Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have had an adsense account for just about 8 months now. My earnings were moderate as my site doesnt get a whole lot of traffic. This past weekend i was away visiting family and when i got back and logged into my account, I found that it had been disabled due to fraudulant clicks.
I checked my server logs to see if there was anything unusual or out of the ordinary, and i couldnt find anything. The last time i had checked my adsense earnings prior to leaving for the weekend, there hadnt been any spikes in impressions, clicks, CTR or anything. Everything seemed pretty normal.
I replied to Google explaining my findings and to find out what I could do to rectify the situation so that I dont lose my account. I never did recieve any warnings from Google that there was a fraudulant click being generated, and I assume that the fraudulant clicks they discovered had to have happened over the weekend. But all i recieved back was another automated response explaining that my account will remain disabled due to fraudulant clicks. Is there anything I can do at this point? Or am I just out of luck. I would greatly appreciate anyone's insight.
P.S. Im pretty sure i dont have any enemies or competitors that would do something like this, and i dont have any friends, partners, etc that visit my site or would fraudulantly click on the ads.
Thanks
Kev
I have been with them pretty much since it first came out. I cannot tell you how much (TOC) but it is respectable and comfortable, spanning many sites. My experience with them has been impressive. The do NOT wack you for no real reason... Web publishers make them their money after all (when it's honest).
Look at their point of view, if they were not good cops I personally would not spend thousands on adwords. What publisher wants to "give" money away? On the other hand, running adsense, "I" want premium dollar which ONLY comes from a trusted network... A two edged sword that really does work in your favor as long as you are above board and honorable in ALL that you do.
Payment can be accepted, but if then before they send the check you get removed, you don't get the check. That's kind of odd, isn't it? Since they have in all their wisdom and expertise already accetepted and checked that payment to be without any "fraudulences", why do they still hold on to that money?
If they've disabled your account for click fraud (whether or not you were guilty), how do you know they aren't going back and taking a closer look at the clicks that occurred before the incident that triggered the account shutdown?
Even if they treat previous invalid clicks as water over the dam, it makes sense for them to withhold payment for a simple reason: to deter click fraud. The more money publishers stand to lose from click fraud, the less tempted they'll be to cheat.
If they suspect a click fraud, and go through the already accepted payments AGAIN, that just means that their system is not perfect in the first place.
Google could be more open on lot of things. Wouldn't hurt anyone.
Adsense should say where and when had the invalid clicks occured, so that webmasters could see where the problem is, and then remove the problem.
First of all, the publisher may be the problem.
Second, most publishers aren't going to be in a position to prevent invalid clicks (except for clicks resulting from obvious TOS violations such as "Support our site by clicking on these ads").
Third, revealing such details could also make it easier for abusers to reverse-engineer Google's detection methods.
FWIW, after seeing all the SEO abuses that have resulted from the publication of Larry Page and Sergey Brin's PageRank formula, Google probably has good reason to value secrecy. :-)
I have had an adsense account for just about 8 months now. My earnings were moderate as my site doesnt get a whole lot of traffic. This past weekend i was away visiting family and when i got back and logged into my account, I found that it had been disabled due to fraudulant clicks.
What a wonderful thread ;)
I must confess that I do not read most of these "my account has been suspend and I don't know why" threads, but this one, which I stumbled across is a real lulu.
One wonders why a guy puts up a dodgy site, solicits people to click on their ads, suffers from lapes of memory,
kevlardev, if you thought you had problems before, people who hate you are now aware of your url. Smart move, dude.
"Feel free to stop by, visit my sponsors, and register on our active forums."
This was posted by you on another message board earlier this year, after you began running AdSense... and it is against the terms to do this. Perhaps someone reported you, or they found it on their own, but that could very likely be what got you suspended. That, or all the posts you made pointing to your now-inactive mesothelioma site...
Thanks for the insight, i appreciate you doing the research for me. Could you email that message board quote you found about visiting sponsors to me so i can take a look at it, i cant believe i would have said that on a board
Now whilst the thread has been very entertaining, on a serious note, it may well be worth the moderators while considering whether to zap all these threads on the line of "I have been axed by Google and cannot for the world think why"
The reason that I personally do not bother with the Adsense thread much these days is that there is very little of "real" value - to tempt me looking or contributing.
Basically most of us that make a living out of Adsense have abandoned contributing. I am not suggesting a solution, but suggesting that the issue needs to be addressed, if indeed the need to reduce the amount of noise is considered necessary.
I lost $$$$ to AdSense, so I would REALLY want to know, who or what was it, that made those invalid clicks.
I lost $$$$ to AdSense, so I would REALLY want to know, who or what was it, that made those invalid clicks.
It might help to know that when Google says "fraudulent clicks" - they don't just mean multiple clicks by the owner or another person - it can refer to clicks generated by fraudulent means.
For example let's say someone has a site about "cheap widgets" and puts adsense on it - but it turns out that they only make 5 cents a click. So then they get the bright idea to put "expensive gadgets" on the page 5000 times in tiny white text on a white background, and suddenly they start earning $5 per click.
Well, the day the Google's adsense team reviews that site, chances are that publisher will be removed for "fraudulent clicks" - because a page about cheap widgets shouldn't be showing "expensive gadget" ads in a contextual advertising network - and it violates Google Adsense T&C.
I have seen a number of adsense publisher sites that were removed for "no reason" and I am sorry to say that all of the ones I saw were breaking the rules in one form or another.
I know that most of the time the publisher is really the one to blaim. However there are people like me (believe it or not), who have a successful and professional websites removed from AdSense due to reasons that have nothing to do with the webmaster himself. These websites are the backbone of internet advertising and should be provided with better protection against click frauds.
I never said that i had been disabled and "dont know why"
I just wanted to learn more about the "fraudulant clicks"
If they were generated by a competitor or such, i wanted to know if there was action that could be taken to prevent this from happening, rather than just having my account disabled forever.
If the "fraudulant clicks" were not technically clicks but a breach of TOS, I wanted to know what that might be as well, which it seems Jenstar helped me to discover.
I just wanted to ask some people who are more knowledgeable with adsense than i am to help me decipher where i may have went wrong.
Thank you to everyone who did that for me :)
I have a website that receives over 40.000 unique visitors a day, so I don't need scam to make money.
I know that most of the time the publisher is really the one to blaim. However there are people like me (believe it or not), who have a successful and professional websites removed from AdSense due to reasons that have nothing to do with the webmaster himself.
Sorry to go OT kev - and good for you for owning up to your mistakes.
Entelekhia, I am going to go out on a limb and speculate that one of the sites you published the adsense code on was the same as the one that you refer to in this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
If I am not mistaken, Google considers use of another person's copyrighted material as a violation of their policies - could that be why the adsense account was in violation?
Site may not include: Any other content that... infringes on the legal rights of others
[google.com...]
This thread is over 40 messages long of utter C**P
It is boring reading and gets your back up when someone who has broken the adsense TOS post the same heading what you have started this thread with and then gets found out on what caused it.
There are members posting on other forums how they are staying away from posting in the adsense forum because of the rubbish like this thread and for some reason it does not get removed.
I only know of ONE person who has had the adsense account reactivated the rest who have posted saying they can't access the login have never returned to say google made a mistake....Mmmmmm I wonder why...
I understood the TOS, but i made a post and didnt pay attention to my wording, didnt review what i had said before i posted it. So knowing that i understoood the TOS, i never thought to look for a post telling people to "visit my sponsors"
Luckily people in this forum DID check all the bases, and they helped me find where i went wrong
Well for your information the only reason you got found out is you posted your url otherwise it would not of been solved
didn't pay attention to my wording...
What like "CLICK HERE SO I CAN RIP ADVERTISERS OFF"
Bottom line, i was excited about my MMORPG site...i was posting in forums to get people to come visit because i was proud of the graphical layout i had created on the site. I didnt realize that i typed asking for people to visit sponsors...im sure someone of your caliber has never ever said something without thinking it through. But i did. Not trying to rip off advertisers, that wasnt my intent whether you care or not.
Why dont you just try to not be bias with people for half a second and just be helpful. The others do, and it works pretty well for them
But, yes, it does seem that bans are always with good reason - even if Google doesn't explain the reason.
I started that site long before Google Adsense was even available, as hard as some may find that to believe. I have a friend and business associate who has a mesothelioma and toxic tort lawfirm. I created a website for them and then i put together one of my own. My goal was to sell advertising space to lawyers once the site started getting a lot of traffic.
Of course the traffic never came. Towards the end i put Adsense on there to see if i could generate revenue from that. But once again, i had very little to no traffic to the site. So i just shut the site down, as there was way to much competition for direct attorney advertising anyway.
It could have maybe played a factor if google was suspicious of the site, but due to the fact that it was taken down and Adsense removed several months ago, i dont see why they would wait until now to do something. But of course, anything is possible.
I didn't realize that i typed asking for people to visit sponsors
It has taken a while to respond because I fell off my chair laughing at this comment you said.
So seeing that you understand the adsense TOS how did you managed to miss this then?
Incentives
Web pages may not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads. This includes encouraging users to click on the ads or to visit the advertisers' sites as well as drawing any undue attention to the ads. This activity is strictly prohibited in order to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as "click here," "support us," "visit these links," or other similar language that could apply to any ad, regardless of content.
Now what would you like me to do wrap you up in cotton wool, give you a pat on the back and say its a shame you have got your account suspended and I bet if you had a second chance you would never do it again...
This has already been discussed months ago and if you think you are having a hard time on this thread try doing a search at google and read some of the other comments from not only this forum but many others because what you are not understanding is a lot of adsense publishers are also adwords advertisers, and you was quite prepared to steal the money from the clicks you had up until the fateful weekend when you received the dreaded google email saying you account has been suspended.
I used the word STEAL because that is what you are doing from the advertisers and whether you like it or not is why your account was closed.
dammit this thread wont die..
I fell off my chair laughing at this comment
The whole thread is in that vein, but is also very instructive.
The original poster wrote
I found that it had been disabled due to fraudulant clicks.I checked my server logs to see if there was anything unusual or out of the ordinary, and i couldnt find anything
How many threads have you seen start like that? The thread has come a long way since then - with a bit of luck it will stop similar posts for a while...
..but I doubt it. The thread has been very polite. If you really want to see the hounds at work, have a look at ODP's RZ, where the punters still line up for abuse with "my great site has not been listed on DMOZ and I cannot understand why". These guys are hairshirt masochists in search of public humiliation :(
dammit this thread wont die..
It will never die if people keep posting in it asking for it to die...
I must also say that after negotiating with representatives of Finnish Ministry of Education and Ministry of Justice, they found that my website doesn't break any international copyright or trademark laws. Google AdSense also approves websites in their program after personally going through them all. And my content didn't change at all during my time in Adsense.
If Google meant something else than fraudulent clicks, they should have said that there was another type of misconduct concerning TOS. They specifically said that the account was disabled due to "fraudulent clicks".
As far as I can tell, in every account cancellation described by people posting on this site, the account holder was notified that the site was disabled due to "fraudulent clicks".
In my understanding (I don't know for sure, I don't work for Google) - that they mean by this "clicks obtained by fraudulent means". That would include self-clicks, clickbots, incentivized clicks, and any other types of clicks gained while the site was in violation of the Google Adsense T&C.
I too stopped posting to this forum when I saw that 50% of it had become:
- G dumped me and i have no idea why. (ps. come to my mesolothamia (sp?) site)
- Adsense earnings down 4% in last hour. What's up?
- Adsense earnings up 4% in last hour. Google rocks!
- "can I click my own ads?"
- "can my buddies click my ads?"
- "can my buddies' dogs click my ads?"
etc, etc, etc
too much noise, not enough signal which is a shame.
Well in regards to the M**********a site. As i had stated before, that site has been down for several months as i never could get much traffic to it.
A M-word site would probably have gotten you banned anyway. I should imagine that any site generating keywords for *that* would get red flagged. I reported an M-word site last week for a clear violation of the TOSes, and I expect many other webmasters would too. I don't know how much the bids are at Google for that, but right now at Overture the bid levels are unbelievable.
Now, here's a lesson for everyone. Do you really think that suddenly generating massive multidollar clicks on an AdSense account would go un-noticed? It would kind of stick out like a sore thumb wouldn't it?
The bottom line is that there are people working for Google who are a helluva lot brighter than most of the people here. There's no point trying to outsmart these people. If you can think of it, they will have thought of it first and coded a detection algorithm for it.
there are people like me (believe it or not), who have a successful and professional websites removed from AdSense due to reasons that have nothing to do with the webmaster himself.
Could you send me by sticky mail your URL? I could help you find out why it happened.
