Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have never tried to harm Google or the system for making money. It was inadvertently that I advertised using Adwords to get the visitors to Adsense supported sites. While Google themselves used to encourage the use of Adwords and Adsense together, what is the harm that publishers like me have done to Google?
My point is this. Google has never asked anybody to do click fraud. So anybody doing click fraud is definitely a bad guy. But while Google themselves used to recommend using Adwords and Adsense together, what is it that a publisher like me has done so badly to Google, to be thrown permanently out of the program, in such a way that our accounts are not even reviewed a second time. Why at all it is considered as equivalent to click fraud. It is like giving death sentense for a lesser degree offence like bribery or teasing. I have never tried to do anything purposefully to harm the program or Google. So why do Google act against my interests. If I had the slightest bit of information about Google's standing, I would not have got myself engaged in Adwords advertising. The revenue from Adsense was a major contributor of my income. I have spent so much of time doing research, took so much of effort to put together information for creating my sites. I have a number of sites about languages, finance, civil engineering, mobile technology, most of them first page results in Google search in their categories. Now that Google has disabled my account, I have no way to monitise my 1500 unique visitors a day. I started using Adsense when my visitor base was only 10 uniques per day. I have spent so much of valuable time of my career just expecting the returns from Google. Definitely there is no point in expecting so much from a single source, but I thought I would be safe if I follow the program policies of Google. I was outsted from Google for a reason not listed in the program policy at that time. It was for not understanding something which was never conveyed to me in any of their documents or would not have appeared in the wildest of my imagination. It is something even a person from another department of Google would not know about. I was encouraged to continue with the Adwords program by an Adwords executive just a few days before I was sacked from the program. I dont blame him because what he said was that Adwords is a different department so he doent know the policies of Adsense, but to use Adwords to promote a site which has sufficiently good content is definitely a good idea. My point is that if an employee of Google didnt know about their policies, how was I supposed to know as a publisher. And the punishment too was too hefty. Even for bigger offences like click fraud, Google used to send warning letters. In my case during my 2 year tenure, I was never given a warning letter exept the termination one.
Fellow webmasters, can anybody explain my fault in this case. The sites I used to advertise were having excellent content. There is no need for further explanation on this since everybody here are aware that Google nowadays take action against any Adsense site promoted using Adwords. Now there is a remark in the program policies also regarding the same. But my account was disabled much before this. Now that they dont even reply to my appeal, it is likely that I have got permanently banned from Adsense. Your opinions please.
So why do Google act against my interests.
Using PPC on an adsense-supported site is against adsense TOS and thus grounds for account closure. It's google's game, so you play by their rules. Even if your actions were inadvertent, you still breached google's terms of service. It is these terms that you agreed to by signing up to the program. That is your fault in this case. Nothing more, nothing less.
*mumbles something about all eggs in one basket*
Have you considered monetizing your traffic using affiliate programs instead?
But this condition was not there in program policies back in June when my account was disabled.
But we always have some expectation about a company like Google.
Unfortunately the only expectation anyone can have of Google is the unexpected:-(
They are the most notoriously secretive company which may have been useful until now however I feel that in the post credit-crunch economy that they will have to be much more communicative than they have been.
Does the emergence of a new ASA suggest anything along these lines? Maybe, maybe not, what is certain is that some publishers are doing well whilst others are suffering for completely no other explanation than "It's the economy stupid"!
Google is going to have to learn to be a responsible "partner" and possibly review some of their earlier decisions otherwise they may possibly see many publishers leaving their ranks if/when another decent programme comes along for those of us outside of the US/Canada.
YMMV!
But this condition was not there in program policies back in June when my account was disabled.
Google forces you to re-agree to its terms of use everytime their policy changes. It is your own responsibility to actually read them (and not just click 'i agree') and be informed. You can't say nobody told you.
You can't say nobody told you.
How can you be told when it was not a program policy at the time? That's as bad as issuing retrospective taxes and totally unfair.
Are we all expected to know and be prepared for whatever Google deems to be new T&Cs with absolutely no notification?
2) Arbitrage isn't just a matter of using AdWords to buy traffic for a site that carries AdSense ads. The issue is how the ads are used and what the purpose of the site is. For example, THE NEW YORK TIMES buys AdSense ads for its Web site, but its Web site has content of intrinsic value, as opposed to being a platform for "flipping" traffic and earning money on the spread. In contrast, a publisher who buys cheap ads for "widget symptoms" with the intention of attracting high-priced clicks on a search-optimized "widgetoma lawyers" page is easy to recognize as an arbitrageur.
3) Click fraud (or invalid clicks of any kind) can be damaging to advertisers even if the publisher isn't responsible for the worthless clicks. If your pages attract an unusually high number of invalid or non-converting clicks, Google may feel compelled to disable your account regardless of whether you have done anything wrong. That may be bad luck for you, but Google's first responsibility is to its advertisers (the customers who are paying the bills).
Second, people here tend to jump to the wrong conclusions on limited knowledge. My bet is that your sites would not pass a "sniff" test. In other words, there's probably not a whole lot of value to them in terms of original content, etc.
So, when a googler went to look at your site to visually check out something flagged by an algo, it was found that you were not providing value to advertisers, or you were being deceptive, or something that many people would agree with if they looked at your site.
In looking at some of these situations where people have expressed concerns just as you have, I've ALWAYS found sites that simply were made for adsense, didn't deserve to even have search engine traffic, and thus the only thing they could do was pay for clicks in adwords, or other cheaper venues.
I understand it could be that I'm wrong on everything I've said here, since I don't know your sites, but again, I bet they wouldn't pass my sniff test.
I'm also betting you don't know the specific reasons you were removed aside from "a threat to advertisers", or click fraud.
Because I've just received yesterday an AdWords gift certificate from Google. It's explicitly written that this certificate is for AdSense publishers. Is Google itself against TOS?
From the adSense policy.
"Publishers using online advertising to drive traffic to pages showing Google ads must comply with the spirit of Google's Landing Page Quality Guidelines. For instance, if you advertise for sites participating in the AdSense program, the advertising should not be deceptive to users. "
I got the email saying "your business model is not a good fit for the adsense program".
So, basically, what you wrote in your initial messages involved conclusions you, in essence, made up? You don't really know why they don't want to work with you? Or is there more you haven't mentioned?
Basically, Google determined they don't want to do business with you. That's their right. They have no obligations to you, moral or otherwise to do anything beyond what they explicitly promise in their online "agreement" which is pretty much nothing. That's the harsh reality.
A lot of the time, messages such as yours come from what are basically web owners who created sites after adsense, and for adsense, and who add ZERO value. For example, proxy sites, wallpaperz sites, free ring town sites, some picture galleries that take pictures from other sites.
I doubt whether most people who are being terminated, such as yourself, have business models, because they certainly don't have real businesses.
So, here's a question you can address, adwinner, if you want to have a real business (and perhaps you do because you mention your own products).
What unique value do you provide to:
your customers and prospective customers
to google itself
to advertisers.
If you add no unique value to any one of these, and add no value to any one of these groups, you are at google risk, and in fact, you may be opportunist, you may even make money for a while, but you don't have a business.
I'd suggest everyone do this little exercise to assess vulnerability and sustainability, and I urge small business owners of any kind to do this, before starting, and ongoing.
In the end, google decided it was not to their benefit to do business with you just as you could have decided not to do business with google. That's business. If you can't tolerate that, then try regular employment, because you are going to come across the principle everywhere.
For example, proxy sites, wallpaperz sites, free ring town sites, some picture galleries that take pictures from other sites.
Indeed members of a forum hate to spend time trying to solve an apparent complicated problem only to find out in the end that the web site in question is some kind of useless sites like these made by hordes of teenagers. That's why people tend to blame to poster first, it happens just too often.
No it's not. There's a difference between arbitrage and strategically growing a site. The details are in the keywords you use and how many of them. ;)
adwinner, we can't speculate why Google shut you down. We do not know if you have been forthcoming about how your "organic" traffic was generated, we don't know how little content is on your site, what the topic was, and many other things to come to a conclusion. You'll just have to read Google's TOS and figure it out on your own because short of a site review, we cannot illuminate this for you. And WebmasterWorld's tos discourages site reviews.
Good luck,
;)
