+8 years old adsense account got banned

Not yet another "my adsense is banned" story!

[moftary]

Ok, first time to write in this section as oppose to writing on the SEO section but you are going to love this.

In 2003 I started a "Google partnership" by integrating their adsense on my free web hosting site and the hosted network. From there I kicked off and made a small wealth off this partnership. Adsense team during this period was always professional and decent with their notifications sent to my account complaining about this hosted site (against my own TOS and adsense TOS) and from my end I do my job of disabling any infringing site to keep my network clean. Things were good!

In 2008 I develop a new CMS with both google and yahoo text ads support. The CMS functions by presenting contents on the subject in a very structured way for both the users and searching engine bots. I demonstrate my CMS to a bunch of my clients by building 50 sites around 50 topics with contents being populated from articles sites and such, keeping reference links to avoid any copywrite issues. No promotion has ever been done to these sites (MFA in the eyes of us and in our terms, yet great way to present contents in the eyes of my clients which are my target) except for placing them as a showcase in my company site front page. Adsense earnings from these sites are almost nothing since there is no traffic or promotions going on, and obviously as someone who knows that google will treat them as MFA sites with zero added value to the user (first argument) and because I have no way to show the integration and support for adsense except by using my own account I decided NOT to promote these sites in any way. Let's keep things clean.

On March the 3rd, 2011 I received this email from google adsense team..

Give more advertisers access to your site with
text & image ads

Hi,

We just reviewed your site,***********.com, and
noticed that you're not opted-in to show both text and image/rich media ads on at least 25 units.

Enabling all of your units to display both text
and image/rich media ads can significantly increase your revenue. Your 336x280 ad unit on ***********.com/category/*****-***-******/***-******-*****-***.html is one example of where you can make this change.

Click to upgrade your units now!

- Once you're logged into your
AdSense account, click the "My Ads" tab
- Select all ad units
- From the Actions dropdown, edit
ad type to "Text & Image / rich media ads"
Need more proof?

Opting into text and image/rich media ads increases the pool of advertisers competing to appear on your site. More competition means a higher eCPM for you. Units that are opted into all ad types typically see an eCPM that's 80% higher than text or image only units. Check out our case study to see how xx.#*$!#*$!xx.com started earning 51% by making this change.


Opt in and earn more now!

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense team

OMG! What we call MFA sites don't actually apply here on my sites. Google adsense team are actually encouraging me to make more revenue of these sites by upgrading from text-only ads to images/rich-media ads. It was not a coincidence that my earnings of these sites has increased in 2011 for some reason or another!

I take no action since I wasn't interested in these demonstration sites and I have sold the CMS to many clients already which was the project goal anyway. Honestly the only reason for keeping these sites online is that they are making profit from adsense program, and hey, that email I received from google adsense team proves me their love.

On July the 14th, 2011 I receive the following "Your Google AdSense account has been disabled"..

Hello,

We continually review all publishers according to our program policies (
[google.com...]
) and Terms and Conditions (
[google.com...] ). During
a recent review of your account, our specialists found that it was not in
compliance with our policies.

WEBMASTER GUIDELINES: Our program specialists regularly review sites in
the AdSense program.

It is important for a site displaying AdSense to offer significant value
to the end user by providing unique and relevant content, and not to place
ads on sites with little to no original content. Additionally, Google ads
may not be placed on non-content-based pages.

Your site should also provide a good user experience through clear
navigation and organization. Users should be able to easily click through
your pages and find the information they are seeking.

Because your sites violate the spirit of our policies, we have disabled ad
serving.

For more information, please review our program policies
(https://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/bin/answer.py?answer=48182) and
Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines
(http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality).

As a result, your AdSense account has been disabled.

Additionally, as stated in our Terms and Conditions, publishers who have
breached this agreement may not receive further payment. The earnings on
your account will be returned to the affected advertisers. Please note
that this step was taken in an effort to protect the interests of our
AdWords advertisers, and to maintain the quality of the AdSense program.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

What? Some +8 google adsense account with clean history and huge past earnings gets banned without any prior notices or warning for having ads on sites they see has no value for the user and more importantly sites that they encouraged me three months earlier to increase earnings from?

I login immediately to my adsense account to find it disabled indeed (yes I thought there is some error). That made me thinking also of what happened to my WU-MTCN that were already issued long time ago but I was lazy to pick up (I prefer collecting two WU payments in a single shot).

I appeal by mentioning all the facts and removing adsense ads off these sites. I expected the result of my appeal in 48 hours as instructed but ZERO answer til the moment of writing.

Some more amusement for you.. I used the same google adsense account earlier to opt-in "Doubleclick for Small-business Publishers" program and "Google Affiliate Netowork" program. I got approved there but never effectively used any of the two platforms features for any purpose. I was waiting for GAN to go out of beta before working with google on a larger scale. After the email of the google adsense disable notification, I receive this email from GAN on the 15th of July, 2011..

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for taking the necessary steps to link your existing Google Affiliate Network and AdSense accounts. Unfortunately, we were unable to complete this process, either because your application to AdSense was declined or because your AdSense account has been disabled. You should have received a separate email notification from Google with more details on the status of your AdSense account.

If your application to AdSense was declined, you can find more details and application tips at [google.com...]

If your AdSense account was disabled, you can find out more information at [google.com...]

You have an option to either resubmit a declined AdSense application or appeal an AdSense account that was disabled due to invalid activity. Unfortunately, you will no longer be able to participate in Google Affiliate Network if you are not able to link your account to an approved AdSense account. If you are unable to link to an approved AdSense account, we plan to terminate your Google Affiliate Network account on October 31, 2009. Any earnings prior to this date will be paid to you, through the existing accounting information on file with Google Affiliate Network (physical check mailing or ACH deposit).

Sincerely,

Google Affiliate Network

OMG! They are planning to terminate my GAN network account on 2009! I must hurry and comply!

Now seriously speaking, I thought it's all google adsense team individual error and after the appeal the error will be resolved. But no reply at all although ensuring a reply within 48 hours? If that what happened to a small business publisher, what do they do with the average webmaster or blogger?

Til the moment of writing, my DFP account is active, my GAN account is active while the root adsene account behind them is disabled.

I leave the judgement on this case to you all..

~Moftary

[netmeg]

I already have moved on ever since 48 hours had been passed from my appeal request. The motivation behind this thread again was to represent a real life case to a sample of the webmasters community and then to sense their reaction to it.

Both has been achieved, so thanks for your input, everyone.

Let's go back to this then, shall we? I think you've gotten your reactions.

[moftary]

Let's go back to this then, shall we? I think you've gotten your reactions.

I did, but other people resurrected that thread and neither you nor I have the right to shut people mouths (or keyboards in our case).

aka_eu and moftary one of the main reasons I opt out of any network advertising is just what (by accident)and (took a chance) you guys did with other peoples money. You have to remeber it is my money your dealing with on your site. My ads being clicked and my money ending in a worthless spend. I got so sick of seeing the referrals going to the crappy site, seeing the bounce, seeing my money being pissed away, wasting my time complaining to google, so I got out.

I wonder how you would feel if every time I came over to your house I helped myself to your piggy bank. Just stuck my hand in there took me a wad of cash and said see ya latter. Sooner or latter you won't let me in the door. This is what happened to your account.

Publishers got tired of seeing blank pages with their ads or going to some god for saken demo site seeing you guys reaching in my piggy bank and saying see ya latter.

How can you come in here moftary and complain your crappy demo sites were full of crap and flat out stealing. Quit your complaining an just man up to the stupid idea you did. Hell man that was bad idea nd your toast.

First of all, calling people thieves and calling their ideas stupid doesn't seem right to me.

Secondly, you can exclude the sites you don't want to have your ads on from your adwords control panel (and yes I am an aggressive adwords advertiser myself), so if you don't know how to run an adwords campaign it might be better if you find yourself another job.

Finally, Google "stole" this money back and refunded it to the advertisers, not just they froze the pending funds but literally stole an older WU payment by denying access to adsense control panel. Compare this action with check payments where they can never put a "stop payment" on.

This thread is about mass-banning adsense accounts, about deceptive official google adsense emails (manual or canned ones), about ignoring threads on the official adsense forums, and about ignoring appeal requests without even declining the appeal. If you have something useful to add to this thread, be my guest, but if you don't have anything to do other than to offend people, whine like kids about "your money", and to announce that you opt-ed out the whole network advertising because you think adsense is crap, then again, please find yourself another job to do.

~mOftary

[bwnbwn]

moftary you missed the whole point of what I said. Yea I can keep your site from displaying my ads after I have to spend the time go through the referrals see the sites I want to exclude, ban them and move on. Well is my time better spent having to spend all day banning these sites. Is yours? I opt out due to this type of thinking. You reaped what 8 - 6 years of revenue from the advertisers so what they got back was a drop in the bucket from what they lost.

I didn't call you stupid it was the idea you did not you personally. I can see from your post your much more intelligent than I ever hope to be, but the idea was lets not say stupid, but one that should have been better thought out.

I will ask you this being a advertiser. Would you have banned your site from displaying your ads? If you answer this question yes then tell me why you did it.

You may think this is thread is about mass banning but really it is about the reason a site was banned. What could have prevented this ban, and what others can learn to prevent this action.

I said in the begining of this thread when this started I could see a site we owned "could" be a problem. I took the necessary steps to prevent Google having to take any action because I chose not to.

[netmeg]

Secondly, you can exclude the sites you don't want to have your ads on from your adwords control panel (and yes I am an aggressive adwords advertiser myself), so if you don't know how to run an adwords campaign it might be better if you find yourself another job.

Disingenuous at best. One can't block your site until they know it exists, and they don't know it exists until they've already displayed ads / spent money on it, and then gone to look at it to see what it was. Which of course isn't scalable when you're running a sizable campaign. Moreover, most small advertisers DON'T know how to exclude sites, and just because you *can* take advantage of that doesn't mean you're going to get a lot of sympathy here for doing it.

And it would appear that Google thinks so, too.

[moftary]

I will ask you this being a advertiser. Would you have banned your site from displaying your ads? If you answer this question yes then tell me why you did it.

You may think this is thread is about mass banning but really it is about the reason a site was banned. What could have prevented this ban, and what others can learn to prevent this action.

But I was not questioning the reason behind the ban. Take a moment and re-read my original post with another perspective. This thread is not even a complaint it is a story, report, case-study, or whatever you might want to call it.

In this case study I questioned certain adsense actions and summing them up again for the interested audience..

1- Choosing to disable an account over a few bux [The whole lifetime earnings for these PPC sites behind the ban is 0.3% of what the account has made in over eight years with sites that is 100% adsense compliant; sites that were sold to other clients and still having these clients adsense code on them] instead of disabling the sites in question or even warning the publisher like they used to be doing.

2- Sending the publisher an official email encouraging him to work more on optimizing the ads for these PPC sites. (Think ask.com or any other similar company site when you want to imagine how these PPC sites are setup).

3- Zero communication channel between the publisher and adsense team. You send an email to adsense support, you get a canned response with links to FAQ. Zero official responses on even what is called the official adsense forums.

4- Offering appealing requests promising a reply within 48 hours but might be taking days, and eventually ignoring these requests completely. I don't mind at all having a negative response to such appeal requests (their network, their rules) but completely ignoring such requests is just wrong.

5- Other hilarious errors in official emails with wrong information (for an example, an official date).

6- Denying access to the control panel that publishers has their issued WU payment details so they can't cash-out their approved earnings. Think this as oppose to issuing a physical check to the publisher where they can't put a stop payment on. Think this as oppose to automatically emailing the publishers their WU payments details.

Regarding the 1st point some went like "well as long as you made an error you deserve this regardless than anything" and I am fine with this as long as they think so. Regarding the 2nd point, the majority of webmasters here in WebmasterWorld pointed out that these emails are automated and shouldn't be taken into account (?!). Regarding the other points, no-one has elected to respond or to even comment about them while they are the main points behind this thread in the first place.

And then the whole thread went completely off track..