A lot of bloggers I know display Google advertisements on their respective blogs in order to earn some money. Naturally, I also have two Google advertisements on every page of this blog for exactly the same reason… (I’d like to point out that I have not received any cheque from Google up to now.)
This service from Google is called Google Adsense.
I got a comment today from Josh who told me that I need to have a privacy page on this blog to comply with Google’s Adsense latest Terms and Conditions. Using Google (what else?), I discovered a blog entry by Jennifer Slegg explaining in details the changes brought by Google. The most relevant paragraph is:
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.
The idea is to make explicit that Google uses web beacons aka web bugs and cookies to track visitors. I suppose this brings some peace of mind to Google lawyers.
Then I realized…
This blog, noulakaz.net, is in violation with the terms and conditions and Google might terminate my Adsense account anytime. Fortunately, Jennifer Slegg has also thoughtfully written a sample privacy policy which she has made public. I read it and realized it was much too long for my blog. With some cut and paste, I finally came up with:
The privacy of visitors to noulakaz.net is important to me. Like most other websites, I collect and use the data contained in log files. I do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit my blog. To support my weblog, I also use third party advertisements which may use cookies and web beacons. You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies in your browser settings or by managing security preferences. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with noulakaz.net as well as other websites.
Nice and compact! I’ve added this to my About page.
Â
Â
Â
15 Common Mistakes
Not having a privacy policy was a mistake. But it’s arguably a cosmetic mistake. The baddest mistake as far as Google Adsense is concerned is for someone to click on his own Adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason (e.g. click on my links coz i need to pay for my hosting.) I came across this list of 15 Common Mistakes that violate Google Adsense Terms & Conditions and I would strongly advise all bloggers using Adsense to go through it once or twice.
Addendum
The “Software Failure / Guru Meditation” picture shown above should bring tears to those happy few who had an Amiga 15-20 years ago… To the rest, this is what we got when the Amiga crashed. No blue screen of death. No core dump. Instead, we had a flashing Guru Meditation message. People were cool at that time…
Should be careful with google…lol
I get my google cheques on time :D
hmm reading this entry i realize that its not much of a change, since back then when adsense was just launched, it was pretty much the same tihng [i was concerned when it comes to money, so i read every single lines of that terms and conditions :p]
thanks for the info about the tracking
@ selven: At which bank did you changed your google cheq?? MCB telling me it gonna take 2 months!!!! to verify tou sa…and credit the money to my account! :-(
2 months!!!!…..its been 2 weeks la….6 weeks to go lol…
I told you they were evil. That’s nothing new though. They change their privacy policy every now and then.
anyway, you should keep your privacy policy in a separate page.
like /privacy-policy or about/privacy-policy
and if you use a sitemap plugin, make sure it lists that page too. just in case… or the hoodoo secret site checking algorithm google uses to check if sites are adsense compliant will smote you.
I meant, they change their Terms of Service every now and then.
and I read your about page. that can’t be all, can it? what about the cookie data wordpress sets? the Tempus Fugit plugin sets some data for the subscriptions, right? You should mention things like that. As far as I know, a privacy policy should also mention what user data is kept on server/set in cookies and how it is (or is not) used. Not just for the benefit of the visitors but for you, the webmaster, as well.
probably should make it more visible too. like links in the footer area. You really have to be careful. A lot of publishers are in semi-permanent violation of google’s evolving ToS. many of them don’t get kicked but many of them do.
Welcome to the Dark Side of Google btw.
@Avish
2 months? You are sure? Well, actually I don’t know how much time it takes to credit it, but it’s definitely less than 2 months… ;)
PS. My previous comment was spammed?? :|
Yea….they said 8 weeks environ….thats 2 months :-\ I am setting bidvertiser on test on my blog for abt 2 weeks la….mwena $2 lor bidvertiser…so wanna make 10 unfoi so I can grab it lol…then i’ll set adsense again.
I deposit my cheques at MCB only, usually its a matter of 1 or 2 weeks or less (i don’t remember the exact cycle), but it is not much.
You sure you didn’t dressed up as a drug dealer or something similar when you went to deposit your cheque? :D
Thank you very much. I’ve used it and adjusted a bit to fit on my own site. Thank you again. :D
You’re welcome :-)