Gambling Hubs: How Strict are the guidelines???

1. 60

   Bigfriendly1581posted 14 years ago

   It's getting tougher for Bum Marketers to promote certain categories.
   
   I totally understand why sites like Hub Pages and Squidoo have to reign in certain topics because of deadbeat spammers who just want to throw a bunch of crap up.
   
   What if you honestly want to offer quality content and have a link to a product you know isn't crap? Am I playing with snakes here???
   
   Thanks
   Scott

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   1. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      It's not just to defeat "deadbeat spammers", Scott.  HubPages relies on Adsense for its income.  So HubPages must comply with Adsense Terms of Service.  Otherwise we could all lose our source of income.
      
      As several people have found, Adsense is dumb.  It relies on robots to detect websites that violate the TOS, which means it looks for "illegal" words, rather than judging the quality or seriousness of the content.  So people who've written serious articles on sex therapy have found themselves penalized for writing porn!  Gambling would have the same problem, IMO.

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2. 70

   wyanjenposted 14 years ago

   Send a message to HubPages and ask them about your idea specifically. The TOS here basically mirrors Google's AdSense policy, because the site needs to protect it's revenue source.
   
   It's better not to guess.
   

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3. 90

   Rochelle Frankposted 14 years ago

   It is against Google Adsense policies to promote casinos or gambling-- among several other things.

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4. 63

   darksideposted 14 years ago

   If you had a hub on The Rules Of Poker and it didn't have links going to other sites and it relied solely on Adsense (and maybe an Amazon book or two) for monetization, I would expect it to be within the guidelines.

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5. 79

   MyWebsposted 14 years ago

   I own a Las Vegas web site for years now. I have reviews of several major Casino / Hotels on "The Strip" I have never had a problem from Google. Research some major Las Vegas Hotel keywords and you will find they pay quite well per click.  The field is VERY competitive too.
   
   https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms
   Prohibited Uses in Section 5 of AdSense TOS makes no mention of gambling or Casinos. All it says is "...on any Web page or any Web site that contains any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content"
   
   I searched the whole TOS page for "Casino", "Casinos" "Gamble" and  "Gambling" no word is mentioned one time.
   
   Of course my content is about legal hotels / casinos in a state that has legal gambling. Start talking about illegal gambling and you would be in trouble.
   
   I have nothing to do with online casinos because as far as I know they are still illegal in the USA.
   
   If I was violating Google's TOS my account would have been deleted years ago. I know for a fact that Google has manually reviewed my web site too, I have seen the admin interface file name they use in my log files a long time ago.
   
   I could also get into "Curse Words", another common myth relating to AdSense,  along the same lines too, but I won't.
   
   The main keyword in AdSense TOS is the word "Illegal" have a web page that promotes or contains anything "Illegal" and your done. At least thats how I interpret it

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6. 90

   Rochelle Frankposted 14 years ago

   Yet their site says:
   
   "Sites with Google ads may not include or link to:
   Pornography, adult or mature content Violent content Content related to racial intolerance or advocacy against any individual, group or organization Excessive profanity, Hacking/cracking content, Gambling or casino-related content, Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia content, Sales of beer or hard alcohol,.... etc etc."

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7. 79

   MyWebsposted 14 years ago

   @Rochelle I didn't see that part. It seems like that would be in conflict with their TOS.
   
   And also conflict with how AdSense really works from my own experience. Like I said I know they accept AdWords from Las Vegas Casino / Hotels. And of course those ads display on web sites that display AdSense.
   
   I think it would be best then to focus on the Hotel side of things then and not the Casino as far as Las Vegas goes. Which is exactly what my Vegas site does.
   
   They really do not enforce the excessive profanity part, at least not for me. One of my web pages is the very definition of "Excessive Profanity" to the extreme. But I guess its the context of the content too. My clever pre-qualifying seems to have worked

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8. 0

   Nelle Hoxieposted 14 years ago

   There are so many safe ways to make money with adsense, I'll never understand the need some people have to skate near the edge. These keywords must have huge payoffs, to risk a lifetime ban.
   
   I've seen too many people in these niches, think they were safe and then moan when they lose their account.

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   1. 90

      Rochelle Frankposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I agree. Another thing is, their robots are not likely to take context into consideration, and it is very difficult to reach an actual living person to give you a hearing.

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9. 79

   MyWebsposted 14 years ago

   @Nelle you make a very good point and I agree with you 100%. My borderline page was a programming learning exercise I planned to delete. I never did and it ended up #1 on Google. I'm pretty sure I'm safe after 3 years and a manual review by Google, but I wouldn't advise others to do what I did.
   
   In hindsight it wasn't the smartest thing to do.

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10. 68

    Michael Willisposted 14 years ago

    I have seen a few hubs that are about Horses in horse racing and the hubs made comments about the Horse Track and even had "links" to the track. I would take this as a link that is Not an Adsense violation since it is not promoting gambling, but the track.
    Would anyone agree?
    
    I know I want to write about an upcoming Horse race near me. Mainly to promote places to stay and where to eat. And of course the horses involved. Would have to mention the track name of course. My question would be if I should link or not link to the Race track homepage? It is not a casino.

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