Forum Moderators: martinibuster
For this day (17 May), does it mean that they will pay for April 1-30 earnings, or for May (1-18) also?
My issue is in the handling of the crackdown. These are two different things.
I say that if you did not breach the TOS, then you should not be kicked out for good without even a single warning. I say the good thing to do is to tell me to fix it - and I will.
The reason why this thread is very good and transparent I believe is a direct consequence of the non specific yet overly hard email from AdSense.
What’s a webmaster to do when you get that message from the King other than bring it up with the guild?
Her site was a classic MFA site - little if any content. (Been telling her for ages to do something about it - but hey....). She was not driving traffic via adwords at all - but was using Overture. So this isn't just about adwords driven traffic - it is either a different issue - ie lame site - or it is about driving traffic from any PPC network
Secondly - I have another good friend - also banned. His site is full of unique content. He participates in a couple of affiliate schemes - not many, the pages have a reasonable amount of contnet on them, and as stated before - it is all written by himself. Also banned. Common denominator is that he too was using PPC traffic.
if you did not breach the TOS, then you should not be kicked out for good without even a single warning
If you know by 'feeling' and 'spirit' that you were swimming against the tide, and that what you were doing is short term and against the TOS, while at the same time you are willing to run the TOS letter for letter against what you were doing and give arguments why your site is not in breach, then you know exactly where Google's soft ban is coming from, and why they did it this way.
What I am saying is that Google is not the best when it comes to publicly disclosing reasons and details behind their decisions, which is exactly what they would be forced to do if they a) Dealt with the problem and opened dialogue on individual case by case basis. b) Provided a recourse where all soft banned webmasters can come back and ask after modifying their sites if they are ok now.
Google did it in the way they saw was most prudent for Google and its network.
That does not prevent you from moving on, or changing your business model and coming back to them with proof that you are now in compliance and need a second chance.
My advice to you newsecular and anyone else that was soft banned is to think positive, put all your energy into what you are going to be doing next.
If we had these tools available all these spammers would already be out of business because most publishers would filter them.
Amen. Here, after months of frustration and maxed out competitive filters, we all were begging Google for filters to ban accounts instead of domains, for the reason you noted, and Google says, "Hey, we can do one better. We'll save you the work--we'll ban the accounts."
Cheers, G-Team!
p/g
P.S. Most arbiters have long known how it's virtually impossible to get unbanned or get a second account. They were playing with fire with no long-term vision.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
" Common denominator is that he too was using PPC traffic"
If this is a fact, then maybe they want only sites with organic traffic to display adSense and should clearly say so in the TOS.
However, my gut feel is that they are banning sites with poor user experience because the adWords Quality Score mechanism has failed to weed such sites out. They are now going at it from the adSense side.
There are two basic reasons for high CTRs. One is that the site provides users with little or nothing else to read or do besides click on one of the ads. The other is that the site offers alignment of content and advertising. After the users has read all about widgets they get excited and want to buy one, so they click on an ad).
Perhaps the statistical fingerprints of these two different business s were too difficult to distinguish using purely automated algorithms, so Google decided to stamp out the one that offers the poor user experience.
They were completely worthless and looked like the scams I thought they were. I could be wrong about that but not the fact that they are one page wonders and do not have adsense on the landing pages so more may be going up the pipe than we know about.
Ann
Edit to add: these are the ones that one needs to fill out forms or just call "I'm standing by to tell you everything". :)
Thank you Google, I am happy to see it but sorry for the genuinely 'haven't a clue' crowd.
[edited by: ann at 12:04 pm (utc) on May 22, 2007]
People talk about useful and unique content being hit, but unless we can see the site, it's hard to tell just how useful or unique it is.
So anyone want to sticky me an example ....
