14 DAY TRIAL // Philipp Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped got his Chinese side of the website banned in AdSense and will stop showing adverts to the visitors due to an unclear reason. As Philipp notes, all he did and which might infringe AdSense's guidelines was to publish some photos inside Google Hamburg but the Mountain View company didn't say a thing about this pictures. "They pointed to a specific sample page in their notice which contains photos I shot at the Google Hamburg office (including a photo showing the Google logo, with permission from Google)," he wrote on Google Blogoscoped.
However, the Google reply was pretty obvious: you're not allowed to use the Google name in your URL or publish the Google logo and even product screenshots on your website. This is the email sent by the Mountain View company to Philipp Lenssen as he published it on the webpage mentioned above.
"Publishers are not permitted to make prominent use of "Google Brand Features" on sites showing Google ads. Google Brand Features include Google logos, product screenshots, or other distinctive features. Additionally, publishers may not place Google ads on sites incorporating Google trademarks in the site URL or on sites that frame Google pages, including search results pages. Which means in your case that the word "google" in the URL is not okay for showing ads, hence we had to deactivate serving to the site."
Although the message is pretty clear, have a look at the second phrase about the elements prohibited on your website. As you can see, Google states you're not allowed to publish product screenshots coming from the search giant. Well, that's pretty curios because there are thousands of blogs out there which publish photos captured on Google's technologies which are still using AdSense and the company didn't notice that using them might infringe the product's guidelines.
So, where's the truth Google? Which is the main reason for banning the AdSense accounts? Is it the Google tag in the URL or something else?