Understanding AdSense account suspensions due to invalid traffic
adsense.googleblog.com
adsense.googleblog.com
Over the years, Google has published posts like these, little FAQs that tell you nothing useful.
Just once I wish they'd answer the only question anybody really has: what do I do if I'm innocent? What if Google made a mistake? There's a clear path forward for organizations who admit wrongdoing and promise to change, but no one can help you if you've done nothing wrong.
Then all of a sudden bam!, unplugged without any reason, they stole my money and never gave any chance to appeal. Sent an email that got an automated response, sent another one got the same automated response, then gave up.
They served all the ads, they got all the money from advertisers, they pocketed it all including my goddamn money.
Plain thievery if you ask me, no matter how you dress it with all the PR in the world.
> they pocketed it all including my goddamn money.
It's worth pointing out that it's not your money until it's in your bank account and they can't claw it back. Unless you are really driving serious traffic, it's best not to expect any payout from any of these ad platforms
It's worth pointing out that there's ways to claw it back even after that point: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58268-2005Apr...
Come on, PR may say "oh no, we give that money to charity" while texting from a yacht in the middle of the caribbean.
Interestingly, AdSense bans are almost always around pay day. We don't know what they do with the funds after an account is banned — we can only go on their word and goodwill, which we know is not to be trusted.
The URL they gave was the home page and they wouldn't provide any specific information. I was already banned. The only theories I had at the time was related to the very international traffic of my blog. As WordPress developer very active in the community I had a lot of international traffic and some of it was trying all types of strange hacks on my site. I used it as a bit of a honeypot. I couldn't find any specific traffic that made sense so. My other theory had me blaming CloudFlare, who at the time, and undocumented, would throw up ads if the traffic seemed suspicious. The only way I found out about that was thanks to an Eastern European coworker, who let me know.
Though that post makes it sounded like that blog might not have been banned for life like the emails from Google at the time implied.
I could have likely used my own network of Google friends to get more clues, but the ad revenue was a trickle and I really only had it on to test the related WordPress plugins and to experience the same interfaces and workflows as my customers. It wasn't worth anyone's time.
What are the popular advertising networks for small, independent bloggers now?
We had been using AdSense for 10 years and had our account disabled after a competitor used a bot to click on the ads 10k+ times. This particular individual messaged me after doing so and bragged about how our account would be banned.
We forwarded the message to Google, asked them to remove those clicks, and told them we took measures to prevent this individual from doing it again. The next month, we were banned by Google on pay day. We appealed and got an automated denial. When we tried to get information from our Google contacts, we were told to make sure our family wasn't clicking on the ads.
Fortunately, we weren't reliant on AdSense, but it was insulting to be treated like children by this company. I'm glad that I won't have to deal with such an unethical company again, at least until they randomly disable my Google account.
So, to sum up this blog post: your competitors can spend a couple bucks to shut you down permanently, and Google will treat you like a child.
I don't understand how their CORE money making products can be staffed by untrained and in my experience uneducated foreign workers.
I've been an AdWords customer for probably 10 years, I won't say how much money I've spent (on behalf of clients) because it would sound like bragging but you would think with that much I'd get some sort of concierge treatment, or at least some sort of "direct line."
Even basic questions and support tickets don't get answered correctly, or in a timely manner.
The sad part is their marketing is so on point. I get clients that get coupons in the mail all the time looking to sign up, and end up not signing up because they arent willing to deal with a non-English speaking person reading from a "conditional logic support script."
ordinary folks? Forget it.
Makes sense, if you're cynical
He lost his play dev account, gmail, google docs and adsense. Banned FOREVER.
Do NOT trust google with your business or use their business suite. They have no interest in customer support
I have customer support for business account but apparently the banning is done by some other team and this customer support has no way to reach them. They don't even respond to emails.
I spoke to Google senior engineer on his reddit AMA thread who agreed that I was banned due to mistake in their bot but he never logged on to reddit again to help me out.
Personally I'm an AdWords customer but I always have a backup.
At first it seems like they'd finally clarify exactly how to address the problem: "Understanding ... suspension" - "Oh! Finally, I'll get my answers", but then manage to do none of that. At least they use a nice and friendly conversational style so the user feels a temporary comfort before being told to go fuck themselves.
It is a very good example of PR and corporate-speak. They were criticized for not addressing the problem before. So they've managed to address the problem ... but without really addressing is.
Now I guess they probably meant to say "we don't want to disclose how to prove your innocence because then fraudsters would figure out how to game that". For example, I would have probably just told customers that, and maybe apologized. Or you know, maybe hired some more customer support people to handle individual cases. But that's why I don't do corporate PR and just write code instead.
I feel that this a slap in the face to any people who face malicious adsense abuse traffic in an effort to attack their site. Google has once again just brushed this by.
The ultimate insult are the "helpful tips" like "don't ask friends and family to click ads".
May, might, could... Google is happy to continue to encourage a whole industry of SEO and Adsense snake oil salesmen.
I literally lost $100,000 because I suggested to Google that we would take proactive measures to prevent fraud. As if having the knowledge to do so meant we were committing fraud.
That seems bizarre. The last account I read of an actual legal action against Google was a small claims procedure for a few thousand, and IIRC the conclusion was that Google basically didn't show up on court day and lost by default. I could understand not working on contingency if a lawyer feels the case isn't clear-cut, but no-one taking a six-figure case? Surely they must have had more than just "It's Google" to put them off if everyone was saying no?
I know the US legal system has an awful reputation for costing lots of money that mostly only goes to the lawyers, but really, if you can't effectively enforce your rights even after being ripped off to the tune of $100,000, your legal system is literally worthless to any normal person. I find it hard to believe that even the US system is that crazy.
Fair enough. Can't argue against being pragmatic in business.
I sense you may be implying that maybe I was breaking the TOS
No, that wasn't my intent at all. I was just reasoning that if you had a deal with Google where you would normally expect to be paid, they would need some basis for not paying you (or, one would hope, they would lose the case and you'd get your money). They might be unhelpful in terms of not telling you why that is at first, but if you're taking real legal action they can't just say "Not gonna tell ya!" any more (or again, one would hope, they lose the case). If they did come back with something from their terms as their justification, then you would have to see whether those terms stood up in court.
https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news...
With $100K in dispute, it would be surprising if no lawyer would even be willing to take the first steps, or if the cost of paying one to do so would be so outrageous that it wasn't worth considering if Google really were pulling a fast one.
Another would be to file a claim in small claims court for the max allowed there -- say $10k or whatever and see what happens. You could even represent yourself there after doing a few hours research. Judges will practically let you write your briefs in crayon in some jurisdictions.
(Throwaway account because I'm afraid of retribution by Google...)
How would a prospective client get in touch with you?
(Edit: I am not the person you replied to...)
Edit: Fark's post about the incident: https://www.fark.com/comments/blog673/Fark-NotNewsletter-Goo...
I've definitely talked to other people who tried to monetize with Google, had their ads shut off with no clue why, and were looking for new solutions. So it isn't a rare story. Google is sort of the PayPal of ads in terms of incorrect account freezes and bans that never get resolved.
I don't even bother with their advertising solutions in my mobile apps any more since competitors generally offer better pay for the same clicks with less hassle.
Details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803568
Since then we've transitioned completely away from ad based revenue which in my opinion is much better anyway because it aligns our interests better with our users (they are now our customers not our product).
Maybe they should recommend installing an ad-blocker :)
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/2411951?hl=en&ref_...
Account suspensions, especially soon before the payouts are due [1] helps.
Valid or invalid traffic is irrelevant and is not a cause, it's an excuse.
That's why there are no appeals and no answers on specific questions.
Expensive lessons for some to bet their business on someone else's platform.
I switched from AdSense to another ad network and my revenue doubled overnight.
I would never work with a single ad network ever again. I wasted a lot of time testing different ones.
Actually it makes sense to use Adsense only if your daily traffic is above a certain level, which will make "friendly" clicks negligible.
I personally don't have a dog in this fight, but it also seems like this keeps happening because they haven't been punished for doing it.
They won't say that, of course.
I hate that sort of thing but they are large enough not to care and the only way they will care (well, at least fake forced care) is if they kicked in the balls very, very hard. The only way for this to happen is a massive class action lawsuit.
It is beyond obvious they have caused untold damage to thousands of businesses who, after deciding to trust their products to create a revenue stream, get cutoff summarily for reasons beyond their control.
This thread has enough people with stories of real (and very unfair) damage that attorneys frequenting HN should take notice.
Also, would it be possible to hurt a website - eg breitbart - by simply spam clicking their ads? Thats incredibly dangerous :o
12 years later, my account is still blocked from signing up for Google ads.
The referring page with the most "visitors" was literally a bunch of buzzwords in something like 6pt grey on slightly darker grey text. It was like some sort of spoof stereotype of an ad-abusing landing page, which any crude detection algorithm I could imagine would have red-flagged. Various other pages were similarly obviously deceptive.
We wrote off the small amount of money since it wasn't worth legal action to recover it, called it a lesson learned, and none of my businesses has ever given Google a penny in ad spend in the years since.
We found moving to native ads to be significantly more profitable when you have a website that has lot of genuine content. For me adsense = spammy ads.
We were blocked twice by adsense in past (two different companies owning two different web properties) for perfectly legitimate traffic giving no excuse what so ever.
In this post they say, if a user clicks again and again... so don't ask your friend to-do so, what kind of bs is this, how they know if the user was our competitor or some ex friend doing to hurt.... they just go ahead and suspend...
They did let people know.
And there's no human being to discuss this with, or even get details from.
Note that this blog itself has dozens of suspicious or obvious bot spam comments. If Google can't filter this out, how am I supposed to?
On a side note it seems like a good racket, sell people ad generating sites then click on adds a few times after the sale and buy it back at a discount.
In short, what drives the different approaches?