

Philanthropy made easy - just search! - crystalarchives
http://www.tokogae.com

======
rrival
Be careful - this is against Google's TOS - it both incentivizes clicking on
ads and the $ to charity is an unverifiable claim. I set something like this
up about a year ago. It lasted about as long as tokogae.com has been reg'd (~3
days) for that reason. That said, if you've found a way around that, I'd love
to know about it.

~~~
crystalarchives
Hm, where I am breaching Google TOS? I've read through it pretty carefully,
although I'm not a lawyer, and I can't find anything besides potentially
incentivizing the clicking of ads. That is up to their discretion, I'm going
to assume it's okay unless they warn me. I've put up a disclaimer though,
thanks for pointing that part out.

I'm able to disclose my earnings though Section 7 of the TOS
(<http://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms>) which states:

"You may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross payments to You
pursuant to the Program."

and I can post my donation receipts for verification. Obviously, this won't
happen until after I get the AdSense check, but there's nothing I can do about
that for the first month. There won't be many users starting off though, so
even if I were a greedy scumbag I wouldn't make too much, and if I actually do
as I promise more users will hopefully show up.

~~~
rrival
I hear you =) Here's a quote from the email (Dec 7th 2006):

Thanks for following up with us and removing the phrase "The more you search
the more we give".

Unfortunately, we’re still unable to approve your application for the AdSense
program because we found that you are offering incentives to users to perform
searches in order to benefit third-parties. This activity is prohibited by
AdSense program policies.

AdSense does not currently permit sites that offer financial incentives to
users to perform searches. This includes both direct incentives ("we pay you
two cents for every search") and indirect incentives to third-parties ("we
donate to charity every time you search"). There are a number of reasons for
this policy decision, most notably our inability to verify the accuracy of any
claims. While we have no doubt that you intend to donate a portion of proceeds
to the charities listed on your site, we have no way to verify this with all
partners.

For additional questions, I'd encourage you to visit the AdSense Help Center
(<http://www.google.com/adsense_help>), our complete resource center for all
AdSense topics. Alternatively, feel free to post your question on the forum
just for AdSense publishers: the AdSense Help Group
(<http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help>).

~~~
crystalarchives
Ouch, I see it now:

[https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=...](https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=48182)

"May not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise
compensation to a third party for such behavior"

I guess this is why there are other sites that use Yahoo as the search engine
for the same purpose... Thanks for the heads up, I'll let you know if I find
some way around it. I think I'll leave it up and wait until Google contacts me
before switching to Yahoo.

Who knows, maybe I'll write something that allows verification of donations
for charities. That might be a good non-profit in itself.

~~~
rrival
Sure thing - good luck - they're pretty quick =)

What I was working on morphed into <http://www.tunesfortrees.com/> once we
realized GoodSearch.com owned the search space.

Your next thought was my next thought, verification for charities would be
great to have as long as you could get Google approval, and as long as enough
people cared =)

~~~
crystalarchives
Genius man, it's a good idea and looks fantastic.

Good luck to you, too!

