My story about being banned by AdSense

Just a heads up

[Alexander86]

In this thread I want to talk about the AdSense "invalid activity" instant bans. I don't know if it's only about small publishers, or only non-US publishers, I'll just tell you my story about being insta-banned and losing about $150 for no reason.

I like making sites and sometimes they become popular. To give you examples, I have a blog, a unicode emoticon "cheat sheet" page, a gallery with cat photos, etc. Some of them are in English, some are in Russian.

I always believed that you should not focus on money, just do what you like to do, create really good sites that you'd be proud to show to your friends and family, and everything else will be ok. Apparently not.

So when my sites combined got ~3000 unique daily visitors, I joined AdSense and got them all under the same account. It took me more than a month to earn the $100 for the minimum payment, so I filled in my address details and started to wait.

It was already more than $150 on my account (just before the PIN-code letter arrived) that I got an e-mail that I have some "invalid activity" on my site (not even mentioning which one), so now I'm banned for life and all my earnings are taken back. Just out-of-the blue, no warnings, no nothing.

I never clicked my banners (and never suggested anyone to), and this was specifically "invalid activity" ban, so it has nothing to do with my sites content (they have another one for content, "violating policies" or something). I never had any traffic spikes (apart from some reddit links that became popular, but that was about +20% of my usual daily traffic). I could't login to my AdSense account to even see the amount of clicks (since I'm banned), and they disabled invalid clicks reports anyway (more on that [adsense.blogspot.com...] ).

So I sent an appeal, giving them all the info I can (reddit links, Google Analytics trafic data, etc), but 12 days later I received an e-mail stating "after thoroughly re-reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into consideration, our specialists have confirmed that we're unable to reinstate your AdSense account". Of course, they "can't provide any more information" about why I was banned and even which site caused that.

So please, if you consider using AdSense in a similar situation, search more about their unmotivated "invalid activity" instant bans. It is quite common (even mentioned on AdSense wikipedia page). Please be aware.

[netmeg]

Ultimately, the quality of your traffic is up to you. Google protects the advertisers over the publishers every time. It doesn't matter if you had nothing to do with the traffic or the clicks, the advertisers are protected at all costs. That's just the way it is. And the advertisers want their ads on sites that are likely to send converting traffic.

At one point last year one of my sites got hit by some kind of weird traffic bot that executed javascript, and the very first thing I did was take the ads off. And I kept them off for the whole two months the attack lasted. It's just what you have to do when dealing with AdSense.

(I dunno if it could be the reddit links, but I suppose I wouldn't be surprised) Google could definitely be more transparent in this area, but fraud is so rampant they probably never will be.

[Nodeju]

This is one of the reasons why I personally am seriously searching for different venues to make money online. Google is just too dominant and it's a shame that some of us (like you), who are honest and forthright and do their best to make an honest living are being kicked in the b...s because of what Google 'thinks'.

For the past 4 years I worked my butt off to get my site to a level that I can say: "hey now this is a good quality site with good quality content".

I write all the content myself from scratch (12 to 18 articles per day, every day - no joke). At first it seemed Google was awarding me for my hard labor. It took one year but there after I began to make real Adsense income that increased every month.

As of beginning this year, my Adsense revenue has declined month by month to the point that it is now 1/10 of what it used to be. I still write my own content, every day, I have not changed my site in any way shape or form and I still enjoy the same traffic I had before the drop.

Why then this obviously very notable drop in income? Don't know and Google isn't talking.

Google Adsense may be one of the better paying programs out there but they are just too finicky for me to run a reliable business with.

Lode

[Swanny007]

I write all the content myself from scratch (12 to 18 articles per day, every day - no joke).

No offense but there's no way one person could be writing that many *quality* articles per day. Are you focusing more on quantity over quality?

Personally I don't care if I write just one article per week, because it's quality that counts above all. Don't worry about how many articles/pages you pump out, make sure it's something that adds value to the 'net or solves a specific problem. If it's something people will want to share (tweet, etc.) that helps.

Bans are just part of the business. Some "make it", some don't, that's life, but that holds true with any job. You can easily be laid off at a "regular" job.