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Let me start off by saying this is my first participation in a forum. I have learned alot from the participants in this forum and so I wanted to share our experience with Google.
I had read numerous stories about the dreaded Google email and termination of the Adsense account for invalid clicks. Every time I would read the part about "We never clicked on a single AD", my reaction was always the same, I assumed that they were just not telling the whole truth and they probably did some invalid clicking. I also believed that any reasonable person could work through a problem with Google.
After a few months of happily receiving our Google checks, just when we thought we had found a very good consistent revenue source, we got the dreaded email from Google about "invalid clicks on your site". After a couple of weeks of trying to be polite with Google and trying to cooperate with them about the situation, we finally threw in the towel. The standard form answers about how Google can't divulge their confidential algorithms for determining invalid clicks was enough to drive me through the roof. What happened to customer service and someone being able to answer with some particulars about the situation?
After much thought and consideration about filing a lawsuit, we made the decision to walk away from Google for fear of losing our search engine rankings and advertising capabilities. We were told we would not be paid for any clicks, whether invalid or not. All we wanted from Google was to explain to us where the invalid clicks came from, but they would not share that information. The concept of innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply to Google.
I suspect those of you reading this are probably thinking that we did something wrong. In our minds we didn't, but obviously something was wrong. There were no spikes in our Click-through ratios. They had been pretty consistent since day one of being in the program. I can't absolutely say for sure that none of our employees (about 20) or employee family members got overzealous with the clicks. I can't say that a competitor got even with us because of our recent successes. I can't tell you any of the reasons why we received the dreaded email ---- because Google wouldn't share that with us.
All in all, it was probably a blessing in disguise. We were getting too reliant on the steady revenue from Google. I once felt Google was the darling child of the Internet, never again will I feel that way about Google. My advice, don't rely too much on a good thing. It can all end in the flash of an email!
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[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 5:58 pm (utc) on April 2, 2004]
We look upon AdSense as a bonus source of revenue, but of course like many other webmasters we hope we do not receive the email.
Our staff, family and friends have all been asked not to click on any ad, which is a bit weird as I know some of them are genuinely interested, but I do not want any of them to think well just one more click won't hurt.
Today I was on a forum, and it had a leader board and the discussion was about tickets for X. Now it crossed my mind that some users may see that page as a beginning to four links, they click on one ad, then perhaps the site loads too slowly or they do not like it and then they go back and click on the others. It crossed my mind how does G see such a situation, in a busy forum that could happen numerous times.
Can I ask what type of site are you running, was it with leaderboard, banner of what format of AdSense?
In general, could it be that Google is not satisfied with the conversion ratio from a site, and to remove it from its Adsense network, G is using the excuse of fradulent clicks?
By the way, my google problems worked themselves out. After 2 weeks going back and forth with them we got an all-clear email. It might pay not to give up.
Can this be done?
Mack.
We were using left-nav banners (4-up)and felt we were pretty successful with them.
IMHO, Google has decided that it is more cost efficient for them not to deal with the individual cases and just suspend the accounts when something is detected.
I was under the belief that a warning was issued first, but apparently some people have been kicked out of the program without a warning.
My educated guess is that there are different filters and the detections are classified from mild to severe, with the severe ones probably getting your site kicked out.
I hope that some auditing gets implemented so that things such as more than one click from the same ip in a 24 hour period or maybe 2 clicks from the same ip within a 24 hour period get audited out. While this might affect some sites that are very sticky, it would make it safer for webmasters not to be punished for the actions of others.
I am wondering if it is a way of getting rid of the high earners. Do you feel like you may have been monopolizing a particular niche.
Could one of the big boys not liked you playing in their part of the yard?
royboy, I'm sure that some will have doubts no matter what you say. However, as with cyberprosper, talking politely to Google about it resolved the issue. I "think" I know what caused our warning. I suspect it was a sudden jump in CTR.
We had put Adsense on a few low traffic, low quality pages that weren't focused on any subject/kw. The resultant ads were therefore probably not targeted well and did not get a lot of clicks. That was for about a week. Then when we got the chance we one day removed it from those pages and put it on a lot of content pages that were well targeted to specific content. The CTR suddenly jumped. That may have caused alarm bells to ring. But we discussed it with Google, the CTR stayed consistently high, they perhaps checked their facts again, and the end result was an email saying that our account was not suspended anymore. No explanations, no apologies. Don't expect any of that.
Keep at it, talk nicely and maybe they'll do the same for you. Don't give up. Asking them for info on "why" doesn't help. Put yourself in his shoes - he's not allowed to disclose that. So avoid that issue altogether. Work out all the possible reasons from low CTR to possible competitor activity - research the issue here. (In the fraudulent clicks email threads third party webmasters have come up with some useful suggestions on why sites were possibly suspended).
When you write to Google, focus on your innocence, on what you have done to avoid inadvertent clicks by friends and family, on why you think it's a great program, on how you agree with them that fraud is intolerable and should be dealt with firmly, on how you'd be happy to provide any information that they'd like to see.....
Avoid asking anything that could possibly have a stock answer. Any question you ask has to avoid the issue of "why me", or "where's your proof", and has to be one that can only be answered manually. They do answer manually so make use of it.
Good luck.
Oh, and welcome to webmasterworld
