Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Any ideas?
Sponsored Links are contextually relevant advertisements that? provides to you. We receive Sponsored Links from Google's AdWords service, and generate revenue from your clicks. The selection of Sponsored Links that are displayed are customize to what we think may interest you.Sponsored Links are always clearly labeled.
Generating additional revenue from Sponsored Links allows us to offer new features to you. Thanks for your support!
also on the ads frame you see "sponsored links" instead of the standard "ads by goooooogle"?
-----
Found on one of the biggest and famous website
So what do you think?
A new member may or may NOT be guilty of fraudulent clicking but we are not police + prosecution + court.
May I remind everyone of TOS #4 [webmasterworld.com]? Always be respectful of other users.... That does include users with a post count of "1".
C'mon guys, is it now taken for granted that any new member starting an "Adsense disabled" thread is automatically a thief?
I don't think it should, as I'm sure there are some innocents out there somewhere. However, it seems likely that they will have an even harder time being believed.
A new member may or may NOT be guilty of fraudulent clicking but we are not police + prosecution + court.
I'd agree with this - besides, having spent a few more minutes searching there are so very, very many sites actively and brazenly encouraging clicks. If I was an advertiser, then I'd certainly opt out of content sites. Someone please tell me that G has a bot that's capable of trawling sites and highlighting offenders!
[edited by: david_uk at 10:11 am (utc) on Mar. 13, 2005]
And guys im not a thief..if u spelled that word in English!
Hey thats exactly what i did.Yes of course i was intended to get more money...which is why i urged my members to do the "support".
After all i was finding it very difficult to get relevant ads on my site.
I had to urge my members to click them.Mistake! I shud've contented with those awkward ads and shud've kept on praying n wishing that somebody clicked on it.
Well, the rest of us have to fiddle around with keywords to get appropriate ads, and block the silly Ebay ads - it might have worked for you too.
Cos...if i had been given a notification..I wudnt have continued it(And u wudnt have called me a thief).
Does this mean to say you think it's perfectly OK to encourage fraudulent clicks until Google tells you to stop?
Google must have disconnected many accounts which were actually TRYING TO GET SOME REVENUE rather than deliberately fooling google.I wudnt prefer to be a advertiser either with google cos..any such UNNOTIFIED deeds means BAD Business.Correct me if im wrong!
Erm - wrong? Why do Google need to notify you that you are in violation of the TOS? The TOS are pretty clear, and you agree to them when you sign up. It's your responsibility to comply with them - not theirs to tell you that you aren't!
Agree.That was my mistake.A mistake isnt a crime.Theres a difference.
I've just re-read the thread, and nobody has called you a thief. There was one very general reference to all sites that solicit clicks as "cheaters".
You certainly made a mistake, and the main thing that can come out of this is that it's a warning for others not to do likewise.
I do understand that you want to make money out of your site - others do, so why not you? But I'm convinced there isn't a way to make money effortlessly on the web.
All advertising programs require good visitor numbers to work. Therefore whatever way you want to monetise the site, you need to have got a site people want to visit, and you need to work on promoting it. There are plenty of forums out there that will help with design and promotion of sites.
If you are trying affiliate marketing, then you need to spend time on what program you can get into, and the best way of selling via your site. If you go for Google you need to work on quality content, and the best way of getting appropriate ads hence (hopefully) clicks. This forum helps with that.
We all started off small. My original site had days when nobody visited it, but through a fair amount of work over a long period of time I managed to get a good position on the search engines, and then adsense came along. So whatever way you want to try and raise money from the web, a sustainable income only comes as the result of a lot of work. It's a long term thing - not a way of making a fast buck, but it's worth sticking with and working on if you believe in the site.
I wish you luck in the future, but try not to make the same mistakes next time.
Thanks for Your confession.
When I read somebody becomes disabled, I am always concerned, could this happen to me too.
Reading Your confession is very good calming my nerves.
Yes i had to.Cos the ads were very much irrelevant and my members wudnt click them..it was clear from the revenue.
No you didn't.
You could have tried optimising your page so that the bot could have targetted better ads. You could have experimented with different banner styles and placement. You could have worked on making your site more visible on search engines. All of these worked for many others here.
You could ultimately have accepted that your site's topic isn't one that lends itself to Google (some sites work well with Google - others don't) and moved onto a different site topic.
Exactly my feeling :-)
Of course.. they might already do this.. but it is horrifying how easily you can turn up these sites.
As a publisher, a few years ago we had our account terminated without warning for "promoting invalid clicks". It came as a surprise to us since we were very aware of Google's TOS and had even gone so far as to discourage clicks when people asked if they should click in order to help support us (we're a free forum site). Turns out that our downfall was a user who had posted something along the lines of "click my ads to generate money for me" on one of the thousands of forums we host. The time difference between when the post was made and when our account was terminated was less than 24 hours (the quote was so new it didn't even show up when we google searched our site)
Now we were eventually able to straighten the situation out, but it took almost a full week during which our replacement ads generated about 1/20th of the normal revenue (we're not so one dimensional after this incident :)).
Point is, if a bounty was placed on sites that apparently break Google's TOS, I'm sure I could expect dozens of unscrupulous users to sign up and post something similar and immediately report it to Google in hopes of collecting a reward. This would quickly turn in to weeks without Adsense ads for my site. Something needs to be done, but that doesn't seem to be the solution, atleast from my point of view.
I'd be amazed if nobody at Googleplex hadn't come up with the idea of Googling for phrases such as "Click on the ads" etc. I'd also be amazed if they didn't already have a bot to do that. The fact that this post was picked up on your forum so quickly rather suggests that that is exactly what they do have, and what happens.
Maybe they don't put enough people onto analysing the results, maybe they aren't bothered anyway - who knows. But I think we all agree that they score "3/10 -must improve" on their report card for this!
A mistake isnt a crime
In the United States stealing from advertisers it's called "FRAUD", doing it over the internet is "WIRE FRAUD", doing it across state lines is then then a federal crime. Although you call it a mistake, it could mess up your life if someone wanted to pursue it.
Heck, they just sentenced a SPAMMER to 9 years, and he didn't even steal anything, he was just annoying.
At worst he's violated a private agreement with Google. That it has resulted in advertisers losing money is undesirable. Whether he is guilty of a crime is something not for us to decide or act on.
I do not encourage fraud of any description - and publisher fraud hurts all of us in that it reduces the confidence advertisers have in the program - but as Brett has often said: It is upto Google to catch the fraud and it's up to them to decide the "punishment" they can "inflict" within the law and their TOS. As david_uk wisely points out - the Phds who developed the Adsense program must have a clue about searching for "please click the ads". That they haven't acted on it is a Google failing. There is a lot of other fraud they can catch quite easily but they don't. And a lot of Made For Adsense sites that they can pull the plug on but they don't.
He's admitted his mistake. I say ...move on. Take a cue from Jenstar's post (mes #2) The really big problems are not guys like him.
As much as the Americans would like you to think it's fraud and you are committing a crime I'm not so sure Amercian law applies to everyone in the world.
If you read the TOS, it states that legal matters are to be settled in the federal district court that covers Mountain View California.
He signed that TOS so he is subject to the legal jurisdiction of the United States.
Whether this is a criminal or civil matter, that's not up to me.
IMO - The guy's a thief, and I am not inclined to go as soft on him as others here are.
It doesn't really help anyone to puff this up into something that it isn't.
It's certainly a gross violation of his contract with Google, but that is not fraud. Perhaps Google could sue him for breach of contract; but most likely their present action--banning him permanently from their program--is an adequate response to the breach, and a court would unlikely order anything sterner than that.
that legal matters are to be settled in the federal district court
Sure, and Google can take it to the federal district court - whatever that is. If the court decides a custodial sentence you think they have any chance of getting him extradited to the US to suffer the consequences? LOL.
Let's concentrate on real life. If someone has broken their end of the bargain it's up to the other party in the contract to take action, and it's up to them what action they take. Other excited comment, and strong emotional reaction, is just venting spleen.
If Google had a good enough system where I could submit my IP and they guarantee to exclude clicks from there (they offered this at one point but not anymore) then I could happily navigate my site without paranoia. Bear in mind the term "fraudulent click" in this context is a Google invention. I'm terrified of clicking my own ads even in accident because it may be considered "fraudulent". That's ridiculous. Ethics play a big part in how I lead my life but I become a common "criminal" if my site is on screen and my two year old clicks the mouse!? I don't like Google's easy use of the word "fraud". The TOS even bans:
fraudulent use of other search engine optimization services
The more we encourage Google to define fraud any which way they want... the more we all lose. The guy broke the TOS; let's keep it in perspective.
We are required to live within the law of the country we're in. It would not be reasonable to expect people to have to be within the laws of every country in the world. Morals, ethics and fraud are defined differently in different societies, the concept of right and wrong differs widely within any given society. But, let parliamentarians and courts define and apply law. Let's not leave the definition of "fraud" to an SE. That's a dangerous slope.
I only know of one case that Google went to court over click fraud, [news.com.com...] . Has anyone heard anymore about this case? I hope Google wins this case and sets a legal precedence in defining click fraud.
Don't start bringing politics and other countries into a discussion of having a adsense account disabled it has got nothing at all to do with it...
FULL STOP
<snip>
[edited by: Jenstar at 2:48 pm (utc) on Mar. 14, 2005]
[edit reason] Check sticky, it was me ;) [/edit]
You are thief by all definitions. Just try to imagine yourself in the shoes of advertisers who show ads on your site and pay the money.
It's hard to see this as fraud as well. For one thing there was no deception, no misleading, no forgery, or fakery. He openly in his own name on his own site publically called for people to help him breach his contract with google and click his ads. How is that fraud?
Hard to see it as a fraud?
How would you feel if you lost all your AdWords monthly budget in a day or two because someone "made a mistake" and you had nothing to show for it?
We're talking about someone that against TOS tells 3rd parties (his visitors, co-conspirators) to click on links to help him take money from advertisers pockets and put it directly into his pocket. He uses 3rd parties to cover his tracks as him doing it directly would be obviously caught, but when there are no coversions from his site it becomes rather obvious and he gets busted anyway.
It's hard to believe so many people seem to condone that this guy taking whatever he wants is perfectly OK and above the law. Glad I'm not in business with anyone that has those attitudes.
