Google Adsense Account Disabled

January 29, 2008 by Ben Shoemate 

See Update: Sweet sweet justice. Praise be to Google.

I’m a big fan of Google (always have been) but I’m staring to worry that maybe I’ve given them a little to much trust and power. I have been a beta tester on almost all of their programs. I’ve played with everything in the Google lab, and been an advocate of all their services. But today I was sent a message telling me that my adsense account was disabled. I understand they have to protect the integrity of the system, but after looking into it, I can not figure out what they think I have done wrong. This is what they wrote:

Hello Ben Shoemate,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.

Just how significant a risk am I? I decided to find out.

The email has a link to the “Appeal” form – which when you read it, sounds almost like a guilty plea with questions like: “Provide any relevant information that you believe would explain the invalid click activity we detected“.

Invalid click activity? – ok now I’m really curious, lets go look at the logs – I can’t get into Adsense because, you know, Account Disabled. But I have my logs emailed to me daily, yesterdays log was in my email:

Date Channel Page impressions Clicks Earnings
1/28/2008 benshoemate.com 145 0 0
1/28/2008 benshoemate.com 367 0 0
Totals
561
0 0

hmmm….no clicks, no earnings…am I not earning enough? So I added up my full 3 months of activity while I have been in the program, (I have never received any checks from Google so it is less than $100) and low and behold the grand total is $18.20.

Technically, as part of the Google Adsense Terms and Conditions I am not allowed to disclose

… click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google…

But they already cut me off and frankly I don’t care if they turn it back on are not, I just want to know what happened. I mean – if there are “invalid clicks” wouldn’t those show up in my account?

They also ask for my log files, I thought that was a little creepy but complied….you don’t argue with the judge.

Looking a little deeper into the terms and conditions – google has this nice sentence – (try to read it all with one breath, that’s how you know it’s legalese instead of english):

Prohibited Uses. You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) directly or indirectly generate queries, Referral Events, or impressions of or clicks on any Ad, Link, Search Result, or Referral Button through any automated, deceptive, fraudulent or other invalid means, including but not limited to through repeated manual clicks, the use of robots or other automated query tools and/or computer generated search requests, and/or the unauthorized use of other search engine optimization services and/or software;

good so far

(ii) edit, modify, filter or change the order of the information contained in any Ad, Link, Ad Unit, Search Result, or Referral Button, or remove, obscure or minimize any Ad, Link, Ad Unit, Search Result, or Referral Button in any way;

never done any of that but I did make my own search button…

but that is not listed as a no-no…hmm….lets keep reading.

(iii) frame, minimize, remove or otherwise inhibit the full and complete display of any Web page accessed by an end user after clicking on any part of an Ad (“Advertiser Page”), any Search Results Page, or any Referral Page;

I agree, I hate that stuff too and would never do that…

(iv) redirect an end user away from any Advertiser Page, Search Results Page, or Referral Page; provide a version of the Advertiser Page, Search Results Page, or Referral Page that is different from the page an end user would access by going directly to the Advertiser Page, Search Results Page, or Referral Page; intersperse any content between the Ad and the Advertiser Page, between the page containing the Search Box and the Search Results Page, or between the Referral Button and the Referral Page; or otherwise provide anything other than a direct link from an Ad to an Advertiser Page, from the page containing the Search Box to the Search Results Page, or from the Referral Button to the Referral Page;

…never done any of that….

(v) display any Ad(s), Link(s), or Referral Button(s) on any error page, on any registration or “thank you” page (e.g., a page that thanks a user after he/she has registered with the applicable Web site), on any chat page, in any email, or on any Web page or any Web site that contains any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content;

Is my star wars post too violent? I do have unnatural feelings of malice and hate toward the writers of the dialog in the prequels. Did google’s omniscient spider turn me in? Maybe it was the reference to Herman Goering (Hitler’s right hand man). If so, this is starting to sound very unfair and un-google-like. But they specifically mentioned “invalid clicks” on the appeal form (the email said only “significant risk” but I bet they have a different appeal form for all the haters out there. Let’s keep going…

(vi) directly or indirectly access, launch, and/or activate Ads, Links, Search Results, or Referral Buttons through or from, or otherwise incorporate the Ads, Links, Search Results, or Referral Buttons in, any software application, Web site, or other means other than Your Site(s), and then only to the extent expressly permitted by this Agreement (e.g., while Search Results may be indirectly accessed from Your Site(s), they may only be displayed on the appropriate Google-hosted Web page); (vii) “crawl”, “spider”, index or in any non-transitory manner store or cache information obtained from any Ads, Links, Search Results, or Referral Events, or any part, copy, or derivative thereto;

no, I haven’t done any of this either …

(viii) act in any way that violates any Program Policies posted on the Google Web Site, as may be revised from time to time, or any other agreement between You and Google (including without limitation the Google AdWords program terms), or engage in any action or practice that reflects poorly on Google or otherwise disparages or devalues Google’s reputation or goodwill. You acknowledge that any attempted participation or violation of any of the foregoing is a material breach of this Agreement and that we may pursue any and all applicable legal and equitable remedies against You, including an immediate suspension of Your account or termination of this Agreement, and the pursuit of all available civil or criminal remedies.

Well, I haven’t done any disparaging of google…yet, let’s see how they handle my appeal first.

As far as I know, I have been a perfect Google adsense user and an outstanding and upright citizen of the web. I never clicked my own ads, I never encourage others to click them and I never edited their javascript code. Unless some WordPress plug in is interfering with it that I didn’t notice (and I hate to admit it but I have not examined exactly what these plugins actually do – I kind of take some of them on faith and hope someone else in the community finds the flaw), or maybe someone on my network (thus with my IP) clicked ads (my wife? neighbor on my wi-fi?), but if so, when? I haven’t had any clicks. And as OJ’s lawyer once said – If the clicks don’t fit, you must acquit…or…something like that. Anyway, I do not understand what happened.

So now what? Now I give them 48 hours to review my appeal, and then I try out Amazon’s ad service. I like the idea of advertising books on my site better anyway. Those ads where mostly garbage (oops – hope that wasn’t too disparaging).

Filed under: All Blog Posts, Google, Thoughts, Web Design, Web Marketing
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Comments

  • google disabled me after a week. I have a site that gets 20K ips a day and google chopped me off.
    I personally only clicked on one ad once (it was a thread about the band napalm death and I want to see the link), but after a few days they cut me off.
    sucks cause google ads would be a million times better than my personally sold ads.
    lame-wads
  • Stacy Holcomb
    It's Halloween, 2009. I should be having fun, but all I can think about is why Google thinks that I am a threat to their advertisers. I didn't do anything wrong.

    Yesturday I was $98.99. Really close to finally getting that coveted $100.00 mark.

    I've invested lots and lots of time and have gotten about $300.00 in about 19 months. I thought this would be a great way for me to stay home and take care of my baby that is on the way.

    I got the same message.

    I hope I get reinstated too. I'll keep you posted.
  • Be patient, Google reinstated me after about 3 days. Do not pay any of these
    sleasy spammers offering to get you reinstated. Its a trap!
  • manibharathi
    hii i will provide you a adsense a/c within a day
    if you really need adsense a/c mail me. manibharathi@live.com

    tks
    manibharathi
  • tush28
    Reactivate your Google AdSense disabled account for $99.99

    Level 1
    2:49 AM
    hii i will provide you a adsense a/c within a day
    if you really need adsense a/c mail me. ashtushwizard@yahoo.in

    tks
    tush28
  • I feel like they've tried and convicted me without cause. It's a shame. I really liked Google. Now, I am in the process of appeal, and if it is not in the positive, I will be saying bye bye to all my Google accounts, including the one I use to advertise my sites, and appealing all advertising charges since they are one of the networks I use to advertise.
  • Yeah, I have heard some people get banned from google adsense without knowing what they have done wrong. And its hard to get back your account if it has been disabled from google adsense.
  • Hey i got the same issue here. But how did you get your account back? I see adsense in your site again..
  • astonished
    Ben, FYI I did get reinstated. However, they cleaned out my account. It took me another 3 or 4 emails to get them to credit the balance back into my account but they finally did. So for now, I'm only out 2 or 3 weeks of AdSense income. :)

    Thanks for commiserating!
  • Add me to the list. Just got the disabled email this morning.
    Monday mornign I saw I had 100 clicks (I doubt I get 100 clicks a MONTH!) and no revenue. Obviously, I was click bombed. Being in good faith, I contacted google and reported it to them appropriately. No luck. I mean, check my site (Oops, maybe I am not supposed to say that), it isn't exactly a google-buster. It could be that i put an ad on each post. and google only allows 3 ads per page, but even still, the 4th ad on just goes invisible, so I never thought that was an issue.

    I know they like to keep their tactics secret, but geez, give me SOME idea! And oh yeah, Google... if you are going to disable my account, can I have the $14 that I have earned over the past 5 months with you? My mom needs surgery.
  • KJ
    Just had the same thing happen to me today. No explanation as to what the "violation" was. My websites have never produced much in terms of clicks, but enough to pay for my hosting and advertising costs.
    I feel like they've tried and convicted me without cause. It's a shame. I really liked Google. Now, I am in the process of appeal, and if it is not in the positive, I will be saying bye bye to all my Google accounts, including the one I use to advertise my sites, and appealing all advertising charges since they are one of the networks I use to advertise.
  • Keep the faith brother - I just got reinstated!! http://www.benshoemate.com/2008/03/07/google-th...
  • EXACTLY! I feel insulted and betrayed for even being accused. It has made me nervous about all of Google's services including email, documents, calendar, picasa...I mean, if they can arbitrarily turn things off at any time without any reason - and accuse you of fraud over (literally) 13¢ .... than.... I'm scared. I appealed on Jan 29. I just got an email from them this week that they will review it. The only thing I can think of is they changed their policy last month to a percentage of click from the same ip - and since I have very, very low numbers, even one click that some one in my house made may have pushed the % up over the threshold.
  • astonished
    I enjoyed your post. Glad to hear I'm not the only one who seems to be incorrectly targeted.

    The same thing happened to me. I don't think I've ever made more than $10 in a month from Adsense. I've had my account for years. In total I'm around $70. I never really expected to break the $100 mark anyway. But I'm curious at Googles strange behavior.

    I received the "significant risk to our publishers" email. In February I believe I only made $6. That's like five clicks. It just doesn't make sense (no pun intended). The link in their email takes you to the click fraud faq.

    This seems akin to the police department booting your car because someone broke into it. I find it amazing that any malicious individual in the world could pick any website at random, rack up a bunch of clicks on their ads, and then go on their way, laughing that some unknown persons Adsense account will probably be disabled in the next couple of days.

    Another thing that amazes me is how confident they are that their security systems are working correctly. It's kinda funny because I know I'm a ligitimate user who's barely dabbling in adsense and has never seen a dime from it. Like you, I'd consider myself a model Adsense citizen. If click fraud is the reason they have shut down my account then their security process has a serious flaw because they've penalized the wrong party.
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