XF 2.1 Google adsense labels navigation as policy violation

[Mr Lucky]

I am confused why a more or less default navigation would get a Google policy violation notice?



It's just this one page:

Saxophones - Lafleur tenor saxophone

Imported by Boosey and Hawkes. Good kit or not worth looking at? Advice please.

cafesaxophone.com

Can anyone tell me what's up with the navigation here?

Thanks

 

[AndyB]

You have this on top of the page:



This is in violation here:



Source: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/48182

 

[Mr Lucky]

OK, but that is nothing do do with ads, it's about our own sales and user upgrade subscriptions.

Also it is only one page which is shown as violating policies so i don't quite see why a notice that has nothing to do with clicking on ads should be a violation.

 

[djbaxter]

Seems to be the "restricted demand" part of Google's notice.

Fix policy issues that affect ad serving - Google AdSense Help

Use the Policy center to help you resolve issues quickly and efficiently to minimize the impact to your ad serving. You can request a review of your site once you have fixed the issue, or if you belie

support.google.com

Resolve issues in your Policy center that may affect ad serving

The Policy center displays all of the current enforcements on your sites. Enforcements can either block all advertising (for example, "Ad serving disabled") or restrict which advertisers can bid on your inventory (for example, "Restricted demand").

You may receive enforcements due to various issues with your content:

• Policy violations that must be fixed. Policy violations are enforced with either "Ad serving disabled" or "Restricted demand".
• Publisher restrictions are not policy violations so you don't need to change your content or ad requests. However, content with publisher restrictions receive "Restricted demand".

Tip: To find out if you need to take action on an enforcement, review the "Must fix" column in your Policy center. The column will say "Yes" if an enforcement is due to a policy violation. It will say "No" for publisher restrictions.

For further information see

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9335567

One thing to note is that Google (and everyone else) is really cracking down on anything that might be considered to be inaccurate or incorrect information about COVID-19. The sidebar on that page points to this thread and Google's crawlers just happened to picl it up on that page:

Covid-19 and repairers

I was wondering what concerns or forum techies have with regard to Covid-19? Will you be taking any special measures at all to protect yourselves if so how, what and why. Stay safe Techies. Regards Al

cafesaxophone.com

I don't know how accurate the advice given in that thread is but it is quite possible Google sees it as unsupported by current evidence.

Statements that may be contentious from that thread:

• "Studies are showing the virus can survive on some surfaces up to 2 to 3 days which gives those who work on instruments some guidance as to how soon they can safely touch something brought in without using a disinfectant. " - recent evidence is that it can stay on some surfaces for up to 17 days or longer
• "One useful piece of news is that the virus dies after around 4 hours of exposure to copper - and as most metal woodwinds are made from copper-based alloys, the bore of these instrument will be largely self-decontaminating. There's no firm data on wood and precious metals as yet, though as a general rule of thumb viruses tend not to do so well on rough surfaces." - I don't know how accurate this is byt it sounds dubious to me
• "The novel coronavirus brings new challenges in that it's new and not that well understood as yet - but appears to share properties with other members of its group. This means that established methods will work against it (disinfectant solutions, soap, alcohol-based solutions) - all of which should be in regular use in a workshop in any event." - again, does this correspond to recent evidence?
• "Dettol (Lysol) spray is your friend, but you can also use isopropyl alchohol (70%) solution." - does this correspond with recent evidence?
• "A UV leaklight could do the trick." - sounds very dubious to me
• "I mean, there's chem bathing or sonic bathing (neither of which are alcohol-based if I am correct ?), there's soap cleaning, there's polishing, there may be disinfecting of mouthpieces and even perhaps some techs who disinfect an entire neck... Would it be reasonable to say that a chem or sonic bath would disinfect the instrument?" - another questionable statement, even if phrased as a question

I do know that Facebook has been accused of being overly aggressive in banning or deleting COVID-19 information - part of the growing process with AI screening - and it may well be that Google is experiencing some similar issues.

Nonetheless, it's worth remembering that Google and others are aggressively cracking down on COVID-19 misinformation and you may need to screen threads about the virus more carefully than usual, especially since it can affect vyour income.

 

[Mr Lucky]

OK, useful information to know. The sidebar is of course on all pages though, but as its latest post that on no longer shows.

But I'm confused why it says navigation.

The sidebar on that page points to this thread and Google's crawlers just happened to picl it up on that page:

So maybe I should delete or at least close that thread. ironic, people are trying to help (unlike some politicians)

 

[djbaxter]

OK, useful information to know. The sidebar is of course on all pages though, but as its latest post that on no longer shows.

But I'm confused why it says navigation.

Not sure. Maybe because it's an outgoing link from that page to another page on your site?

So maybe I should delete or at least close that thread. ironic, people are trying to help (unlike some politicians)

People are giving all sorts of terrible advice on social media (and in the White House) in attempts to be helpful. But if the advice is wrong or potentially harmful, it's not really helpful at all obviously.

But either delete it move it to a section of your forum not open to Guests or bots. Closing it won't help if it's still visible.

All of this is assuming that's Google's objection, of course, but I don't know what else it might be on that pages.

 

[djbaxter]

Also if you move rather than delete, restrict the forum you move it to from showing up in the widget.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Also if you move rather than delete, restrict the forum you move it to from showing up in the widget.

It's easier to just delete, we don't have an appropriate restricted forum for that thread