nickreynolds - 4:30 pm on Nov 11, 2012 (gmt 0)

On my sites I don't overdo adsense, (usually only one or two ad blocks) and I make sure there is good text above the fold.

No one is backing up my suggestion that adsense per se is causing me problems or that my specific adsense account is causing the problem. I'm willing to take that on board but wanted to see if anyone else had experience that could back up that possibility.

The common theme of adsense being on the punished sites may just be a coincidence.

I can however buy into the idea that maybe if people are seeing adsense on my sites and click on it straight away that maybe makes it look like my site is of low quality.

What about this hypothesis:
site a. is weak and is punished
site b. is a stronger site, but has the same adsense code on it, is on the same hosting account, same analytics account and so is punished?

(in favour of this hypothesis I did see something about a patent a while back that used a definition of a "site" as different domains with certain things in common (such as hosting))