AdSense abuse is, like it or not, a part of the game. Google does do quite a bit to counteract that abuse, including monitoring of the AdSense network, giving the ban hammer to any obvious offenders, and follow-ups with anyone whose made a minor error. Additionally, Google has updated their AdSense policy to prevent certain abuses that may or may not have been intentionally.
Those abuses were happening due to the AdSense content being “iframed” into a site. An iframe is a way to construct your code so, rather than having content present on the current page, it creates a virtual window to another online location. Iframing is typically used to import embedded features – such as website elements, reports, or a database front-end – into a different branding environment. With AdSense, however, iframes were serving a different purpose.
Google acknowledges that there are some legitimate uses of iframes for AdSense, but the majority of what was happening was redundant, faulty, and redundant. And I’m not just being ironically redundant there – the code actually has two forms of redundancy. The first problem is that the iframe isn’t necessary. It was once helpful for making the site load more quickly, but changes to the AdSense code earlier this year rendered this tactic unnecessary. Second, much of the AdSense code displayed iniframes is improperly truncated, leading to partially obscured – and sometimes miss-clicked – content. And third, the iframe tactic was sometimes being used maliciously to create ad exposure redundancy by showing the content on locations outside of the approved site – sometimes without the approval of the webmaster who was displaying the ads.
Google has stated that they will approve any uses of iframes for a legitimate purpose on a case-by-case basis.
[via Search Engine Land]
