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Free-RSS-Resources
08-18-2005, 09:48 PM
Just wanted to remind everyone out there to not get too
dependent on your AdSense income -- Google feels free to
take it all away whenever they feel like it.

Back in June, Google falsely accused me of click fraud
and terminated my AdSense account. :mad: After two canned
robotic responses to my emails asking them for proof,
Google forwarded the rest of the emails I sent directly
to the trash bin, without even a canned response. A
quick search on Yahoo turned up over 20 other people
that this has happened to (I'm sure there are more out
there who are less vocal than us). Some of them lost
thousands of dollars :eek: , some have very high traffic sites,
some have very low traffic sites, but all have one common
theme: we’ve all been terminated by Google with no proof
and no recourse (see the articles in my blog for more
information and quotes from these people).

In my situation, I didn’t see anything odd happening
with my stats ahead of time, my only warning was after
Google had shut down my account and then they wouldn’t
let me see the ad stats to determine what happened. My
site stats didn’t show anything out of the ordinary,
leading me to believe it was just a few clicks instead
of hundreds or thousands. And all of my AdSense ads were
ones which only brought in a few pennies per click, it's
not like it was a site of high-priced keywords that cost
advertisers any significant money when some idiot came
along and started clicking on them for fun.

As another one of us put it so well (in the posts on my
blog), “it appears my right of appeal consists of - you’re
guilty and we are not going to tell you of what or how
we know - just accept it and get lost.” Even their paying
AdWords customers like me (in fact, Google continues to
hold out its hand with a nagging email every time I pause
or end my AdWords campaigns).

Anyone out there have any thoughts on how to get Google
to re-enable my AdSense, or should I just give up and
hope that Google hasn't sold their click-fraud list to
Yahoo to prevent me from using their new AdSense-like
service too?

Since Google captures your social security number, along
with all sorts of other identifying information for your
AdSense payments, it seems hard to create a new identity
that they won't figure out (I suppose I could form a multi-
person company in a different city and put the account
under someone else's name, but I'm currently a 1-person
operation). Especially in light of the following quote
from another one of us that's been hammered by Google:

“A strange twist is that my brother who has a site on a
totally different topic, different area of expertise etc,
has had his account terminated also - reason is because he
knows me. No I am not kidding - ’Google AdSense account was
found to be related to an account previously disabled for
invalid click activity’” :eek:


Best of Luck With AdSense,

Kurt Inman
Free RSS Resources (now Google-free)
http://www.ProsperAll.com/free-rss-resources

Joel Comm
08-18-2005, 10:22 PM
Kurt,

I am sorry for your Google troubles. I only know of one case where Google reinstated someone's AdSense account. I know she provided lots of documentation in the form of log files, and she also knew that someone had a vendetta against her. None of the rest of the cases I am aware of have resulted in reinstated accounts.

May I suggest using BrightAds as a source of revenue? It's very similar to AdSense and they do pay.

http://www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads.cool

Joel

ebizindia
08-20-2005, 10:55 PM
I am sorry about your situation, Kurt. I cannot comment on the reason Google disabled your account because I do not have facts. The only thing you can work on is get alternative sources of income - and there are many now. Joel suggested one, you know Yahoo already.

Just a friendly suggestion to anyone facing this (God forbid) in future--

1. Please hold your frustration. I know you might feel like hammering them on the head but be polite in your email. A rude email can only reduce your chances of getting reinstated.

2. Tell them that you are a responsible webmaster and have all the intention to comply with their rules. Offer to forward the logs for their inspection. DO NOT forward all your logs in the first email you write. Send the logs after they confirm they want it.

3. If you did anything wrong, admit it right away and offer to clean up everything. If you have a decent site that you can proudly show, there is nothing to fear.

4. Please read the TOS again. Double check that you really did not violate any rules. (You might read this regularly to make sure that the dreaded email does not come your way anyway).

Kurt, none of these is directed towards you. These are generic pointers for Adsense users.

Sam Freedom
08-21-2005, 03:28 AM
I had this trouble with Paypal accusing me of
running a 2-tier affilite program which up to
that point I had seen 1000s of other marketers
doing and thought was perfectly legitimate.

The thing that saved me was that I was never
running one. After numerous calls and emails,
I finally was contacted by a senior agent, and
after showing him some things he realized that
the page they accused of having an affiliate program
was not only devoid of join links and non-functional
but not one payment had ever been made on that
website ever.

They reinstated me, but not before making me
sign an online affadavit admitting I had still violated
policy but they were giving me another chance.
Since I have a big sale coming up, I, under duress,
agreed, but I was not glad to do that...just glad to
have paypal back for my sale.

My suggestion to you is search the web for any
CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS that might be forming
with similarly disaffected users. Joel made a great
suggestion for brightads.com and you can also try

Chitika (http://www.chitika.com)

You should be very pleased with them. They allegedly
feed ads from MANY seperate places and you get a
large share of the click...min 60%.

Good luck,
Sam

spiv
08-22-2005, 02:48 PM
I hope Yahoo, Microsoft, or other Google wanna-be's are listening - the best way to try and compete against Google is to do one thing better -- transparency.

In spite of all the altruistic BS from Google founders and their stock IPO, Google runs the day-to-day business very opaque.

Example: you aren't even told exactly what the revenue share is on AdSense - just how much is Google keeping for themselves versus paying you?

What other affiliate program doesn't even tell you what you are getting paid and just asks you to "trust them".

I strongly believe that click fraud must be policed rigourously, but Google (or anyone else) should also have a clearly published and reasonable procedure for dispute resolution.

They are worse then the Gestapo! Image being arrested, not told what your crime is, not able to confront any witnesses or evidence, and just thrown in the slammer without a trial by judge or jury.

If Yahoo or MSN offer "friendlier" programs, I think a lot of webmasters will be interested in considering them as a replacement, not just an addition.