Forum Moderators: martinibuster
By a 100% legitimate site I mean a site that wasn't primarily in the business of generating income through Adsense. I'm not referring to site that are just barely on the right side of the TOS either. I mean a site that would probably still be there if AdSense or any similar form of web advertising didn't exist.
I've accidentally run foul of AdSense rules a couple of times. Both times they contacted me and pointed out the problems. Both times I fixed the problems right away. My site existed with no advertising for about 6 years before AdSense came along. They can probably tell it wasn't built for AdSense, but it does now supply advertisers with a focused group of users interested in their products. I wonder if this "legitimacy" means that I get the benefit of the doubt, while a site built 3 months ago plugging real estate seminars or Vioxx litigation lawyers gets booted off without warning?
It would be really interesting to see a list of websites that Google has thrown out of the AdSense program to see if there's some sort of common pattern to them.
Just a thought.
Person B - OK I made a good site 500 real content pages, but made one simple mistake, Board members-see that proves our point, everyone is guilty etc etc.
Sorry to be so cynical
I would never start a thread here if I was banned from Adsense (not that I ever do anything against their TOS etc) because I know the reaction I would get - no point in just standing up to be called a liar and a cheat.
Do you believe that there are any other possible reasons for them not terminating your account apart from the fact that you've had a content site that's been around long before Adsense?
First time AdSense contacted me was when I mentioned something about my earnings. I removed that and AdSense stayed on the site.
The Second time was when it became against the TOS to display AdSense ads on pages with Swedish content. At the time, I showed AdSense ads on English pages and on index pages of various areas. Since most index pages where bi-lingual, they asked me to remove the AdSense code from the site alltogether.
Then, when Swedish became one of the AdSense languages, I asked, and was allowed to re-include the code on the site.
Threads about being banned (frequently from WW newbies) tend to skew us into thinking Google is a tyrant.
1) Most Webmaster World members use aliases and choose not to include their URLs in their profiles.
2) Most "I've been booted" posts are by new members who aren't allowed to include URLs in their profiles.
3) Even if all members used their real identities and included URLs in their profiles, there would be know way of knowing if the site in the profile was the site that got them into trouble.
In any case, there's no evidence that Google is engaged in the frivolous, systematic purging of quality sites run by honest publishers. (That obviously wouldn't be in Google's interests, since Google needs more inventory for its rapidly growing base of advertisers, not less.)
I presume they contacted me because it was probably obvious to them (if they looked) that I'd made some honest errors, not that I was out to try to "cheat the system" in some way.
I just get the felling that the paranoia that some AdSense users seem to display may not be justfied if you're running a "real" website which provides a genuine service to an established user base, rather than a "get rich quick" site primarily designed to take advantage of advertising revenue. Looking at a site it's usually not that hard to tell one from the other.
I agree. There are far too many "pure" Adsense-spam/made-for-Adsense sites and they even seem to be doing quite well in the SERPS... there've been threads about that in the Google forum.
>>Both times they contacted me and pointed out the problems. Both times I fixed the problems right away
Now that I think about it, they did help me in the early days. I had a problem with a js on every page of my site that was designed to throw off third-party frames and prevent my pages from showing up in someone else's frame. It was however, clashing with Adsense and caused my pages to just keep refreshing every second or so. They identified what was causing the problem (which I was not able to do at the time) and gave me a chance to find an alternative js that did work.
[edited by: Macro at 10:52 am (utc) on Dec. 21, 2004]
I just get the felling that the paranoia that some AdSense users seem to display may not be justfied if you're running a "real" website
Bearing in mind that I lost about 60 pages of content in a server crash, what do you think the site is in my profile? Real or made for adsense. Thats the one that got kicked out. The adsense ads used to be in the right hand column and was the only advertising on the site(no banners at all). Hey if someone can tell me what TOS I broke as well that would be nice(although it was an invalid clicks e-mail I got).
I'm getting a bad feeling. Not a good subject. You didn't use your Adsense account on a site talking about WMD, did you?
The picture was taken at one of Scotlands Visitor attractions called the secret bunker. It was for use by government officials (I assume we peasants could all die)in the event of a nuclear strike which has just been opened up to the public. The surface to air missile launcher was one fo the exhibits outside. It is all in context, honestly!
now what kind of centextual ads will that pull up LOL!Normally perfume/cosmetics- I know, I know!
We only need one David Blunkett to re-populate the world.
I dunno. It may be worth developing some more text content for those pages. If Adsense doesn't reconsider then other contextual networks that develop may still work better on your site if there's come more text.
Who does AdSense boot off?
Sites in this thread.
[webmasterworld.com...]
However, the people at Google are busy counting their stock options.
>>because I know the reaction I would get - no point in just standing up to be called a liar and a cheat.
Iguana, I don't think that's fair. True, a lot of recent posts have attracted some flak but that's partly because of the nature of the post itself. Sometimes it's: "I only click my own ads a few times a day, wot's their problem dude?".
I'm just remembering some of the early threads mainly about the fraudulent clicks warning email. I seem to remember one well respected member getting the email and I was convinced by a number of the others that they hadn't been clicking their own ads.
I agree that most of the 'I was booted' posts for the last year have indicated some dodgy activity. But the atmosphere is such that what would it take to convince anyone that a poster had been booted off without any fraudulent activity on their part?
1. Have some pages that look like they were made for Adsense
2. Have faulty js on a page causing the page to automatically refresh every second (happened to me and causes fraudulent impressions)
3. Have some long forgotten page from several years ago, when you were taking CPM ads, where you urged users to visit your sponsors
4. Have some page that looks like it is manipulating PR (which, of course, is not allowed)
5. Have some ad served via js that has now become a contextual ad and therefore can't share a page with an Adsense ad
6. Have some forum members requesting others to click ads to help the site out.
7. Have something in an iframe from another site which used to be OK
8. Have some other "violation" you were not aware of...
It's the publisher's word against Google's. Given the above variety of possible causes - and the fact that the publisher can't really ever categorically state he's never violated an Adsense TOS (particularly on larger sites/older sites/forums etc) - people are more likely to give Google the benefit of the doubt. But, yes, the suspicion isn't comfortable to live with. Sometimes, however, it does produce a possible reason for the boot.
