Comment by birken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by birken | Hacker News Reader

Let's think about this logically. Google takes 32% of every adsense click [1], so assuming an account makes $5,000/month, Google is making $2,352/month from that account. So by banning the account, they are making $5,000 one-time, and losing $2,352/month forever. No company is stupid enough to do that.

However, considering a site making $5,000 or $10,000/month is generating quite a few clicks, I think it makes perfect sense for any account reaching these thresholds to be manually reviewed to ensure they are valid sites. The quality of Google's clicks is one of its main selling points, and by cutting out spammy sites at the source it both improves the quality of its own program and at the same time removes a lot of the financial incentive to run a scummy site.

So my guess is these policies (or similar policies that involve manual reviews of sites) make perfect sense, are not illegal in any way, and this whole posting is as bogus as it looks.

1: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en

This not necessarily the case. Most advertisers will have fixed budgets to spend on AdSense.

Under this assumption banning a publisher would not diminish the revenue stream but just diverting the ads to other not yet banned publishers.

That doesn't mean the scheme as described is true, but it's not as obviously stupid as your first paragraph makes it seem.

Also obviously if Google reduces the pool of adsense publishers, the money is more likely to be spent advertising on Google properties, and Google will take 100% of that, rather than 32%.

If that was an ideal strategy they would have never opened it up to publishers in the first place.

Google no doubt optimizes their algorithms for profit, but they surely don't need to block out publishers to ensure their own sites have ads to display.

Ad inventory supply is and always will be > demand. As such, their actions to make short-term revenue by banning publishers makes sense. It's basically recycling publishers, knowing the pubs wont be able to do anything about it. Obviously it hurts their brand but they're too big to give a shit.

> Google takes 32% of every adsense click [1], so assuming an account makes $5,000/month, Google is making $2,352/month from that account.

The publisher (ie your website showing ads) isn't the one paying them that money; they aren't losing any recurring revenue by banning them.

Since they're Google AdSense, it's very likely that they have plenty of new signups to show those ads on.

You might be thinking about it wrong. A site that generates $5K a month is worth way more than some Mommy blog that just started hosting ads.

I assure you, if you wrote a report that targeted your highest earning affiliates, gave them the toss, and replaced them with poor performing newbies you would lose money.

Is it just me or has it been witch hunting season as of late?

From the current cases, it seems to be a winning, low-cost strategy.

If all this just false accusation then do you care to explain why google dont have any human interaction with their adsense publishers if the account is banned or suspended while their employees go around licking the asses of people using adwords as advertisers? I had my adsense account blocked for no reason and all the appeal went in vain without any human seeing my appeal. Now I am a major adwords advertiser for an ecommerce site and I have google representative just a call away!! thats just taking advantage of the monopoly they have created.

If all this just false accusation then do you care to explain why google dont have any human interaction with their adsense publishers if the account is banned or suspended while their employees go around licking the asses of people using adwords as advertisers?

According to the story this only started in 2009, when as far as I know they never had any human interaction with publishers, so that doesn't sound like a good sign of its veracity.

The most likely explanation is simply "because publishers don't pay them".

yes that's my point, they never have any interaction before blocking a publishers account, doesn't it look like as if google is trying to prove itself superior?

It depends. Is Google an high school student? If not, then no. It just looks like they don't give a shit.

I can't speak for 2009, but by 2012 large publishers definitely had account managers.

Large publishers have had account managers since 2008 and earlier. But you have to be pretty large.

being a small publisher, never knew this.

I pay for app engine, if I want human interaction then I have to pay an additional $150 a month. Google does this for services it charges for, so it is hardly surprising that it does it for ones where it is paying money.

Its not about human interaction, its about citing clear reasons and giving chance of proving innocence before suspending anyone's account and taking their money. Its impossible for a computer to understand arguments made by publisher and that's why there is need of human interaction without having to pay for it.

I don't agree with your basic assumption - google doesn't get money from publishers, but from advertisers. If they ban one publisher, the ad may get clicked somewhere else. Let's call this metric 'ad fill factor' - how many different ads does google have for this content and traffic? When some niche is getting near the point when there's no enough ads for its traffic the marginal value of website becomes exactly zero. At this point, banning accounts and taking their earnings makes financial sense.

An account was banned on 2012-Nov. We did sign a contract with Google as partnership publisher at that time. No reason, and no invalid activities.

Nice try Google PR guy.

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