Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Adsense was a great/easy way to suppliment online income, easy to set up, reliable payments, and I often recommended it to friends online and offline, as well as the many Pubcon events I've attended.
I occasionally read about Adsense accounts getting terminated, but I always assumed it was because the publisher was 'pulling a fast one', with fake traffic or ads-only sites, so I wasn't concerned.
I did get 2 warnings over 2 years - one was the policy change where they suddenly decided that it was somehow wrong to place thumbnail photos near ad blocks (although many major publishers still do this, and Adsense actually recommended it when I first signed up), and the other warning was because I used the city name of the user IP on the page near an ad block (still not sure what the problem is with that, but no big deal, I removed it). We reacted to both warnings within 24 hours.
In August 2007 I got a message that my sites had been reviewed by Adsense Staff, and that all was well except that I should add a 'Google Search' button to increase revenue.
In Sept 2007 I got another message saying something to the effect that I was a 'preferred publisher' and as a reward I was invited to participate in their new CPA system (pay per performance). I set up a test ad right away.
A few weeks later, I get another message:
PERMANANT BAN FROM THE ADSENSE PROGRAM!
I thought it was a joke or phishing attempt at first, but my login was disabled immediately.
I've exchanged a few emails with Adsense since, but the message is pretty much, "Get lost, we are Google, we don't have to tell you anything". Most responses have a list of possible termination reasons from the TOS, but I'm 100% certain none of my sites have violated any item listed.
I've been involved in quite a few businesses in my time (I'm not a youngster), but I've never seen a company act in such a malicious and arrogant manner towards another company with a multi-year business relationship involving several thousand dollars a month.
My best guess is that some sort of error has been made, but either arrogance or embarrassment at their inability to conduct business in a civil manner "prevents them from giving a reason for account termination".
There is absolutely NO ethical reason to ~not~ explain an action such as this, especially when Adsense mostly deals with small companies such as mine who put invest a good deal of time and money learning the RIGHT way to do business with Adsense and building software to do so. As I mention before, we've made software level changes before to comply with Adsense rules, even when they didn't make sense.
Also, short of fraud, there is no reason to terminate an Adsense agreement without warning (so the publisher has a chance to replace the Adsense ads), and there is no reason to hide the reports and keep secret the amount that Google owes us for the final months.
If you depend on income from Adsense, I SERIOUSLY suggest you look what they've done to us, and look into your other options.
I'll have lots of questions for the Adsense folks at Pubcon when they try to pitch their product to new publishers.
They weren't interested in that.
Heck, they won't even publish a phone number, so why would they bother meeting someone who has been sending them customers for years? Silly me.
So I listened to my little voice and let me tell you, thank goodness I did.
[edited by: netchicken1 at 9:02 pm (utc) on Oct. 30, 2007]
I can imagine how you're feeling right now, it must be very frustating to have a source of income cut all of a sudden. However, Google had an agreement with you which stated that the relationship could be ended at any time for whatever reason they consider valid, nobody said it had to be fair, it's just a bussiness relationship, if it doesn't work for one part (in this case Google), then it's very probable that the deal will be ended.
Yes, I know it can be hard to overcome this but you can look for affiliates, in my case -and niche- they pay a lot more than Google.
Oh, BTW, there are a couple of threads here in WW about being reinstated in AdSense, just do a quick search cause I don't seem to recall the exact location/name.
12,000 low-volume websites
One of the mods will be along and post the threads referred to above. There *have* been known to be reinstatements.
I've been Reinstated - adsense has let me Back in
A member recounts their experience at being removed from the adsense program, but subesequently reinstated when she proved that she was not responsible for false clicks.
[webmasterworld.com...]
What to Do When You are Kicked Out of adsense
A long step-by-action-step tutorial on your recourse when booted from adsense
[webmasterworld.com...]
There's not much we can do here to diagnose why you were banned. If you read the above posts you should get a good idea of how to proceed in getting reinstated if you feel you did not break any rules. And make sure you know the rules.
Good luck.
