Forum Moderators: martinibuster
This poses to questions.
First, If someone wanted to generate invalid clicks, couldn't they just start clicking away on my ads? Sure, it's malicious but I have received a few nasty emails from competing sites and I wouldn't put it past someone to do this in an effort to get me banned from Google.
Second, I have been running these AdSense ads for over a year and never received a payment. I have been the account just accumulate. Is this not illegal? They are stealing my legitamate click revenue. We're only talking about and $80 balance over the past 16 months.
Anyone already go through this experience. It was a very nasty email with no contact information or tangible proof provided.
Thanks,
Bryan
DaveN
Can you still log in?
Re the fact that you've been with AdSense for 16 months--sorry, but that's irrelevant. Google has done nothing that you didn't agree to when you signed up. The AdSense TOS allows them to terminate the account of publishers with invalid clicks, and no money was due to you (you hadn't reached the $100 minimum payout).
They are not stealing, and if you email them about this, be careful not to say they are. People have been reinstated, rarely, but it does happen. When they were, they emailed AdSense a polite message, offering their logs and providing information about any changes on the site that might have caused changes in impressions or clicks.
Finally, be aware that Google's definition of "invalid clicks" is pretty wide. It doesn't just include clicks you made, or someone made in attacking your site. It also includes clicks caused by a violation of their TOS. So if you, for example, had a page anywhere on your site where you asked visitors to support the site by clicking the ads, even if not on a page with AdSense ads, then any and all clicks on AdSense ads could be considered invalid.
Sorry to hear about your bad experience, but at least you aren't out much money.
There was no code for clicking but the ads were displayed repeately. Would this be a violation?
If this URL rotator caused a sizable jump in impressions on a site that had for many months been fairly low traffic (or so I'm guessing based on your earnings), that might have raised a red flag....
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll post their response...if I get one.
Bryan
If your site has been earning such little revenue that it didn't make $100 in a year Google may have just considered it too small an account and not worth the overheads of monitoring etc.
I find this fairly unlikely... As the overhead for a site like that is pretty much non-existant, and the potential of sites turning into something in the future exists, so weighing the almost non-existant cost with the potential for 1 in a 1000 sites becoming something worthwhile, and it makes sense to keep them around. Unless they do something wrong.
I find this fairly unlikely... As the overhead for a site like that is pretty much non-existant, and the potential of sites turning into something in the future exists, so weighing the almost non-existant cost with the potential for 1 in a 1000 sites becoming something worthwhile, and it makes sense to keep them around. Unless they do something wrong.
This reminds me of a bank I once did business with. They implemented a policy that required a minimum savings account balance. Failure to maintain the minimum balance caused a monthly service charge to be applied to the account. Enough service charges (without deposits or interest), and the account would go to zero and be terminated.
Whether maintaining a low-activity account is too much overhead for G is a debatable topic, but bottom line, they call the shots.
I find this fairly unlikely... As the overhead for a site like that is pretty much non-existant, and the potential of sites turning into something in the future exists, so weighing the almost non-existant cost with the potential for 1 in a 1000 sites becoming something worthwhile, and it makes sense to keep them around. Unless they do something wrong.
I ran adsense for 10 months or so with almost zero revenue, and no grief from google. So I think the above comments are 100% right.
I ran adsense for 10 months or so with almost zero revenue, and no grief from google. So I think the above comments are 100% right.
Yes, but if invalid clicks turned up on an account with minimal revenue, Google might feel that the site wasn't worth the trouble (especially if there was no compelling reason to keep it, such as the site's being an authoritive source for Zarzuela lyrics or early 1980s WordStar printer drivers).
