europeforvisitors - 7:23 pm on Dec 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

Occasionally there is a case where the poster never accepts that he was at fault in any way. This is understandable as it's possible the fraudulent clicks happened outside of his knowledge (even by an advertiser depleting a competitor's ad budget). The fact that Google doesn't shed any light on the reasons does make it harder to accept the ban if you believe you've done no wrong.

True, but Google may feel that it isn't worth getting to a time-consuming dialogue with a publisher whose account has been disabled--especially after reading Webmaster World threads like the ones below. :-)

[webmasterworld.com...]

[webmasterworld.com...]

Just as important, there may be legal reasons for not going into detail about why the relationship is being terminated. By not accusing the publisher directly of fraud, Google may be less vulnerable to lawsuits and subpoenas that could lead to disclosure of its fraud-detection methods. (Indeed, I'm almost surprised that Google reveals anything at all: The more conservative approach might be to simply say, "We've decided to terminate our mutually cancellable contract" and leave things at that.)