or no follow tag in such an instance.

Actually, a php include might not work. You cant use absolute URL paths, only relative paths to pages on the same server. If on another domain, yet on same server you'd need relative paths to the drive and folder. ie

Code:

<?php include('D:/foldername/filename.html'); ?>

you cant do this

Code:

<?php include('http://sitename.com/autoprotectors/footer.html'); ?>

as php wont recognize the absolute URL path.

axemedia added 0 Minutes and 29 Seconds later...

Originally Posted by GRIM

I would not trust a no index or no follow tag in such an instance.

why not???

Originally Posted by axemedia

why not???

those tags are good for search engines not indexing a site 'for the public', when it comes to seo I highly doubt the engines wont even take a peak.

Even if they don't at this time will they never?

Originally Posted by GRIM

those tags are good for search engines not indexing a site 'for the public', when it comes to seo I highly doubt the engines wont even take a peak.

Even if they don't at this time will they never?

Oh, they do, and will, take a peek. But the no index means they wont bother to cache it in their index, and the no follow means they will not pass any link weigh to it.

And one duplicate page on your site is not going to harm you. They don't penalize the whole site for seeing a little dup content. They penalize that one page. Not so much penalize it as only bother to rank one, or a few, versions of the same content.

Take news sites for example. The same news story gets syndicated over many, sometimes hundreds of sites, but often only one version of it will rank. Sometimes the first to post it, other times the one with the biggest authority and trust rank. The other sites with the identical content don't get their whole site slapped with a penalty that hurts rankings on other pages, only that one duplicate page.

G does not penalize the page. It just sees 357 versions of the same page, decides that the content is relevant to the search, and then decides, "ok, which one of these will we show?", "hmmmm, this one looks good. We'll just ignore the rest of these".

So I would be confident in having the same privacy policy page on many sites, even without No-Index tags. But I would still use no-follow to not waste link juice on them.

Ahh but they will see all the sites together is why I am worried, not duplicate content

Originally Posted by GRIM

Ahh but they will see all the sites together is why I am worried, not duplicate content

you mean if they all were linking to the one privacy page? Then I can see why.