rooturaj
Aim of the Experiment: To establish if Cryptocurrency mining can lead to a ban on your Adsense account when used together.
Studies covered in this analysis and experiment
- Effect of crypto mining on the end user and his hardware.
- Possible violation of Google Adsense policies
- Possible Negative effects on your SEO / Digital marketing
Possible violation of Google Adsense Policies
After a quick research, I found that Google has banned Bitcoin faucets displaying Google Ads recently. It may not have a direct relation between violating Google policies and an Adsense ban on the faucets. Possible reasons behind the ban are said to be
- little informative content
- too much invalid click activity
- violation of user privacy because of nontransparent disclaimers about crypto mining warning.
Though I cannot tell you for sure whether using CoinHive or other such cryptocurrency mining system as a revenue will lead to a suspension of your Adsense account, based on the three factors above it seems you are in a high-risk category. To be more specific, there is no-mention of Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency or mining on Google Adsense policy dated 13 Oct 2017.
But this section is important and covers sites’ users in this case.
Site behavior
Sites showing Google ads should be easy for users to navigate. Sites may not change user preferences, redirect users to unwanted websites, initiate downloads, include malware or contain pop-ups or pop-unders that interfere with site navigation.
Honor end users privacy or be ready to get your account disabled.
Crypto mining like CoinHive can lead to a violation of Adsense policies if you are using background javascript and API methods to mine monero or bitcoin. You may be relatively safer if you clearly tell the user in advance that you are using their CPU to mine Cryptocurrency. You may also leave a statutory warning that – CPU usages may spike to 100% and decrease your processor life. Additionally, you should also have an opt-out / opt-in function so that your website users may stop or start the process when they want.
Recently Showtime.com and Piratebay had a bad time after Gizmodo and other websites reported their secret cryptomining activities without public disclaimers. Afer that Piratebay launched an online poll asking users whether they preferred banner ads or non-intrusive cryptomining and to the surprise of critics the majority was in favor of crypto mining.
Now, even CoinHive has started asking users to clearly disclose it to the end users.
While it’s possible to run the miner without informing your users, we strongly advise against it. You know this. Long term goodwill of your users is much more important than any short term profits.
Effect of Cryptocurrency Mining on websites user experience.
Either you have to put a disclaimer on your website that you are using cryptomining or you do it secretly. If you follow the second approach, you violate users privacy. If you put up a disclaimer and people start noticing that their PC is getting slower or if they do not under stand the cryptomining system and sense something risky happening to them they will end up closing your website.
You will loose your credibility and people may start avoiding your site. Also, please note that, your users are also Google Users because you are an Adsense partner. If Google sees poor user experience on a particular site using adsense it can lead cause your account to be disabled.
Refer to my post on Effect of crypto mining on the end user and his hardware to see proof of bad user experience in details. I am putting the conclusion of the experiment here for a quick idea.
CryptoCrypto currency mining scripts apps like CoinHive
- Take your CPU utilization to 100%
- They drag your website users PC / Mac / Tab / Mobile performance and make them slow.
- They may decrease the lifespan of users hardware on long-term usage.
Conclusion :
Crypto Currency mining is a good revenue stream and a good alternative to intrusive banner ads but it is not a good idea to run it along with your Google Adsense. You may use it as a Google Adsense alternative but not simultaneously.
