WebProNews

Google and Ecocho evidently have a minor history of agreeing to disagree about Google's AdSense policies. The Ecocho search site launched last week, ahead of Earth Day, with the promise to plant trees for every 1,000 searches performed.

Visitors had the option of selecting Yahoo or Google to deliver search results on Ecocho. In Google's case, Ecocho displayed that search engine's AdSense advertising alongside the results. However, Ecocho's method of asking for searches offended Google, which shut Ecocho out of its AdSense program.

"In this case the site was in clear violation of our terms of service and we had previously warned the owner of past violations … We have now stopped serving ads and search results to the owner's sites," a Google Australia spokesperson said in ZDNet Australia An ad company named Found Agency owns Ecocho..

"For Google to say that we had no approval to use Adsense on Ecocho is inaccurate," Ecocho responded on their blog. Ecocho listed a timeline of conversations with Google dating back to January of this year, regarding AdSense on the site.

Whether or not Ecocho's intentions were good doesn't matter. The tree-planting theme still served to encourage search activity, which brings up those lucrative AdSense ads. Even with verification of the carbon credit purchases and tree planting, Ecocho still made Google think it indirectly nudged people toward acting on ads displayed in the search results.