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Putting contact details in your signature
If you are a service provider you are welcome to put in your contact details or website in your signature but only on posts where your signature is relevant. We welcome the fact that some providers develop a reputation on Askaboutoney for being well informed, well written and genuinely helpful. If you get clients as a result of that, we are delighted.
You should not attach your signature to posts which are not relevant to the service you provide as this is advertising. So a mortgage intermediary can put her signature on mortgages, house buying and related financial topics, but should not have her signature on posts in the motoring forum.
If the vast majority of your posts relate to the service you provide, in practice, you might forget to remove your signature from unrelated posts. However, when you see this, you should edit your post appropriately. (You can leave your signature on posts before the 4th February 2009, the date of implementation of this new guideline)
Under no circumstances should you advertise a rewards scheme and affiliation scheme or any form of viral marketing. For example "click here for R Points"
Signatures should not be used to promote websites which you don't own, whether commercial or not. This does not prevent you from providing links to other relevant websites in posts.
If you think a signature might not be acceptable, then it probably isn't. We will only ask you once to change your signature. If you abuse the rule again, we will ban you from using signatures completely. The moderators will not enter into discussions on this.
I thought that this thread laid the ground work so we'd all knew where we stood.
http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=100790
If the poster had asked could he have his contact details instead of asking could he reccommend himself would the answer have been different
Someone can use their business name as their askaboutmoney name, but they can not post on any topics, other than ones related to their business.
We warned a guy recently for posting "Agreed" and "confirmed" on a few posts which we took to be pure advertising.
Brendan
We do not consider contact details on the bottom of a meaningful post to be advertising.
So why not simply enable signatures?We do not consider contact details on the bottom of a meaningful post to be advertising.
Someone can use their business name as their askaboutmoney name, but they can not post on any topics, other than ones related to their business.
We warned a guy recently for posting "Agreed" and "confirmed" on a few posts which we took to be pure advertising.
And what about where someone's username is their actual name, which also happens to be the name of their business?That seems unreasonableBrendan said:Someone can use their business name as their askaboutmoney name, but they can not post on any topics, other than ones related to their business.
Look at my username.
It's the username I use on most bulletin boards and actually predates the company formation.
And what about where someone's username is their actual name, which also happens to be the name of their business?
The Posting Guidelines do not cover every possible eventuality.
So why not simply enable signatures?
Links are more "advertising" than user names as Google rates the site linked to based on the popularity of the site from which it is linked.
Brendan
I'm not so concerned about what Google thinks I'd just like clear rules on what is constrewed as being advertising.
If someone makes a significant amount of decent posts, maybe they should be allowed to have a link. If they abuse this privilage then the link privilage could be taken away from them.
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