mvandemar - 5:22 pm on Jun 15, 2007 (gmt 0)

What was the guarantee that a crook would not place your ads on a "bad" website to get you banned or at least in trouble?

There was actually a big stink about back in September of last year, where some users felt this is what had happened to them, and due to the total lack of transparency in the program they had no way to verify it and try and get their accounts reinstated. It was determined that anyone could get anyone else banned from AdSense just by putting AdSense code with that users pub_id on a site that violated the AdSense TOS, no invalid clicks needed. Leave it up there, and if no one else reports it, report it after a month or so.

Kudos to the AdSense team... it only took you nine months to even start a beta program that might help with this issue.

Quick question though... even though you might not be legally bound to do so, do you think that perhaps re-evaluating some of those cancelled accounts over the last year might be the "right thing to do", now that you admit it could have been a problem all along?

-Michael