AdSense Cancels your Account

why did that happen?

[brownoatmeal]

I've always believed in having multiple income streams for many reasons...

Well, I also have a love affair w/ the big G. I think I've got something good going and have been able to replicate successful category after category and bring in profit.

So, now, I'm seeing that my income is dominantly Google, and it makes me give pause to Google TOS and what I've heard in the past about fear of account cancellations, etc.

I wanted to start a thread about this... What exactly happens when your account gets cancelled? Of course, if you violate the terms, they can toss you out, but are there ever warnings? Are there petitions to state your case and be seen before the Court of G as it were?

Or am I right to worry about the dominant source of my income firing me in a whim b/c maybe I didn't fully understand their TOS?

Let's talk about this!

[blairsp]

There are indeed loads of threads on this.

When your account gets cancelled you get an e-mail that your account has been cancelled for invalid clicks(usually). You are locked out fo your control panel and if you look at your site it will show error messages where the ads used to be. You can then obviously ask G why. The response I woudl not like to predict in most cases, but in my case I got standard (boilerplate) responses which often didn't even relate to my question or points. My experience with others though have suggested that by the time you get to your third e-mail exchange the responses are different in that they are SLIGHTLY more tailored to your questions.

Your love affair with G takes a temporary or permanent distancing just like all good love affairs and you start to do strange things like using Yahoo as your search engine instead of G.

Not sure whim would be the word I would use but your "right of appeal" in the

court of g

in my experience isn't nearly as good as the ones I have seen on Ally McBeal, L.A. Law, Perry Mason etc

[Sanenet]

Obviously having all our eggs in one basket is dangerous. However, as long as you don't give Google a reason for kicking you out, I see no reason why you can't have a long and happy relationship with them.

[webmasterworld.com ]

I would, of course, advocate that now you have a decent income from G, you start looking at other ways to make money from the net. Don't just sit there hoping you'll be ok - what if G went bust tomorrow?

[webmastertexas]

It does seem a bit risky to put all your eggs into one basket, as it were, especially since this particular basket could drop you on a whim without ever bothering to let you in on their decision.

But I think it should also be said that G seems to be getting more and more lenient nowadays. I remember when you could only put one ad format on your page, now it's multiples. Seems like since they've gone public they've been making an effort to make more money, which means keeping as many affiliates as they can, which means they'll liable to not kick you out for some indiscriminate reason unless they can help it.

Of course this is just my perspective, and I could be completely wrong. :)

[Born_User]

My experience:

Adsense didn't like the way that the ads were being displayed on certain pages. I was clearly in violation of the TOS. I sorta "knew" that I was i violation, but figured that it was a gray area, and I would probably be ok.

Adsense sent me an email and notified me of the issue. They said that if I failed to respond or did not correct the problem, then I would be dropped from the adsense program. I replied and said that I would fix the problem immediately. I fixed the problem, and sent another email letting them know that I had fixed the problem and was now compliant, and open for inspection.

They wrote back and thanked me for adhering to the rules, blah-dee-blah-dee-blah.

I've been in good graces ever since.

That's my experience

[morpheus83]

I had got 2 emails from adsense.
1) When I had accidentaly placed 2 google ads on my page at the starting of the program a year back when double serving was not allowed.
2) When I had changed the Google search form.

[ogletree]

I got an email from AS that said that I had too many kw's on pages. My sites were pure spam anybody could tell. We made a few chages like taking AS off of our sitemap pages and took off some misspellings on the bottom of one page. We told G we were done and they said thank you and kept sending us our money.

[europeforvisitors]

But I think it should also be said that G seems to be getting more and more lenient nowadays. I remember when you could only put one ad format on your page, now it's multiples. Seems like since they've gone public they've been making an effort to make more money, which means keeping as many affiliates as they can...

IMHO, being lenient and allowing multiple ads are two different things, and multiple ads are simply a way to increase inventory (not part of an effort to retain publishers).

[Born_User]

I agree and disagree. I agree that it's not leniency, but just better business sense.

However, I don't think displaying multiple ads increases inventory. Inventory depends on the individual budgets set by advertisers. The higher the budgets, then the more ads that Adsense is allowed to display, hence more inventory. When inventory runs out, CPM goes down.

Sometimes there's a surplus of inventory, and displaying multiple ads allows Adsense to maximize their chances of being able to sell their inventory. But simply displaying more ads wouldn't increase inventory.

[webmastertexas]

I agree and disagree. I agree that it's not leniency, but just better business sense.

I think that's the point I was trying to make. They're being more "lenient" because they want to make more money, thus they are less strict -- i.e. more lenient. :)