Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am one of a handful of people (that I'm aware of) who have had my account knocked out for invalid clicks and been reinstated a couple of months later.
So, here's a little tip guide primer on what to expect and what to do.
A few things first:
A) You will not receive any check that is currently unprocessed. Consider that payment forfeited (and don't threaten google with a lawsuit to recover it - it will just make things much, much worse).
B) Do confess to them any and all circumstances where you might have screwed up. If you didn't screw up and are genuinely baffled you will need your server logs to locate suspicious activity. I highly recommend getting click tracking software to monitor your ads for exactly this scenario. If you don't have server logs or tracking software, YOU are at fault by default.
C) The account disabling was both automated and then verified manually. Google examines the location of where clicks were coming from. If they see that too many clicks are from the same geographic area as where they send your check (or the ip you log in from) that sets off a red flag. Competitors clicking on your ads is something Google is well aware of and can track as well (they know their geographic area too)
To get your account reinstated:
A) Write google an apology and discuss steps you've taken so the situation won't arise in the future. Don't avoid blame, even if you knew nothing about what your friends were doing when they decided to "help" you by clicking on your ads. The fact is, by revealing information about how you make money to someone else, you are setting yourself up for this situation. I'm not being judgemental, just telling you how Google sees it. In your letter to them, recognize and admit this.
B) Offer to make good on any fraudulent clicks. They won't take you up on it, but they will know that you are genuinely sorry and want to keep their business.
C) Contact someone at google directly. Don't just send off a random email to adsense@google.com. Go to a webmasterworld conference. Meet someone in their company. Use that In when the conference is over. Worst case scenario, BUY an In into the company. Does someone you know have an In there? Offer to pay them to to speak to their In on your behalf. A big adwords spender with a personal ad rep is a good place to begin.
D) Seek out text ad competition immediately. Even if the ads aren't as high-paying as Googles (and they won't be), it will break the sting of losing all of your income until Google does come back around to review your case.
E) Be persistent, but polite. Send a letter (a new one) once a week. Keep reiterating your loyalty to their program and how you are prepared to write letters forever until they will understand you are committed to following their rules if they will reaccept you.
Now for the bad news....
None of this will probably help. To be reviewed for readmission, your site must be large enough that the revenue is worth a potentially risky business move.
If they don't answer your letters anymore and all hope is lost, you are now left with basically one recourse assuming you really want to be in their program: Change your domain name, bank account, IP address, ISP and site design. Wait two months, then take on a partner you trust. Reapply for the program under this new partner's name and address, (now especially possible given Google's automatic deposit program). Learn from your mistakes and never do anything that can potentially result in your ads being clicked on fraudulently again. So, really, get a partner you can trust will not click as well.
To anyone else who hasn't been kicked out yet and never wants to be:
A) Shut up about how you make money when talking to friends and family. Let them privately think you run a bestiality porn site or something. It's still better than them clicking on your ads :)
B) Disable ads for your own ip and local geographic region, if you have access to that data and it won't hurt your business. Ditto with your competition's ip address. If you don't know it, write him an email pretending to be a customer and look at his return headers.
C) Get click-monitoring software and check it daily. Be vigilant in notifying Google about what YOU think is fraud, even if they don't. Your notifications to them will come in especially handy should your account ever be flagged by them. You'll be remembered as honest.
D) Think of Google for the long term, not the short term. So you're having a bad month and think clicking on an ad you might be interested in anyway doesn't hurt anyone? You're wrong. This month might be bad. Next month will be good. Google revenue is about long term averages. Is a few cents click worth the loss of thousands of dollars in the long term? Definitely not.
Take it from me, I've been there, been put out on the street, and eventually been reaccepted (after a lot of hard work). It can and does happen to any of us. Just make sure the odds of it happening to you are as slim as possible.
[edited by: asp4bunnies at 8:04 pm (utc) on Mar. 24, 2005]
What did you do to get kicked out?
It's not like they kick many people is it?
(atleast not hope so, wouldn't like to be a random victim of some moron showing of to his friends how fast he can click his mouse :P )
Post is a bit late though. With msn and yahoo developing a similar service google will less easily deny publishers.
By the way, does google return the money to the advertisers when fraud is detected?
Fradulent clicks are a HUGE problem... checking my server logs I noticed that after I signed up with google that I was getting traffic from other countries (like india and such) that never went any farther than the first page, if they even managed to load the whole first page of my site. The funny thing is that I had my google ads set to only display in the US...
Targeting to specific cities and states seemed to cut down on this problem. I don't know if it's a problem with google figuring out where someone is coming from or if they're using some kind of proxy servers or what...
I'm sure that in all the months that I was spending 5-6 thousand dollars a month that I recieved more than $300 in fradulent clicks, but how could I ever REALLY prove that to google?
p.s. I've read several things from other people stating that fradulent clicks are MUCH worse with the other pay-per-click options, so Google is the lesser of all evils.
Disable ads for your own ip and local geographic region
What did you do to get kicked out?
I'd rather keep that confidential. I don't think the circumstances mattered in the sense that they will allow you back if you did X but not Y. A termination for fraudulent clicks is bad no matter what the circumstance.
It's not like they kick many people is it?
I don't know, but it seems to be an ongoing concern here. I posted this in response to someone else's thread on being kicked out.
Post is a bit late though. With msn and yahoo developing a similar service google will less easily deny publishers.
I don't think they will "loosen" their restrictions on publishers clicking on their own ads. If anything competition will mean that they are stricter with their publishers. This program is really about the advertisers. Publishers wouldn't exist without the advertisers feeling confident in Google's filtering out fraud. With new places for advertisers to go, Google will want to reinforce that feeling amongst advertisers.
By the way, does google return the money to the advertisers when fraud is detected?
I don't know. I would assume so, especially if the advertiser has complained of the fraudulent clicks.
EDIT:
Any tips on how to block your ip and geographical ips
You need to run a dynamic (PHP, CGI, ASP, etc...) site capable of serving scripts depending on incoming headers (such as the person's ip range). I'd recommend a product like browserhawk and countryhawk (do a google search) for that kind of information on where incoming traffic is coming from. You can easily see your own IP (and your competitors IP) and filter it out in the code directly. To block other countries or regions, you could use countryhawk to not display ads to people coming from India (lots of originating click fraud) for example. Also, check with your local broadband provider, they might have ip range data available for you if you explain what it's for.
[edited by: asp4bunnies at 9:07 pm (utc) on Mar. 24, 2005]
You don't threaten anybody with a lawsuit, unless you are prepared to carry out the action, and unless the amount owing is large, legal costs will quickly eat the perceived amount owing. So for 99.99% of cases, Item A is correct.
You catch more bees with honey than vinegar anyways, and its best to work with Google for the long term gain.
[edited by: lgn1 at 10:23 pm (utc) on Mar. 24, 2005]
The account disabling was both automated and then verified manually. Google examines the location of where clicks were coming from. If they see that too many clicks are from the same geographic area as where they send your check (or the ip you log in from) that sets off a red flag. Competitors clicking on your ads is something Google is well aware of and can track as well (they know their geographic area too)
This kind of misdirection posted on WebmasterWorld is giving WebmasterWorld a very very bad name.
Every heard of web proxies? There are literatally 10,000 of them from every geographical area available.
If Google is kicking people out because of fraud clicks then they have a very very big problem on their hands.
You get kicked out for on page issues, like
a) no content
b) made for adsense website
c) encouraging users to click or other deceptive tricks
The top 100 ladder site for my niche market, uses this technique to stop cheating, so I assume a much larger company such as Google can do an even better job.
[edited by: lgn1 at 10:27 pm (utc) on Mar. 24, 2005]
Get click-monitoring software and check it daily.
Please explain how click-monitoring software can keep track of how many clicks were made on Adsense Ads. I am not understanding how this is implemented.
I'll repeat what I've said before several times: There is no way for Google to know who is behind click-fraud with high accuracy. If you think there is, you just aren't being creative enough in how click-fraud perpetrators could cover their tracks. If they are cancelling accounts for this without warning, without discussion, and without real confirmation of what is going on, that really sucks for honest webmasters that get kicked out of AdSense for no fault of their own (and it seems like there is more and more of this being reported).
Please explain how click-monitoring software can keep track of how many clicks were made on Adsense Ads. I am not understanding how this is implemented.
Do a google search for "adsense tracking" and look at the ads that appear to see some examples of adsense click tracking scripts.
Every heard of web proxies? There are literatally 10,000 of them from every geographical area available.If Google is kicking people out because of fraud clicks then they have a very very big problem on their hands.
I was discussing my own particular situation. My post was entirely based on this, including the part about hiding the ads from areas in close geographical proximity to myself to keep my friends, neighbors and relatives from seeing my ads (because resulting clicks in the same geographic vincinity to my business would look suspicious). My point in that part of the post, if you bothered to read it, was not about using proxies as a way to get away with click fraud. It was a way of further securing yourself from getting kicked out by the actions of other "helpful" people in close proximity to you. Not the malicious actions of competitors.
Oh give this a rest.This kind of misdirection posted on WebmasterWorld is giving WebmasterWorld a very very bad name.
No, senior members who flame in threads that are intended to be helpful gives webmasterworld a very, very bad name.
[edited by: asp4bunnies at 10:58 pm (utc) on Mar. 24, 2005]
I can't help but believe that G wants AS to run as smoothly as possible and completely on the up-and-up. Let's hope that they realize that they will need to devote more resources to quality control for the sake of both advertisers and honest publishers.
Personally, I have always hoped that by delivering a large amount of traffic to AS, any malicious clicking would be dwarfed by the legitimate income, making it completely illogical for anyone at AS to believe that such clicks were caused by me (at least upon review if any sounding board was available). Therefor, I do find the information posted by asp4bunnies to be useful and welcome.
Because
a) Talking about clicks won't get you anywhere with google because it's not why you got kicked out in the first place
b) You're going to make people paranoid about a problem that does not exist.
If click fraud was the cause of AdSense websites getting kicked out, then I could get anyone kicked out with a simple snap of my keyboard.
"Kick Website out of AdSense"
All it does is visit it proxies in the geographical zone as the website I dislike and randomly post fraudulent clicks for the next month on a constant basis.
Are you telling me that Google didn't kick me out for that reason?
Displaying Adsense ads to some but not others could be considered "cloaking"? Since you are showing different versions of pages to different people. This could lead to penalties in the Google SERPS, right?
Displaying Adsense ads to some but not others could be considered "cloaking"? Since you are showing different versions of pages to different people. This could lead to penalties in the Google SERPS, right?
No. That's not cloaking and won't result in a penalty. I don't think a googlebot can see javascript written content anyway so it would look the same no matter what.
Dynamic ads aren't really indexable content anyway (for the purposes of serps), I don't think.
When there would be a possibility to watch all sort of click aktivities, I would be never free for some days.
The basic agreement is
I deliver good content
Google delivers good ads
Google looks for good and bad clicks
When I would have the possibility to watch everything, it would be better to apply before for a nice place in an insane sanatory.
I'm not saying any of the advice posted is bad advice (and apologies sure don't hurt), but it may be a little overkill on what you need to do.
Seige, thanks for the kind words. I prefer to remain as anonymous as possible in the interest of (ironically) being as open as possible, but if you'd like to sticky me with any general questions I'd possibly answer.
Teshka, was he reaccepted under his same website and domain name? I'm truthfully very glad to hear that he was reaccepted without a hassle.
Yes, everything was the same. I was actually surprised when he got back in after everything I'd heard from this forum. I kind of wonder if all they do is flag your site when they boot you (rather than entering a lengthy explanation in their records). Then if they go back at a later date and everything looks ok, maybe they give you another shot.
Disable ads for your own ip and local geographic region
What about people that create regional websites?
Type a name of a town in a search, Seattle, New York, Dallas, and so on you will see tons of google ads that must use those cities as keywords. Lets say someone starts a {City Name} Weekend Hot Spots website and puts up google ads. He gets thousands of clicks from locals looking for hotspots in the {City Name} area where 95% of his visitors are from. According to what your saying, even though many people are buying {City Name} as a keyword and paying top dollar for that word his site would be kicked out of the program for having too many clicks from the same region.
Now how does that make any sense?
what Google probably don't like is people continually clicking on their own ads and then going to check their stats with the same IP address. Odd occasions it's probably okay but too regularly and it might throw up a flag.
just for the record, I never click my own ads, and I hardly ever click any ads.
