Banned...and bummed about it.

[lostcoin]

Well, I never thought it would happen to me. If you knew me (which I realize you don't), you would think I was one of the most honest, hardworking, straight laced guys you've ever met...and I've been banned from Adsense!

At first I was shocked, then really angry, and now I'm just kind of sad. I have never clicked on my own ads, have never encouraged anyone to do so, have always "checked in" to the blogs etc. to make sure my pages were following Google's "code" (there is nothing "tricky" about any of my pages, they are just community forums for various cities), and yet I've been banned. Of course, I'm not given any insight into why and yet my passion and motivation for a lot of my work has been taken away without any reason.

Anyway, I'm sure you've all heard this before. When I would read cases like this on forums, I would think "well, of course, you were trying to get away with cheating the system" and dismiss the writer. I am here, however, to tell you that I have never tried to cheat and yet Google has cheated me.

Of course, I'm feeling rather vicitimized by what has happened to me...but one question has been nagging me since. Why is the publisher punished for possible invalid clicks if they're not generated from him/her? I mean, surely Google's logs must show that I have nothing to do with any "invalid clicks" that have resulted from my sites. If someone sets out to "sabotage" Google's advertising clients and decides to use my page to do so, am I screwed regardless?

For example, let's suppose an Adwords client sees a competitor's ad on my page and decides to use up their daily budget every day by just clicking away until they don't see it anymore. Would this result in a banning of my account? Do I have any recourse at all? (I've already appealed via their online "form" a few times). I'm not saying this is what has happened to me (because honestly I have no idea), I'm just speculating.

Anyway, thanks for listening (if you've made it this far). I look forward to contributing with some future posts...I have a lot of extra time now without Google in my life.

[DomainName]

Is goog indicating that you had faud clicks or is this an assumption? Did they give an explaination? I've heard if you get banned from goog they at least send an explaination.

[tonyfloyd]

wow...sorry to hear that.....keep us posted as to what caused this and what happens going forward....

ps - have u tried signing up for other ad sites?...kontera...yahoo...adbrite....etc?

[Ehsan]

IT happened to my friend too he was just starting and reaching the $100 mark, and they banned him and didn't even give a reason , its a bloody joke they are misusing there position it has actually happened to a lot more people than you think once a guy threatened me to mass click my ads to get me banned from adsense , i at once emailed them to keep an eye for unusual clicks and explained there situation and i was saved.

[DomainName]

I thought they were suppose to give you an explaination as to why a person is banned. Do they still complete this procedure?

[lostcoin]

No, they said something along the lines of "invalid clicks have been generated from sites on your account and in order to protect our advertisers, your account has been banned" and then nothing more. You get one shot to make an appeal and then they basically have said (paraphrased) "Unfortunately your appeal has been denied. We will not communicate any further." I can dig up the actual emails, I'm sure I still have them.

I *totally* understand the need to protect advertisers and reduce click fraud. If I was an advertiser I wouldn't want to pay for clicks from visitors who had no intention of visiting my site. I also realize that "invalid clicks" can mean a whole wack of things...but I really feel like I've done nothing wrong here which is why it hit me so hard.

[Banned: domain newbie]

"Unfortunately your appeal has been denied. We will not communicate any further."

at least they didnt go like ebay/pp does:

"I can imagine how this must feel, and I am sorry that you have to go through this. I want you to know that I understand your situation where in you feel this is not fair..."

those sorts of responses makes me nuts !

monopoly sucks imho

[kwok]

Well, I never thought it would happen to me. If you knew me (which I realize you don't), you would think I was one of the most honest, hardworking, straight laced guys you've ever met...and I've been banned from Adsense!

At first I was shocked, then really angry, and now I'm just kind of sad. I have never clicked on my own ads, have never encouraged anyone to do so, have always "checked in" to the blogs etc. to make sure my pages were following Google's "code" (there is nothing "tricky" about any of my pages, they are just community forums for various cities), and yet I've been banned. Of course, I'm not given any insight into why and yet my passion and motivation for a lot of my work has been taken away without any reason.

Anyway, I'm sure you've all heard this before. When I would read cases like this on forums, I would think "well, of course, you were trying to get away with cheating the system" and dismiss the writer. I am here, however, to tell you that I have never tried to cheat and yet Google has cheated me.

Of course, I'm feeling rather vicitimized by what has happened to me...but one question has been nagging me since. Why is the publisher punished for possible invalid clicks if they're not generated from him/her? I mean, surely Google's logs must show that I have nothing to do with any "invalid clicks" that have resulted from my sites. If someone sets out to "sabotage" Google's advertising clients and decides to use my page to do so, am I screwed regardless?

For example, let's suppose an Adwords client sees a competitor's ad on my page and decides to use up their daily budget every day by just clicking away until they don't see it anymore. Would this result in a banning of my account? Do I have any recourse at all? (I've already appealed via their online "form" a few times). I'm not saying this is what has happened to me (because honestly I have no idea), I'm just speculating.

Anyway, thanks for listening (if you've made it this far). I look forward to contributing with some future posts...I have a lot of extra time now without Google in my life.

Yeah, please keep us posted. I hope your appeal will be successful.

[Acro]

monopoly sucks imho

I actually like it, with 4 players

[James]

I actually like it, with 4 players

As long as I don't get the "boot".

[Raider]

Perhaps the ban will take you in another direction where your earnings increase... This may actually be a blessing.

[kwok]

Perhaps the ban will take you in another direction where your earnings increase... This may actually be a blessing.

But what other ways ... other than Adsense you may suggest?

[VTEC]

so let's say only one site appears to be "fraudulent", will they ban the whole account or only one of the campaigns ? what about moving your site and opening a new Google account ? wouldn't this work ? or if you could contact them like 2-3 months later with something like: "I recently purchased this site on a forum and for over a month it's not getting any commission, bla bla bla" design, content changed a bit, different google account etc ? what if you would change the domain ?

[Raider]

But what other ways ... other than Adsense you may suggest?

That's a broad question Kwok... Not knowing what domains he has or how much time he's willing to devote to developing. Another option is YPN, I'm not sure what the pay, but it cant be worse than Adsense.

[lostcoin]

Yeah, I'm eagerly awaiting participation in YPN. For now though, it isn't an option for me yet as I'm not US based...and I've tried a few other advertising networks but they don't have near the advertiser base or the keyword algorithms that Google has, so basically they result in lots of Casino, make money online, or dog food ads alongside content that has nothing to do with any of them.

I have a few sites that can me monetized well with affiliate links but at the end of the day or month or year, the earnings will not be the same as they would be with Adsense.

[dotDan]

so let's say only one site appears to be "fraudulent", will they ban the whole account or only one of the campaigns ? what about moving your site and opening a new Google account ? wouldn't this work ? or if you could contact them like 2-3 months later with something like: "I recently purchased this site on a forum and for over a month it's not getting any commission, bla bla bla" design, content changed a bit, different google account etc ? what if you would change the domain ?

I had Adsense on about 8 or 9 of my sites.. 3 of which were proxies. I only had ads on the front pages (not explicitly unacceptable as far as the TOS went) and I received the same fraudulent clicks message. I replied to Google saying that I understood the situation and wanted more details, so I could modify my sites accordingly (either removing some or blocking IPs) and they just sent me the generic "sorry, can't help ya" message in response.

@OP: Google has pretty much become the faceless company that they tried so hard to differentiate themselves from.. I'd go with a new advertising network. People still made money on websites before Adsense came along

[VTEC]

:/

I have links to my Google sites, placed on my xxx image Hosting, but not directly on the hosting site....Is this something what I can be banned for ??

ps.

maybe this will help somehow

http://www.affiliatewatcher.com/how-...-5-easy-steps/

[Focus]

Good luck my friend, sorry to hear this happened to you. How much revenue were you generating?

[lostcoin]

Yeah, it is not cool at all. I'm still pretty steamed at how this was all handled but I'm trying to stay positive. For awhile it was just turning me into a stressed out freak job every day so I'm trying to at least take care of myself now.

I think the biggest problem is that I just have no idea why I'm banned. I'm assuming they think this is the right course of action in order to limit the number of lawsuits coming back to them.

Anyway, as for your revenue question, I only had a few sites up and running with Adsense but they were earning about $30 each per month (which I realize is peanuts compared to many on here but was actually okay for building and promoting them all from the ground up by hand).

My account had about $80 in it when they pulled the plug. They say this money goes back to the advertisers however I'm very curious if their share of my hard work goes back as well. Somehow I doubt it but I don't trust anything they say anymore anyway.

[soj]

lostcoin, you might think this is a bad thing that google has banned your adsense account, but i see the positives. adsense used to be good, but google have done so much to ruin it and publishers are suffering. this is your chance to put in a little more work, and actually make MORE money by finding private advertising in space of those adsense ads. also you could look at running affiliate offers, and the such to supplement that income, but most likely increase it. adsense should be the last place you should turn to for monetisation of your sites. good luck to the future though, and let us know how you do at monetising them from now on