Publisher Standards

Core Publishing Rules

• News and reference first: Posts must report, explain, compare, document, or analyze. They must not operate as a store, coupon page, affiliate funnel, or purchase guide.
• No direct sales: We do not publish buy buttons, checkout links, cart links, purchase-incentive codes, discount-style incentives, or calls to buy tobacco, nicotine, vape, cannabis, or drug-use products.
• No ad interaction encouragement: We do not ask readers to interact with advertisements or reward ad engagement.
• No youth targeting: Content is for adults 21+. We avoid youth appeal, cartoon framing, toy/candy-style promotion, and language that encourages underage access.
• No illegal-use guidance: We do not provide instructions for illegal purchase, illegal shipping, evading age checks, public smoking where prohibited, drug production, or unauthorized product distribution.
• No health claims: We do not claim that vaping, nicotine, cannabis, or any product is safe, FDA approved, medically effective, or a cessation treatment unless an official source clearly supports that exact statement.
• Source-dated claims: Prices, events, hearings, bill status, enforcement items, and product authorization claims must include a source and access date when practical.
• Original value: Articles should add Alaska context, regulatory explanation, retailer compliance context, source comparison, or reader-useful analysis. We do not scrape or lightly rewrite other sites.
• Clear navigation: Policy pages, contact, privacy choices, events, and editorial disclosures must remain reachable through site navigation or footer links.
• Comments closed: Public comments are disabled to reduce user-generated spam, off-topic links, and unreviewed commercial claims.

Restricted Topic Handling

Google Publisher Restrictions identify tobacco and recreational-drug content as restricted inventory. AKVN therefore treats vape, nicotine, tobacco, cannabis, and consumption-venue coverage as sensitive editorial coverage. Restricted does not mean every article is forbidden, but it does mean we must avoid promotional sales framing and accept that some pages may receive limited or no Google-served advertising.

When we cover prices, we record public observations without ranking stores as winners or telling readers what to buy. When we cover events, we distinguish public hearings, trade shows, legal adult-only events, and licensed consumption contexts. When we link to stores, menu platforms, manufacturers, venues, or ticketing sources as evidence, those links are source citations and may be marked nofollow.

AdSense And Ad Placement Rules

• Ads must not obscure page content, age notices, privacy controls, navigation, or publisher disclosures.
• Ads must not be placed in a way that makes them look like editorial links, menu items, download buttons, or official government resources.
• We will not place ads on empty, thin, duplicate, doorway, search-result, login-only, noindex, or error pages.
• We will not use misleading labels such as “official,” “recommended,” “safe,” or “approved” near ads or ad network placements.
• Display advertising and direct advertising must be labeled before publication and must follow the same adult-only, no-health-claim, no-youth-appeal rules as editorial content.

Google Policy Sources We Monitor

• Google AdSense content and user experience guidance
• Google Publisher Restrictions
• AdSense Program policies
• Google Publisher Policies
• Google Search Console manual actions and thin-content guidance