+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

[HuskyPup]

Hi moftary

It makes typical G-reading these days, a very, very sad scenario.

G has proven several things in the noughties...pretend to be good then you get many to do most things for you for free...once all these people are believing every word you say, get 'em on board and pay them well, they'll spread the word so that loadsa people will want to join...even better, give 'em a free platform with a GUARANTEED AdSense account so that they can rip/scrape as many sites off they like and still NOT get banned.

And once you have word dominance financed by...greedy investors...rip the average webmasters' throat out, adjust the algo so that the average webmaster hasn't a clue what's going on and then promote AdWords to all and sundry.

I'm now at the point of cutting off my Google beer money, it's a mere pittance of what it used to be and it just ain't fun any more.

FWIW, I do know how to beat Panda, I just can't be a$$ed!

[DaStarBuG]

You say:

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

and you say

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.

Even though you know that it is against their quality guidelines you still keep these pages on (the optimization emails are automated as most google messages are).
This means you always knew that there was a risk, you took it and you lost. That's called gambling.

Don't gamble with your Adsense Account because once it is gone it is near to impossible to get it back.

What all people who complain about AdSense Termination are forgetting is, that they don't hurt Google when they violate TOS or Quality guidelines. They (and you too) hurt us, the AdWords advertisers who try to get a decent return from their investment.

Think about it

[koan]

that email I received from google adsense team proves me their love.

I'm pretty sure those emails are automated. I wouldn't interpret it as an endorsement of your web site. I agree with DaStarBuG, you took unnecessary chances with bad content because you thought you were too big to get banned, but this proves there is no such thing with Google. I would never gamble with my Adsense account, and even then, I know I might get really unlucky one day and get the dreaded email from Google for one reason or another.

[piatkow]

This is the same Google that sent Adwords vouchers to existing Adwords customers which they could only use by opening a second account, contrary to the ToS.

[explorador]

Don't put serious scripts of your accounts on non serious websites. For demo purposes you didn't need to add Adsense on the sites, fake ads made by you would have done the job. Besides having little ROI in terms of AS those demo sites were not helping, they were a risk. We also know for sure based on experience that very often G might give wrong advice, and those automated messages can't be taken as a sign of "they knew and it was ok".

I'm on a similar boat, I develop my own CMS and have demo sites for my clients to see but everything on the demo sites is demo and don't include ads on them. I hope you get a way out of this within their policies and get your account working again.

Even serious demo sites with original content could be a risk if you add Adsense, the purpose of the demo site is to show it off to others, this way you are exposing your G Ads and your account on them. By experience we know that our websites with Adsense should be like the fight club, we don't tell or speak about it. Remember the threads of click fraud caused by friends that wanted to help once they knew the site was of a friend of theirs.

[bwnbwn]

moftary I am suprised your suprised. In your own words you knew this could be a problem, but for some strange reason you decided to stay all in.
Such a waste of good account. I hope you can get the account back and I am sure this won't be a repeat.

Don't remember when the account banning started but right off the bat I took all adsense off our article directory site. The site gets a ton of hits and page views, but is a small part of our adsense revenue. Even though adsense had been on the site for years I knew sooner or latter if I didn't take action our company would have gotten the same email.

How do you go to the CEO and say umm I took a chance and lost our adsense acount.

[moftary]

Guys, I know there was a risk but there was no other options like I don't know what explorador means by "using fake ads". For the sake of argument, consider you are a drupal developer and has made an adsense module, how will you represent it since there is no demo mode?

Back to the original point, there was a risk and yes I took that risk in 2008. I was sent 3 years later an official google adsense email about these "not-serious-contents" sites encouraging me to do more ad exposure. Who knows perhaps my account was banned because I ACTUALLY HAVE NOT TAKEN AN ACTION and didn't optimize the sites for more earnings.

Some of you amazes me really considering official google emails something not accountable. Some of you amazes me because they think that this is hurting adwords advertisers when you can simply opt-out of showing your ads on this or that site. Perhaps when they finish mass banning hundreds of high adsense publishers accounts, you will see the impact of this on your adwords accounts. And one day you are going to read the emails I pasted here showing how hallucinating google is at the moment. I can't get pass an official google email asking me to comply before 2009 or else! If that's the PPC/CPA network you are trusting, enjoy!

And "fight club"? Are we dealing with some big name or some blackhat undergroud group around here?

And what about not responding to an appeal when officially announcing a 48 hrs reply?

Yes, as an adsense publisher I perhaps made a single mistake 3 yrs ago, though I still can't figure out an alternative to my action. Google adsense as a PPC network has made dozens of mistakes, and even worse they literally stole my money since they denied access to their control panel preventing access to my WU payment details that according to their TOS is no subjected to a refund, unlike June earnings that is paid in the end of July.

Face it, people. If I am to make another account under the radar, it's easy and safe. But the whole thing is about the concept itself. Disabling an aged clean history account for an incident that financially is estimated of 0.3% of the account earnings. It's about stealing some bucks from an old partner. It's about the hallucinating misleading official emails, let it be automated or manual (well, when I received from google "we reviewed" I assume it is manual).

You choose to see a single point of view and intentionally neglect looking at the full picture. You choose to see this site or that site as MFA trapping the user with no escape but for adsense clicks, without even caring about stats like pageviews, bounce rates, etc.. that show the users behavior in a so-called MFA site. You choose NOT to see how official emails became over time ridiculous.

However, since I left this for you as a webmaster judgment. I will just move on and hope that someone can make a use of the personal case I represented.

BTW, you can enjoy some other stories too on the official adsense forums that barely some official takes a lot at or respond to, no matter how serious things can be.

All the best,
mOftary

[explorador]

By fake ads I mean simulated ads, non real, just gifs or jpgs inserted on the demo sites. This serves the purpose to show the material and won't compromise anything. Is very important to include the text "demo" somewhere on the ads to avoid problems or being accused of falsification.

Flight club has been mentioned several times as a joke but also as a very true comparison to Adsense. We can't control who visits our sites but is advisable not to tell others this or that is my website with Adsense on it. Here some webmasters shared how they had problems after telling others about their web, as their friends began clicking the ads (the same could be done by your competitors), I don't know for sure how that can affect the sites today but is better not to find out.

I get your point but honestly I don't see any reason to put real adsense ads on demo websites other that getting some income, but anyway it means a risk in many ways from my point of view as a demo site won't have real or accurate information, and that could be the source of your problem. Instead, why not creating real websites instead of demo? See it from their perspective, MFA that copy and MFA that invent their info.

Hope you can get your sites working with AS again. Good luck.

[netmeg]

Some of you amazes me because they think that this is hurting adwords advertisers when you can simply opt-out of showing your ads on this or that site.

Unfortunately, you don't get it. The onus is not on the advertisers, it's on you. The advertisers are the important ones here, not you. It's a lot easier for Google to kick you out than deal with even one advertiser who is unhappy when he finds out his ads are running on a site such as yours. Let alone multiple advertisers.

The emails you received are automated. Obviously nobody's updated them for a while - did you really expect, on the scale that Google operates - to get anything else? They don't have the infrastructure; in fact they have LESS support now than they ever have (rumors of possible changes notwithstanding, none of it has changed)

You took a shot, had a good run for a while, and it's over. Time to move on.

[webprofessor]

I feel your pain I got banned recently as well. Maybe new EIN and business then re-register?

[moftary]

It's not a pain caused by financial damage because as you might guessed already, getting in again is 1-2-3 process. That's obviously if the disabled publisher care to re-join in the first place. A LOT of people neglect this fact and choose to go "don't whine! it's all your fault!" in spite of it and moreover intentionally neglect to look at the comedy show run by the 3rd party company they are members in as publishers or advertisers, or at the next new GAN CPA model, affiliates and advertisers.

It's more of an 'emotional' pain caused by being betrayed in a business relationship, as shown in misleading emails and funny but-not-haha errors and not neglecting any appeals, and moreover being literally stolen.

It adds up to it when you see a considerable portion of the webmasters community being "the sheep" or "the drifters" as long as things don't hurt them in person. It's sad to see old-school webmasters contradicting with BASICS like which party is the backbone of a PPC network; is it advertisers or publishers or which party is the backbone of a CPA network; is it affiliates or vendors.

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.

~mOftary

[netmeg]

Didn't understand a word of that, but good luck to you.

[karkadan]

I will keep it simple:

1. Emails from Google were botmade. No human being checked the sites when the email was sent. The bots sensed more ads could be added, so, that is why you got the email.

2. Why were you ban?
A. Advertiser noticed that he is not receiving a Return (sales) for the clicks on his ad.
B. He starts checking the sites were the ad is displayed. Notices that they are demo sites. He feels cheated. He demands your "head" to Google.
C. Google responds. If they feel you cheated, more or less, there could be total ban or partial ban.

YOU are responsible for your content, and for following TOS. And they can terminate the agreement any time they want, even when you are "right".

[karkadan]

Unrelated/related story. The second year I was an "Adsense partner", I encourage a dear friend to make his own site. He had the idea to make a top model site, focused on news and bios.

After 2 months, he left the project. But after a few months, the site got a few audience. He used my Adsense code, it was making dimes per day, but enough to pay the domain every year, and a bit more...

4 years later, I got an email from Google stating the site was BANNED.

Why?

Apparently, my friend used a photo that was a bit sexy. No nudes. The photos showed the girl on bikini.

Still, the site was banned.

[aka_eu]

moftary last days my AdSense account created in 2003was also banned for the same reasons : WEBMASTER GUIDELINES and also DECEPTIVE AD IMPLEMENTATION. I couldn't find the pages were they think I had this DECEPTIVE AD IMPLEMENTATION but maybe they have different eyes.

Anyway I removed any link units and remained only text/image/animation ads (of course not served by the AdSense Server), I make the appeal but I have no hope. The thing that bother me is that they didn't give us a clear example of the page where we was wrong at least with a clear example we can be convinced that they are right.

[HuskyPup]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld aka_eu

How long, months/years had your ads been like this or were they a recent change?

[aka_eu]

My ADS placement and look-up haven't change for months(for some of them years), except a minor change from an old square format to a new one.
This year I only placed an ad to a new website where from 2650 pages indexed by Google my website script had around 250 pages almost blank.

[HuskyPup]

This year I only placed an ad to a new website where from 2650 pages indexed by Google my website script had around 250 pages almost blank.

I don't understand what you're writing here other than you have 250 blank or nearly blank pages.

Do these have AdSense on them? If so that is against their TOS or do you mean something else?

[netmeg]

It sounds like he had something generating pages that were blank (or almost blank) except for AdSense, and of course, that would probably trigger the TOS violation.

[moftary]

The way you are describing how the adsense network works recently (yes, some including me has been working with adsense since 2003 and we used to get human responses from Google adsense employees) makes it a high-risk business for publishers. Simply a competitor can inject a publisher adsense code in a dummy site that is against the TOS and report him, eliminating him from the network. Google is not stupid and it does understand this already and instead of banning domains (I am obviously speaking of adsense-banned domains, not Google index) like they used to be doing, they do ban the accounts itself. I am not a fan of the conspiracy theory but I see it intentional with "the new adsense".

They are either saturated with publishers and want to get rid of the majority of them, or they don't have enough employees to handle such mass bans in a manual way.

To those who will say "I don't understand what you are saying", refresh your thoughts with my original post about integrating adsense on a hosted network, and compare between what they were doing then by communicating with the publisher when something trigger a TOS violation and what they are doing currently by direct account-wide bans without prior notices. Ignoring the appeal requests seems to ensure that this is intentional.

This is at least the way I see things.

[ken_b]

Simply a competitor can inject a publisher adsense code in a dummy site that is against the TOS and report him, eliminating him from the network.

Wouldn't a publisher be protected from this tactic by using the "Allowed Sites" feature?

[HuskyPup]

To those who will say "I don't understand what you are saying",

Please don't write in riddles since it makes it very difficult for us all to comprehend.

All I'm understanding right now is that you are on a "hosted network", whatever that is, and your implication that someone has taken your code and inserted into 250 blank pages.

Correct or not?

[moftary]

Please don't write in riddles since it makes it very difficult for us all to comprehend.

All I'm understanding right now is that you are on a "hosted network", whatever that is, and your implication that someone has taken your code and inserted into 250 blank pages.

Correct or not?

Speak for yourself please not in behalf of everyone. You even are confused between me, the original poster, and the other guy with the 250 blank pages. A cup of coffee will help really.

[HuskyPup]

Apologies moftary, between bannings and Panda I need a holiday...it's nearly time for beer here:-)

[moftary]

Wouldn't a publisher be protected from this tactic by using the "Allowed Sites" feature?

Finally someone with a valid point. I withdraw what I said earlier about such "tactic" but I am still stuck to what I am saying regarding the mass ban because of saturation, or lack of adsense support employees.

Again, in the old days on each incident concerning your account you used to get a human notification. Worst case scenario you would be getting your infringing site/domain banned (and announced) if against the TOS.

I never was banned before so I can't comment on how "appealing requests" were handled, but I know now that they are ignored. Officially they say it should take up to 48 hours but might be taking "days". Mine is two months old (not that I complain as I am over adsense already) and others are "months" old.

Just checking on the official adsense forums will amuse some of you with the horror stories there.

[aka_eu]

250 almost blank pages
The website is a touristic guide and it's seems that my mistake is that I added some cities to the website but I didn't put any information regarding them.

Now I fully understand that it was a mistake by me, but I still not understand why they don't give us a chance to correct the mistakes.

[edited by: martinibuster at 8:30 pm (utc) on Aug 18, 2011]
[edit reason] URL REMOVED. [/edit]

[moftary]

Now I fully understand that it was a mistake by me, but I still not understand why they don't give us a chance to correct the mistakes.

Have you submitted an appeal request? If so, when? and have you heard back from them with even a decline to your appeal?

Have you posted on the official adsense forums? If so, have you received any comments from an official adsense rep?

[aka_eu]

Of course I made an appeal (last Friday) still now, no answer good or no. I also posted on the Google Forum, but no answer either. I'll wait.
Did you get any answer from them ?

[bwnbwn]

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