Forum Moderators: martinibuster
My website is about an IT topic, in which I have some expertise. I started this website, just because I knew about the topic and started to write about it.
So, everything started just for promotion. I already had adwords account, because I was promoting some affiliate sites, some very tiny ones. Then I decided to create a campaign to promote this new website, and throw like $5 bucks a day out of my pocket. A month later, I signed for Adsense, so there was as point where I was running both, and the adsense earnings somehow compensated my adwords spending.
As time passes, the Adsense earnings overpassed my Adwords spending and somehow this resulted in a "business model" (please note the sarcastic use of quotes).
There were good times, in 2006, a peak, but then profits went down, and down, and down, mainly because the QS on adwords. I didn't care too much, because my website was good, and I was getting lots of free links from blogs and forums, so I was getting free organic visitors, and compensated the always increasing adwords costs.
At the beginning of this month, the Quality Score thing practically erased my campaigns by increasing 99% of my keywords to $10.00, and the only ones surviving were those 4 years old affiliate campaigns, which by the way, have all keywords in "great" quality.
Then, I had a few email interchange with an Adwords representative about this last event, and I'm quite sure this was the one that triggered a manual revision and got my adsense account down.
After these three years, my website grew a lot and it is somehow well known in its niche. I get like 500 visitors a day, free of charge, from the SERPS.
Also, there are like 150 people who regularly sent press releases for products related to this IT niche. I mention this so you have an idea, that I'm talking about a REAL website, with real people reading and getting help and useful information.
I know there are histories about people getting theirs accounts back, at least, I've read about 7 or 8 in this three years of reading webmasterworld every day. But those were cases about "invalid clicks", which turned to be a false statements, so, Google give them theirs accounts back.
So, the main reason to post this here, and ask this here publicly, is if you know cases from people getting the "your business model is not a good fit" that has appealed and get their adsense account back.
I'd suggest either:
A) Remove AdSense on landing pages from AdWords ads, or
B) Discontinue AdWords (or at least to any landing pages with AdSense on them)
Then you can try appealing to Google.
Are your landing pages..too 'thin' ? This is the only thing I could think off..
Google does allow adWords traffic on adSense pages.. There are blogs on inside adSense pointing to this.. so I wonder what happened.
I said I "had", because, I've just deleted any adwords campaign that was still "running". And I say "running" in quotes, because I was getting zero impressions since a month ago.
Go figure!
that's sad to hear, especially as you are a long standing member who apparently knows about the pitfalls of Adsense.
I had a few email interchange with an Adwords representative about this last event
That's why I think one should restrict communication with Adsense to the absolute bare necessities. There is the potential (read: RISK) that you will communicate with someone who is not really bright and might get everything wrong and at the end might even terminate your account.
I once communicated with a person (?) from Adsense, who turned out to have absolutely not understood what my question/problem was (and it was not a crucial problem). That person then responded with a canned response that made me shiver (because it somehow blamed me when the problem was clearly and unmistakenly with THEM).
My tip: never communicate with Google, unless you really really need to.
Did you buy traffic from other networks and land them on AdSense pages?
Are you selling something that can raise eyebrows on a manual review?
Is your site in violation of the search engine or Adwords guidelines?
If a competitor wanted to get you in trouble, what could they find to report on your site?
Details will help others who have sites similar to yours.
(Why they couldn't just turn off the Adwords account is what I don't understand....)
Now, yes, I also bought traffic from Look Smart, but it was like a $1.00 a day, and since they just send robots, they don't click the ads! lol
Well, seriously, I wonder if that could be a problem, but I have that campaign in looksmart like since 2 years ago.
The site has only one ad unit and one ad link for each page. Just one of each.
There are many pages without ads, because they contain only grouped results. Actually these pages rank well in search engines.
The only ad unit that I have is a big square that is right in the middle, but it is clearly marked with an additional "advertisements" title, so there's nothing deceptive at all.
What else? mmmh, let me think more...
(Why they couldn't just turn off the Adwords account is what I don't understand....)
Yes, you're so right about that.
I thought on deleting all my adwords campaigns when the last QS slap happen, but I just gave it time, to see if the campaigns woke up.
And seems I just gave them time... to cancel my account :(
How original was the content? Did you develop it yourself or are you aggregating?
Pardon me for asking, no offense intended, but did this have anything to do with file sharing, P2P, or obtaining *free* software?
This is perplexing. A site like "eweek" classified as incompatible? A portal or directory classified as an incompatible business model? I think it takes more than that to be deemed incompatible. Which might point to the content.
Is there a twist that's making it incompatible?
So it has 100% original articles written by you or by your staff, articles that are not found elsewhere and has nothing to do with P2P nor features links to P2P sites or places to download torrents or anything at all to do with copyrighted content?
So, I think that what they did not like was that I was driving traffic to landing pages with Adsense using Adwords.... :(
But, note, that they were not "optimized" landing pages, i.e. they were not pages with nothing but a paragraph and the ad unit. Instead, the landing pages were working sections or categories of my website.
Actually, I survived many raids of shutting down arbitrage sites.
It is until now, that I drew attention to my adwords (and adsense) account that this happened :O
Go again though the Adwords guidelines point by point and tell us if you discover anything new to you.
Actually, what they did send me was a link to an Adwords guidelines page.
The AdWords Quality Guidelines [adwords.google.com] covers issues with content, including advertising copyrighted content. For example (an example, not saying this is you), a technology portal like eWeek dealing with bit torrents, bit torrent software, bit torrent news possibly might not pass their quality quidelines because it involves issues with the distribution of copyrighted content.
Is it all possible someone filed a complaint with AdWords about your site?
The quality guideline list is long. Among many other reasons:
[edited by: martinibuster at 1:19 am (utc) on April 30, 2008]
Go again though the Adwords guidelines point by point and tell us if you discover anything new to you.
I did that and I found this:
"Provide substantial information. If your ad does link to a page consisting mostly of ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional, unique content."
So, since most of these landing pages consisted of "boxes" with headlines (again, look at eweek to know what I'm talking about). May be they considered that I had not provided "additional, unique content". And well, they might be right, since you have to click on the headline to go to real content... but isn't that what everybody does in this type of websites !?!?
Who on earth put a full article on the front page of a portal? :(
And again, why it lasted three years? And it is until now I ask someone to look in my account that I got my account disabled?
That's why I think one should restrict communication with Adsense to the absolute bare necessities.
I think the common term is "waking the sleeping giant".
So, there's other things to consider, such as have you ever run other sites? Why is your natural traffic relatively low? Why is your ratio of spend to earn so low?
It seems to me that from your numbers your business model isn' working for you. I don't know, but I'm thinking from past posts there's other things you haven't included for consideration.
Anyway, perhaps it's an error.
I also asked about running a lyrics site, but I never did that. Actually I left drop 3 good domain names perfect for lyrics, because I just didn't want to be associated with such sites. You'll find that recently I asked about adsense running on lyrics sites, and it is precisely, because I had an eye in a proyect like that, but yet again, I never did it.
And finally, I also asked my girlfriend about a ménage à trois, with a girl, but we never did that either..... lol
Are you getting the idea? Just by asking doesn't make me guilty... ;)
Well, seriously, I currently have only 4 websites, two portals on IT niches, one that holds some affiliate links and an spanish forum.
Just one of these have adsense, and it is the one I'm talking about.
And yes, my "business model" wasn't working for me, because I didn't have the intention to run such darn busines model to start with! ;)
Thanks for your sympathies :)
And finally, I also asked my girlfriend about a ménage à trois, with a girl, but we never did that either..... lolAre you getting the idea? Just by asking doesn't make me guilty... ;)
Ok. I get it, although I extend my sympathy to you and your girlfriend!
Let me ask you a question. I'm a long time business owner, both online and offline, and I make my living based on ethical behavior, honesty, and I'm a real hard*** about these things. Would I (or a traditional conservative businessperson) have any particular reaction positive or negative, to our sites (all of them or any of them).
Would I immediately be impressed and want to link to it, or trust you to do business with?
Obviously, if you want input worth something more, you'd pretty much have to make available your website urls, PLUS your ads and key words. I'd bet there are things there that would jump out to someone else (a fresh eye), but of course you can't post that stuff here.
As it stands you and google are the only ones that can diagnose, and both of you have your own perceptions and biases(É!)
I will take my advertising dollars else where, rather than lose my Adsense account. While I thought it would be easier to have everything handled by Google, when I signed up for Adwords many months after beginning with Adsense, I can see how wrong that can go.
Thanks for posting your story.
As I mentioned in the first post:
After these three years, my website grew a lot and it is somehow well known in its niche. I get like 500 visitors a day, free of charge, from the SERPS.
Also, there are like 150 people who regularly sent press releases for products related to this IT niche. I mention this so you have an idea, that I'm talking about a REAL website, with real people reading and getting help and useful information.
I think that should answer your question about wanting to link to my site. :)
This is hardly big money.. arbitrage?
This can happen on any genuine website even inadverently.
The reasons HAVE to be elsewhere. If not, there has been a major change in G policy.
We are top of SEPRS for a few kew phrases but we also buy traffic for many keywords for which we donot rank. We have adSense ads on some pages of our website. A part of the cost gets deffered by adSense. If G thinks this is arbitarge, then we are in trouble. They should clarify.
