Forum Moderators: martinibuster
(I've changed the earnings slightly but they match what I'm on about)
31-Oct-2006 Earnings... US$4,900.00
30-Nov-2006 Earnings... -US$3,900.00
I did not recieve any payment for October as I had not verified my account in time for the payment by november 28th.
Anyway I expected to see Earnings accumilated for november as the similar fasion of October.
I was amazed to see a Minus symbol.. I look into it further...
AdSense for content US$2,100.00
Subtotal US$2,100.00
Adjustment - Invalid Clicks -US$6,000.00
Total Monthly Earnings -US$3,900.00
Now why did I come to webmaster world to ask this question? What does this mean, do I owe google almost 4k US dollars.
If I add both my monthly earnings 4,900 and 2,100 = 7,000$ and they say 6,000$ is invalid, then I should be left with 1000$ Correct?
(Oct 4,900$ - Nov 3,900$ = 1,000$ )
Now what I don't get is if thats the case why was the month previous not put into the equation for my Earnings, and therefor should indicate 1000$ for this december EFT.
Either way I'm not ungreatful I'm just shocked, suprised at how it's layed out, and now wondering if it's going to start playing up every time payment arives I'm not going to be able to rely upon google.
In regards to the invalid clicks, I have no idea only that I appreciate that they have been removed and not a ban , however it is ironic that serving on my page which generates over 10 million page view a month hasn't earnt 1 single valid click? that's got to be a lie.
[NoodleBox.]
[edited by: noodlebox at 1:37 am (utc) on Dec. 5, 2006]
This post was the ironic values of having an adsense account, whilst you earn great money, you don't own the money until big G says you do, and since when did they say we did? ... I mean in theory we spend that money, but if G wants it back.. we're not going to be in a position to affoard back thousands a month that we've gone and blown on a new computer, web-server or somthing insane like a car or some holidays.
I'm appreciative that they want invalid earnings back, what i'm not happy about is that it's all ran by computer, how do we know it's not got it wrong this time round and I'm losing my hard earnings I've worked years towards achieving... who knows.
All I can say now guys, keep your hats on your head, and don't spend G's money until you've accumilated enough to start spending some of it... (spend less than 50% to ensure you don't get yourself in debt).
,what happens to that information after you give it out, who knows?
I dunno... maybe the site might get spidered and ranked...
hehe.. seriously, nothing on the web is a secret, many of us post here under our REAL names. Paranoia will only get you so far...
thousands a month that we've gone and blown
One of the prime rules of survival as an online publisher with advertising or affiliate income is to wait until you have the check and it clears before you spend the money you think you've earned.
The only exception should be business expenses that are directly related to earning the income (hosting, site development costs, promotion, etc.).
One of the prime rules of survival as an online publisher with advertising or affiliate income is to wait until you have the check and it clears before you spend the money you think you've earned.
can you imagine any other company saying, that money we paid you last year, pretty sure you weren't entitled to it. We are not telling you why, but we want it back.
Laughed out of court (except the US probably)
Anyway I recognize Google's right to do this, but they absolutely need to be more forthcoming. If you're going to claim the moral right to seize that much money that's already been paid out for previous months, you owe the publisher an explanation for your actions.
I'm a big defender of Google in this forum, but that's two multi-thousand-dollar clawbacks from publishers in good standing in two weeks. If this is a new trend I may have to scale back my AdSense visibility; it accounts for a minority of my income now, so that's a quite practical option.
I'm a big defender of Google in this forum, but that's two multi-thousand-dollar clawbacks from publishers in good standing in two weeks. If this is a new trend I may have to scale back my AdSense visibility; it accounts for a minority of my income now, so that's a quite practical option.
Perhaps this is a trend. Perhaps G is using new information to determine past "invalid" clicks. However, I wouldn't blame anyone for scaling back their visibility, or just quitting the program outright. Things are getting out of hand (IMO). I think if G wants to arbitrarily go back in time and claim that there was some "invalid" clicking going on, they should have to offer proof of same. I hope someday a legit publisher is willing to fight it out in court for the money; lets see the actual criteria that was applied to the account that now results in chargebacks after all this time.
Yeah, I know ... the publisher signed an agreement. But there is some precedent for courts nullifying agreements that are found to be unlawful. As an example, some US companies have people sign noncompete clauses when they are hired. If they're laid off, they're stuck for the duration of the agreement. But some US courts have ruled that these agreements don't need to be honored in some US states because you just can't force someone out on the street and say they can't work for either you or your competitor. As the person was working for you it's likely they have skills that are valuable to the competitor.
[edited by: gregbo at 8:23 am (utc) on Dec. 5, 2006]
If I were in your shoes I would at least compare this to for example me buying a service, say cleaning, from another company. Let's say I have always paid my bills to this cleaning company. But now I have discovered that, for the past few months, they have been using other cleaning materials (cheaper, less quality, bad for the environment) than specified in our contract. This is a case of some invalid cleaning so to speak.
Now what do I do?
Can I go back to the cleaning company, simply stating that in the past (not specified) they didn't do their job as they should (not specified) and therefore I ask them to pay me back $6000,- (not specified).
Now 90% of them would just have a wild outburst of laughter and then kick me out. The other 10% would perhaps say; well, If you think you should get your money back, then could you exactly specify:
- what did we do wrong;
- in what timeframe did this happen;
- what kind of damage did this do to you;
- your proposal to compensate for this.
And perhaps, then we are prepared to have a look at it.
I mean, it looks so absurd to just donate them the money without them showing any evidence or specification of what they think went wrong.
Now I know that there are among us who say: Google can do whatever they like and you agreed upon that by joining the Adsense program.
Well, I would like to disagree with that.
Google can do whatever they like as long as it is within the agreement and within the law. And in some cases perhaps court should decide on these kind of matters.
Where I come from we have laws that protect consumers and small businesses from ridiculous agreements that are forced upon them (mostly buy large monopolist firms and government agencies).
I simply refuse to believe that they (G?) can simply do as they please.
BTW, correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the Adsense TOS say Google has the right to stop payments at any time. That's surely not the same as demanding back money that already has been paid.
Over the years I have never seen a chargeback on any payments. Anyone else seen this?
As for Noodle, it is so hard to evaulate these things when you can't see the site. I have lost count of the times something critical has been left out by people who have been banned. Plus it has the other red flag of a new member. In the context of what happens frequently on this forum, I remain sceptical that everything was 100% within the TOS.
Google reserves the right to withhold payment or charge back Your account
Thanks for the correction;-)
I know the Adsense TOS pretty well, but I guess I am in some sort of denial about this part.
And that is because it can not possibly be so, that a business partner makes you sign an agreement that includes his right to charge back payments when at the same time he has no obligation at all to explain why he wants that charge back.
I am not a legal expert but I expect this not to be legal in my country.
Based on the information you've provided: $4,900 in earnings and more than 10 million page views (which I think is too much information and bordering on a TOS violation) your eCPM is less than $0.49 - which seems very low.
As suggested, you might want to take a very close look at the TOS and make sure all of you site complies with those rules including the types of pages you're allowed to run Adsense on.
Rbacal, are you guessing Noodle is the webdesigner?
No. But I thought "just in case", because I stumbled upon that webdesigner site and was fairly blown away by it, and a few of the sites in the portfolio. It's rare I find sites that make me go WOW.
I have lost count of the times something critical has been left out by people who have been banned.
I had to look for it, and I found it,
Ok noodle, glad you found "it" care to share with us what it was you found?
Google's proprietary technology analyses all ad clicks for
invalid click activity that is intended to artificially drive up an
advertiser's clicks or a publisher's earnings.
For additional questions, I'd encourage you to visit the AdSense Help
Centre ( [google.com...] ),
... scary part about for additional questions they'd encourage me to go and look it up... maybe not a good idea questioning adsense?
Ahwel things are looking up decembers earnings are up and I'll be hoping to see earnings in the Plus not Minus at the end of december.
Hopefuly I'll get that 1,000$ they owe me by X-mas.
Great why not prevent it on the fly
It would be nice to do that but sometimes it takes a while to see the patterns.
It's easy to catch most of the fraud but there are some tricky ones to catch and then there are the ones that can never be caught. It's the tricky ones that can take a while to spot.
JAG
It's easy to catch most of the fraud but there are some tricky ones to catch and then there are the ones that can never be caught. It's the tricky ones that can take a while to spot.
Actually, there has never been a definitive study of (1) how much click fraud there is (in volume), and (2) how many different ways in which it can be done. Thus, it is yet to be determined how easy it is to determine click fraud as a percentage of all online advertising.
There are "obvious" patterns, such as multiple clicks from the same IP/user agent/session cookie over very short periods of time (< 1 hour). One can certainly call this click fraud, but there isn't any real proof of fraud. It would be more correct to say that it is not believed that any human could (or would) generate such a sequence.
Another practical problem is at what point do you decide fraud has occurred. There will be different thresholds of pain depending on the budget of the advertiser in question. It would have been an improvement over the current situation if there had been some industry agreement on what reasonable thresholds are, but those discussions don't seem to be taking place.
A further wrinkle is that new information might cause a reversal of previously collected information, such as a botnet that was found generating fraudulent clicks at some time. This is another area in which an industry agreement might specify a reasonable statute of limitations, rather than giving the engines and networks the power to arbitrarily determine that "invalid" clicks occurred at some past time (with no basis in proof) and holding publishers responsible.
If Google can actually demand a cash payment (as opposed to just refusing to pay further) for an indefinite number of past pay-outs, then this significantly affects the the ability to manage risk with the AdSense program. It seems most likely to me that they want to reserve the right, but probably are reluctant to exercise it, since that then could make a legal counter-action the only sensible response for some publishers in some situations. Still, they previously did not exercise the chargeback, so one has to wonder...
Always good to re-read the T&C. I apparently had forgotten this clause:
clicks co-mingled with a significant number of invalid clicks
which flat-out absolves Google for paying for valid clicks, once they declare you have "significant" invalid clicks.
how many different ways in which it can be done
That's the key. Everyone thinks of new ways in which it can be done without thinking of the ways to see that it was done.
I know I can see the same user doing all the ways that there are to try and commit fraud. Change your IP and I still know you. Change your user agent and I still know you. Go through a proxy and I still know you. Don't allow cookies and I still know you. Don't have JavaScript turned on and I still know you. Use Norton and those type programs and I still know you. Do all those things at the same time and I still know you. Since I know you I can also see you trying to stop me from knowing you which does indeed imply click fraud :-)
Does it prove fraud without a doubt? Nope but it is pretty strong evidence.
Unfortunately there cannot be standards for this unless the secrets are well kept and the more people that know the secrets the more likely it will no longer be of any value to anyone except the fraudsters.
JAG
I believe they do, but from this discussion not always. When monitoring the Adsesne reports for periods of every 30 minutes, I have seen total earnings dip while impressions rise (this is not a browser cache issue.) I have seen it more than once and I susepct it happens more often - I just don't watch the reports enough to see it.
For example (numbers not real, only to demonstrate)
12.00pm: 1000 Page imp, earnings $10.00
12.30pm: 1050 Page imp, earnings $9.75
1.00pm: 1100 Page imp, earnings $10.00
There could be other technical reasons for this behaviour that are not invalid clicks.
I know I can see the same user doing all the ways that there are to try and commit fraud. [...]Does it prove fraud without a doubt? Nope but it is pretty strong evidence.
Are you sure these are all the ways? Are you sure that this is the same "user" (if it's even a human being)? At what point in the clickstream does it become (perhaps) fraud, instead of someone just going about their business?
Unfortunately there cannot be standards for this unless the secrets are well kept and the more people that know the secrets the more likely it will no longer be of any value to anyone except the fraudsters.
Actually, this is incorrect. As the old saying goes, if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns. The key is not to keep secrets, but to publicly address the risks, and provide sufficient alternatives. The fact that PPC advertising is extremely vulnerable to click fraud is no mystery; a simple security analysis of the problem bears this out, given how the Internet is currently designed. However, the industry decided to go ahead with it anyway. It has only itself to blame now for whatever problems occur as a result.
Change your IP and I still know you. Change your user agent and I still know you. Go through a proxy and I still know you. Don't allow cookies and I still know you. Don't have JavaScript turned on and I still know you. Use Norton and those type programs and I still know you. Do all those things at the same time and I still know you. Since I know you I can also see you trying to stop me from knowing you which does indeed imply click fraud...
Is it just me or is this one of the most poetic posts to have appeared on Webmaster World for some time?
Are you sure these are all the ways?
Nope. There will always be a few that get through but it is easy to find the people that read a few messages about change this and change that and block this and block that and you won't be caught. Fortunately for me those fraudsters are the majority so seeing them is extremely easy :-)
We'll just have to agree to disagree on the sharing of the secrets.
It would make a good song
I want royalties ;-)
JAG
eCPM risen up extremely. whilst CTR is down. Click value is up. Total value for the day seems to increment about 25% more per day since December 1st.
I would of expected peanlisation and smartpricing to have been set on 5% earnings or something painful as that... maybe they decided to increase income to my account as they know it's worth alot to them in the real picture.
maybe adsense wants their money back in a realistic way (no smartpricing for you baby)
