Search Engine Arbitrage using AdSense AND AdWords - feedback requested

[beyond.domaining]

I have lots and lots and lots of web sites monetized by Google AdWords.

Recently I started running a test on some of my sites that have particularly high eCPM (usually coming from high PPCs) where i started buying up thousands of long tail keywords at really low CPCs ($0.01, $0.02, $0.03) per click on Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing.

hoping to bring traffic in on the cheap and then monetize it on the expensive on the way out. Search Engine Arbitrage, of course.

The first few days worked out REALLY well. i was bringing people in really cheaply and my eCPM in AdSense pretty much stayed the same as before I started the test.

Brilliant, I was thinking... but know i'm not so sure....

I'm still waiting for more data to come in, but i feel like i've seen the PPCs drop dramatically on the sites that I've been running this Arb test lately. To where now its not even really worth it to be buying the keywords.

My hunch is that Google is penalizing me in some way and is now only sending low CPC crap ads into my AdSense sites because they see I'm buying AdWords for those same sites.

Does anyone know if Google actively penalizes Search Arb or am i just being paranoid?

[Illuminosity]

Are the keywords you are buying related to the topic of the websites they lead to?

[james2002]

Yes, I understand google is against arbitage and it will even ban you if they find it out.

[jasdon11]

Are your sites product or service related? If so, are there any affiliate systems running relating to them? Might be better to swap the adsense for affiliate links.

[beyond.domaining]

thanks for the follow up guys - to answer:

yes, the keywords are related to the sites i'm promoting and some of them do have affiliate programs running, but i make a lot more money off of AdSense than i do off the Affiliate programs. so the affiliate programs are just a little bonus.

i'd be curious to hear if anyone has some definitive evidence that you can be banned from adsense for this? i'm going to look into the Terms and Conditions for AdSense. These are real sites though, with real content, so i don't really see what the problem is with buying keywords, just because i have adsense running. i have a friend that got banned for doing search arbitrage, but he was basically just scraping (stealing) garbage content and had built one big search keyword spam site. so, him getting banned, made sense to me.

i'll update the thread if i find out more on this.