Forum Moderators: martinibuster
So please help to prove me right.
If you were banned from adsense before,
can you drop a reply and state how long you have been running adsense, with reason of being banned?
If you stick to the TOS you will have nothing to worry about ;)
I would love to know if
1) bans happen from accidental clicks at all, and
2) do only newbies get booted for them (as suggested)
Your theory proves both itself and the exact opposite at the same time.
If indeed most publishers who are banned are newbies, this could be explained by Google being strict on newbies. It could also mean the opposite: Google applying the same regime on all publishers. In that case, those that tend to fraud the system will be caught during the first few months. Those who are still around after more than a year are just the ones who don't fraud the system.
So these numbers prove nothing.
In that case, those that tend to fraud the system will be caught during the first few months. Those who are still around after more than a year are just the ones who don't fraud the system.
Makes sense. Cheaters are likely to be impatient and stupid; I can't see them waiting a year to begin stealing from advertisers.
If you stick to the TOS you will have nothing to worry about ;)
It is in Google's best interests to convince AdSense publishers that that is true, but it is not a verifiable fact, nor is it even particularly logically convincing.
Publisher A decides to run Publisher B out of business. Publisher A rents a botnet (highly affordable, IP addresses indistinguishable from "real" people -- since they actually belong to real people with infected machines). Publisher A sets botnet up to simply click on Publisher B ads like crazy, making every effort to get caught by Google.
Google detects fraudulent clicks on Publisher B's site. But there is absolutely no technical means by which Google can decide that a competitor, rather than Publisher B, perpetrated the fraud. Publisher B is booted from program forthwith.
The only saving grace is that there are presumably relatively few AdSense publishers willing and able to engage in this illegal (in most countries) activity in order to get a competitor booted from AdSense. It would be naive to think that there are none, however.
Note that it is easy to find people who claim to have been booted due to "fraudulent clicks", but I can find no reports of Google notifying an AdSense publisher that they are removing fraudlent click income and keeping in the program because they were the target of fraud by a competitor.
One more time: there is no technical means by which Google can determine who instigated botnet-based click fraud. Therefore, there is every reason to believe that an unscrupulous competitor can get an AdSense publisher booted from the program.
Doesn't mean most of the booted publishers we see here are the result of this phenomenon. But it stretches the bounds of credulity to imagine that it never happens.
One more time: there is no technical means by which Google can determine who instigated botnet-based click fraud. Therefore, there is every reason to believe that an unscrupulous competitor can get an AdSense publisher booted from the program.
Sure, it's conceivable. But some of us have been victims of click attacks and have not been booted from the network. This is one of those situations where the "sniff test" is likely to be a factor. Let's take two hypothetical sites, both with the same amount of traffic:
- Site A has content of intrinsic value, a good record with the network, and the appearance of being a site that would exist with or without AdSense.
- Site B has content of minimal value, a limited record with the network, and the appearance of being a site that was created only to earn money from AdSense.
If both sites triggered an alarm with questionable clicks, which one do you think would be most likely to receive the benefit of the doubt in a manual review?
