The H D Consultants' ShareLink Guidelines
The H D Consultants ShareLink directory has been designed to support like minded people and businesses, to promote each other’s brand and proposition. Underlying this purpose is the obvious need for us all to present professional, legal, safe, truthful, clear, fair and not misleading content.
On approval of your logo and text submission, we will publish your content on our ShareLink directory, and all we ask in return is that you do the same for us. This reciprocal support only works if we support eachother.
Working together on the basis of these fundamentals, and in adherence to the guidelines below, we can help each other to promote our brand to each others wider audiences.
Guidelines; The do’s and don’ts.
The first 'do', is that you must post our logo and text on your website as well. The logo and text is provided automatically to you when you submit your details via this form.
Ad copy (title, text, and display url):
Ads must:
• Be clear, truthful, and accurate.
• Be correctly constructed: Ads should be grammatically correct, not include misspellings, and be formatted correctly.
• Manage expectations:
• Ads should not mislead.
• Ads must be highly relevant to the product, services or information presented on your landing page, or the general content, purpose, and theme of your site.
• When an ad implies that a product is for sale, the landing page must allow the purchase of that product.
Multiple ads from the same Company may be displayed if the target site for each ad has:
• A separate, distinct brand
• A unique look and feel
• Different products or services
To comply with these policies:
• Make sure that your ad does not duplicate any of your other ads.
• Do not submit multiple ads that link to sites whose content or design is very similar.
Capitalisation;
• Ads must use proper, grammatically correct capitalisation.
• Capitalisation must be consistent. For example, use title case, sentence case, or capitalise the first letter of every word.
• Ads may not use excessive or random capitalisation, such as BIG SALE or AmAzinG.
• Titles should be title-cased for the English-speaking markets. Descriptions must be sentence case.
• Legitimate acronyms and advertiser brand names that are registered in all capital letters are allowed.
Grammar, punctuation, and spelling:
• Grammar and spelling must be correct unless the incorrect grammar or spelling is part of the corporate or product branding.
• One exclamation point or question mark is allowed per sentence in ad text.
Symbols, special characters, and abbreviations:
• Use numbers, letters, and symbols in a way that reflects normal speech.
• Only one price or % allowed per ad. This includes discounts and price reductions, such as 25% 50% off! or £99.99 £89.99 £79.99!
• Consecutive, non-alphanumeric characters are not allowed. For example, "TV - Only £5.95/Mo!!!"
• Use of italic, bold, superscript, subscript or other enhanced or resized fonts is not allowed.
• Use of the trademark symbol ™ or copyright symbol ® in the ad title or ad text is not allowed unless the trademark is already registered or in the process of application.
• Symbols not used as part of the language of the ad are not allowed in ad copy. For example, the following types of symbols and characters are not allowed in the ad title, ad text or keyword list:
• Wingdings, dingbats, arrows, bullets, or other symbols used to draw attention to an ad.
• Mathematical symbols such as <, >, =
• Emoticons
• Block elements such as ▉ or ▃
• Accents or characters specific to languages other than those enabled for the market(s) the ad targets. For example, ~, ^, or ç would not be allowed in the US market.
• Unnecessary symbols such as @, }{,][, ¤, § ‗
• Abbreviated or shortened versions of words may be used if they reflect common usage and are in direct context of the advertised product or service. For example:
• Month may be written as mo or mo. (with period).
• Pic, pics, or pix may be used instead of pictures.
• An ampersand (&) may be used in place of "and."
• A number sign (#) may be used in place of "number" or "pounds."
• A percent sign (%) may be used in place of "percent."
• An X or x may be used in place of "times" or "by"—"5X faster" or "4x4 truck," for example.
• A plus sign (+) may be used in place of "plus."
• An asterisk (*) may be used to denote travel category stars—"4* hotel," for example.
Word count and character limits:
• Minimum word count. A minimum combined total of at least 3 words is required in your title and descriptive text.
• Character limitations. If your ad title, ad text or destination URL exceeds certain character limitations, you will receive a request for a shorter version.
Prohibited and restricted ad content includes:
• Counterfeit goods
• Dangerous products or services
• Ads that enable dishonest behaviour
• Inappropriate content
• Adult content
• Alcohol
• Copyrights
• Gambling and games
• Healthcare and medicines
• Political content
• Animal products
• Dating services
• Soliciting funds
• Medical devices
• Drugs and paraphernalia
• Endangered species and live animals
• Illegal products and services
• Counterfeit goods
• Sensitive content
• Unacceptable business practices
• Weapons and explosives
• Infringing content
• Deceptive content
• Hateful or discriminatory content
• Inappropriate content
• Cryptocurrency ads
• Areas of questionable legality
• Deceptive products and services
• Drugs and related paraphernalia
• Endangered species products or services
• Fireworks and explosives
• Misleading messaging, content, images
• Offensive/controversial content
• Peer-to-peer file sharing
• Pyramid schemes, chain letters
• Sensitive advertising
• Suffering and violence
• Tobacco products
• Trafficking or exploitation
• Unregulated user-generated content
• Usenet
Ads which are offensive to good taste will not be acceptable. This means ads must not be, for example, hateful, vulgar, sexually suggestive or violent. In special circumstances, we may determine that an ad that was acceptable is no longer appropriate as we update our policies to reflect new laws or clarify our position.
ShareLink exclusion:
Sites may be excluded if there is reason to believe that their advertising or business practices are potentially malicious, harmful, or deceptive or they consistently violate our policies.
The following are examples of sites that may be completely excluded from the marketplace:
• Sites that include viruses, malware, spyware, or other self-installing programs.
• Business models that attempt to mislead site visitors, or that seem deceptive or fraudulent.
• Phishing sites that try to trick visitors into sharing personal data for fraudulent purposes, such as stealing one’s identity.
• Pages that consist entirely of advertising, or whose main purpose is to direct site visitors to advertising.
• Link farms.
• Parked domains.
• Sites operated by advertisers who consistently violate our policies or in the case of Search Ads, submit large numbers of irrelevant keywords.
• Landing pages
• The functionality of your site should not surprise site visitors or interfere with a user’s ability to navigate, and disruptive or deceptive content is not allowed. Navigation buttons should operate in a standard and predictable manner, and sites and all parts of the page content should load properly.
Your own website must not:
• Generate any disruptive pop-ups or pop-unders. Please note that functionalities that are part of the site’s expected experience or otherwise non-intrusive or user initiated, such as an age verification or log-in for example, would be acceptable.
• Spawn multiple pop-ups or any pop-up that prevents visitors from leaving the site.
• Illustration showing multiple pop-up windows preventing users from leaving a site.
• Open any additional windows.
• Mislead the user with "fake" dialog boxes or browser windows.
• Be designed to look broken or simulate a non-working webpage in any way.
• Use "fake" close behaviour. For example, when a user clicks a "close" button on the page, it should close that page, and no other behaviour should result.
• Illustration of a pop-up window that appears when a user tries to close a web page.
• Use doorway pages or cloaking.
Without the user's consent, your site must not:
• Change browser preferences or resetting default home pages.
• Resize browser windows or disabling browser buttons.
• Do not open properly or consistently result in a “product not available” message.
• Redirect site visitors unexpectedly to unrelated domains.
• Display a high density of advertising above the fold, and/or consist significantly of advertising or links.
• Illustration of a landing page featuring a high density of advertisements above the fold.
• Feature content that functions primarily to support ad monetization.
• Are built for search engines and feature excessive off-topic keywords or pages that feature hard-to-read text.
• Consistently feature sparse or limited content, particularly where the user would expect to find a range of offers, products or information on a similar site.
• Illustration of an ad that displays 'How to Lose Weight: Learn all you need for weight loss,' yet leads the user to a landing page with limited content.
• Exist only to redirect to other businesses without adding significant value as an intermediary, e.g., by providing enhanced pricing, product, or merchant information.
• Misrepresent the origin or intent of their content and as a result are likely to deceive a portion of the target audience.
• Require the entry of personal data unnecessary for the purposes of providing services or completing a purchase.
• Illustration of landing page requesting appropriate user information for a newsletter sign up, such as name, address and email address/Illustration of a landing page requesting unnecessary personal data for a newsletter sign up, such as bank account and social security numbers.
• Please note, sites driving users directly to a sign-up or login page must enable the user to link back to the main home page or supporting content describing services and terms of use.
• Delay or obstruct the user’s access to requested content, products or services by adding steps solely designed to monetize the user.
• Illustration of an ad leading to an interim page designed to monetize the user before proceeding to the expected landing page.
• Employ marketing tactics that might be considered evasive, overly sensational, or potentially confusing.
Final note; these lists are not exhaustive and in the spirit of fair and mutually beneficial promotion, we will adhere to the above Guidelines and trust you will too.
