Forum Moderators: martinibuster
It seemed like a good deal, so I asked for proof of earnings, but instead of him sending me his Adsense screenshots, etc., he actually took my publisher ID from my site and added it to his pages and said, "now you'll get to see the revenue for yourself."
That seemed extremely suspicious to me, so I told him I wasn't interested in buying the site, and later that day he removed my publisher ID from his site.
Yep, as you can guess, I got an "invalid clicks" email from Adsense, and today when I tried to log into my account, it redirected me to...
[google.com...]
That got me thinking...
Since someone's publisher ID is public, what's to keep saboteurs from doing the same thing to anyone? I was only making $2 or $3 a day on that account, so it's not a huge loss, but still... aren't we all at risk from such a thing?
I've sent back 2 emails explaining the situation, but so far I've received only robotic boilerplate emails from the "team".
At this point, it's the principle of the thing, and I'm not going to sit idly by and be called a cheater! Anyone have any suggestions?
Thing is, we still get clicks on channels which are now unique to those 'lost' pages, which are now not even in the Google cache. This suggests that my publisher id has indeed been hijacked - and quite possibly more than once. Even though the result for us is a couple of extra $ per month, I too would love to have this situation clarified. Even though the result has been mildly benign, there is no way I can check the logs, (or even find the url) where ads are being displayed in my name.
Which is disturbing.
I send G a message about views and clicks on a adsense account I havent used for 18 months.
I was sure someone must have copied the pages/code way back then.
But they said 'don't worry'... likely a cached browser page. I could see one page maybe being cached but not 10 pages for 18 months!
They would not tell me from what url the views/clicks were coming - privacy concerns (what crap is that!)
[disclaimer] I am not saying Google is infallible or cannot make mistakes, I'm saying Google would be stupid if they allowed such a thing to happen[/disclaimer]
As requested hundreds of times already here, why isn't Google allowing publishers to list and restrict ads to their domains?
You can take some precautions yourself by using an adsense ad tracking script. Imbed the script's notification script somewhere into your content so it will be copied along with your content by the hijacker. That way you will see what URL any ad views/clicks are originating from.
1. Everything was fine for 2 years.
2. A guy used MY publisher ID on HIS site (which I now suspect as generating invalid clicks, but I don't have any real evidence).
3. A week later, my account is disabled.
4. Despite my protests and explanations, Google responds with boilerplate "invalid clicks" emails.
From a business point of view, I understand Google's rationale. We're talking about small amounts of money here, so any dispute and they're erring on the side of the advertiser. As an Adwords advertiser, I suppose I appreciate that sentiment.
I just don't like being treated like I did something wrong when I didn't, and even if Google is right 99.9% of the time, there's the 0.1% like me who receive summary execution without a trial.
I've had people copy my pages including the adsense. So far it's been some clueless person and I could get them to take it down.
Your case is different. I suspect the person trying to sell his or her website was trying to show you how much the site would make by clicking on your ads to bring the earnings up.
I hope you can get it sorted out.
Thanks!
I refuse to believe it is as simple as the O/P put it
Why? It closes no holes to let you restrict clicks to your "own domains". If someone can/will generate the invalid click pattern needed to trigger Google's automated banning algorithms, they can point them at your domain as easily as copying your Pub ID to their domain and doing it there.
if it was that easy, we all would have been out of AdSense business a long time ago.
Well, the word about how easy it is to get someone else banned is still transitioning to common knowledge, so watch for a big uptick this year. You still have to have somebody willing to do the invalid clicks and risk getting banned themselves (not much risk if they're a disgruntled and banned former user themselves).
For this particular case, the theory that the guy was selling in the first place because he already got banned sounds plausible to me.
Thinking about it now, that would be a case where an email to adsense support would have been a good idea....
And anyway, the "whitelist" feature is badly needed indeed.
... and said, "now you'll get to see the revenue for yourself."
When he "said" this, did he say it in writing? If he did, offer Google copies of the correspondence between you. Might also add weight to your case if you took screenshots showing your publisher ID on his site.
Good luck, and here's to the day when publishers have to register/confirm each site their pub ID appears on with Google before ads will appear.
I am not saying salvisa did any of this, but other items to check by the banning algo would be salvisa's history / credibility rating, recent clicks recorded from his IP range, other domains he own and their rating as well, the IP's of the clicks on salvisa's sites and their relation to known click bots... If you noticed, it has to be all related to salvisa not the seller to confirm a relation, other wise Google would be dim witted.
salvisa, sorry for that mess, I am not saying you did any of that, just that there is possibly more to the story that what you say or know.
And yes, we need to lobby for that whitelist, what possible reasons could Google have against it?
if the seller was banned, then his inserting a pub id alone does not constitute a definite relation with that pub id owner
About whitelist, unfortunately no one requested such a feature in the wishlist :( Not sure if that would help though
[webmasterworld.com...]
34. Ads shown only on sites which really belong to us. Give the option to specify our domain names in our accounts. (as we do in Google Analytics)
+ It has been requested in more threads than I can count.
Google replied with a bunch of questions including what website URLs I controlled. They wouldn't tell me what domain(s) other than those I controlled that any clicks where coming from. This went on for about 2 weeks and I emailed Google every day I noticed a large number of unaccounted for clicks. Eventually Google must have banned the offending domain. The extra income was also adjusted out of my account. I expressed concern that I could lose my account over this episode and Google reassured me that my account was still "in good standing".
I guess the moral of the story is, if you suspect your ads have been copied and/or there may be invalid clicks, email Google early and often as long as it persists.
It appears that you detected the exploit before Google did. Google may have detected fraudulent clicks, but they may not have detected the exploit behind it. It makes me wonder if Google has adequate systems in place for detecting ID jacking.
When you think about it, how could Google detect this in a timely manner? Constantly cross-checking whois information with publisher IDs?
If Google is not checking for this kind of exploit, does it mean that their knowledge of the extent this kind of activity is not truly known? And if Google is not truly aware of the extent of these occurrences, how many innocent publishers may have lost their accounts due to this kind of event?
Mojo
When you think about it, how could Google detect this in a timely manner? Constantly cross-checking whois information with publisher IDs?
It's interesting that they apparently can't right now, and not for lack of publisher input. Though I'm more of a 'submit a site for approval before running Adsense on it' type of guy, the idea of a 'whitelist' has a lot of appeal. The lack of one can go far in explainging some of the 'Iv'e been banned threads', at least a few of which were started by regular WebmasterWorld members.
What I find particularly confusing is Google's lack of feedback whenever publishers raise points that can only improve the program. Either a whitelist or the end of 'run once, run everywhere' would only help to protect the advertisers' dollars and ease publishers' peace of minds.
Guess I'll take a hike over to the Reasons Why AdSense Won't Implement a Whitelist [webmasterworld.com] thread.
Funny thing is, this guy actually has a large internet presence and sells "how to succeed online" products. God help us all!
Could it be possible that his site was recently banned? Maybe that's why he has no proof of his earnings and was trying to offload the site. My guess: He has a banned site and now your ID appears on the site. The Google Algo puts the two together and says these are the same person, hence the ban.
I think you've likely nailed it. Obviously, he wants you to think his site pulls in massive amounts of money. But, if he had to show you any current screenshots - and his account was disabled - well, he couldn't ... because I don't believe you can even log in when your account is banned. So you caught him a bit off-guard with his request.
His response? Put your code on his site so that you could "see for yourself" ... but think about it for a minute. Let's say you've got some site that earns big numbers - like $2,000 per day. Why, on earth, would you want to GIVE SOMEONE YOUR REVENUE FOR A DAY?!? It just doesn't make any sense.
Nope - he was trying to sell you a site that was just itching to be banned again, and charge you a large sum of money for it. If you can get your account back, you've managed to dodge a big financial bullet.
Question: is it worrying enough to G?
>>You acknowledge and agree that Ads and/or Links: (i) shall only be displayed in connection with the Site(s), each of which is subject to review and approval by Google in its discretion at any time; and (ii) shall be subject to the placement guidelines set forth herein.
>>You are solely responsible for the Site(s), including all content and materials, maintenance and operation thereof, the proper implementation of Google's specifications, and adherence to the terms of this Agreement, including compliance with the Program Policies
>>Prohibited Uses. You shall not...... other means other than Your Site(s),
Sorry you had to learn a lesson this way, but I have to say that you broke a lot of TOS rules. It's also a story that is very hard to explain because on the surface, it looks like fraud.
For example, if you've got a site that generates $2 per day and this person's site generates $100 - well that allows you to quickly make the $100 monthly threshold. It's also hard to explain what you were going to do with the money... Did you have to pay this person back? And yes, I do understand this issue has more to do with account IDs... but there is a lot going on here.
THAT would be a good new feature for AS just like the iTunes feature to deauthorize ANY machine even if not in your posession (anymore).
he actually took my publisher ID from my site and added it to his pages and said, "now you'll get to see the revenue for yourself."
Yeah, and he probably got carpel tunnel sitting there 24/7 clicking on your adsense ads.
