Forum Moderators: martinibuster
<snip "invalid clicks email">
Iīm not about to howl in protest that i am innocent because that does no good, although i am totally confused about this after 6 months of using them.In actual fact, although the web site has over 250,000 hits a day the number of clicks has steadily been going down so the accusations of false clicking is a mystery to me, the click through rate has never been higher than 0.3 %
My real question is this..disabled is their polite way of saying "terminated"? and does that mean i can kiss goodbye to the money i made in january and the money i made so far this month?
thanks
[edited by: Jenstar at 2:48 am (utc) on Feb. 12, 2005]
[edit reason] No email quotes as per TOS, thanks! [/edit]
However if you read the terms you'll see that Google have the right to cancel at any time and keep the outstanding monies if they so wish.
After six months the click rate has been reducing whilst the traffic increases so i find it strange that now they decide to say something is wrong
CTR depends on a lot of things - the ads shown, where they are, what colours you use, also people increasingly use ad blockers... are you serving ads to the 11% of ppl without javsascript (who can't see the Google ads)? If so you could switch to that ad all the time whilst the problems with Google are sorted.
I canīt really complain because google are not obliged to provide me with the service but i do think they can do more to advise webmasters of any potential problems so we can try and deal with it instead of just closing accounts with no notice.
You should have site logfiles of your own to look at (and could track the clicks on the ads if you so wished). For minor infringements (where it's genuine) they won't suspend the account. In this case they don't want any more invalid clicks which is why they've suspended your account pending review.
if i have 250-300,000 page impressions a month over 3 sites i guess i might be better forgetting about adsense and using a system that pays via page impression but which ones are best (except fastclick)?
thanks
With this paper, Google will have to release all the information about the click froud.
Google can not hold back information necessary to brighten a criminal act.
The TOS gives them the power to do what they want....i donīt argue that they found click fraud...with over 13,000 visitors a day, someone could have clicked on everything for whatever reason but i donīt believe that every one of the 25,000 plus clicks was fraudulent.
Here is the question....there seems to be a contradiction between posting provisional earnings and then adjusted confirmed earnings (no doubt to deduct invalid clicks) and their draconian practice of immediately suspending an account where they find click fraud....this surely is not compatible....whatīs the point saying they will adjust earnings to deduct invalid clicks when you know they will cancel your account the minute they find any?
What really pisses me off is not the money, itīs the fact that google has given its advertising clients 7 weeks free advertising on my websites without having to pay a single cent since they suspended my account and refuses to even give me a clue as to what went wrong or why they did it. That surely is not ethical.
I bet they do. I've gotten money refunded from adwords on a number of occasions.
Miguelito, sorry that your account was cancelled.
Is it possible that instead of someone "clicking on everything" , that some of the content on your site was violating someone else's copyright or that you had placed incentives on your pages (like "click on these ads to support our site"), or something of that nature.
I just hope that my case (and subsequent stupidity) serves as a warning for other new webmasters... I was doing so well with google that i decided to concentrate full time on the sites i have and give up my job in the real world at the ripe old age of 39. I gave it 6 months to make sure it was stable and growing and then left work. Two days later, google pulled the plug so now i am looking for other sponsors just to survive.I hope nobody else in here does this because you never know when it can all come crashing down.
sorry for all the metaphors.
Here is the question....there seems to be a contradiction between posting provisional earnings and then adjusted confirmed earnings (no doubt to deduct invalid clicks) and their draconian practice of immediately suspending an account where they find click fraud....this surely is not compatible....whatīs the point saying they will adjust earnings to deduct invalid clicks when you know they will cancel your account the minute they find any?
They don't necessarily cancel your account the minute they (or you) find invalid clicks. Some of us have been targeted by "click attacks" without having our accounts disabled or even suspended. IMHO, it probably isn't a bad idea to notify AdSense Support if you see any obvious anomalies in your reports. (I once had daily earnings that were about $1,300 higher than normal, so I notified Google. After the second click attack nearly a year later, I did the same thing. This probably helped to establish my credibility with Google.)
Two days later, google pulled the plug so now i am looking for other sponsors just to survive.
Look over in Forum 20 [webmasterworld.com] where some alternatives are discussed: Kanoodle, Adbrite, Linkworth, Adsonar.
Give them a tryout and let the rest of us know how you make out with them!
;)
I've thought about trying to protect myself by creating a few DBA (doing business as) business entities and then having different adsense accounts for each site to protect myself.
Has anyone tried doing this?
or perhaps create an adsense account under a relative and put it back on the site?
or, let us know how Kanoodle/adsonar might be working for you?...
Maybe all happened because somebody had a strange idea about helping You.
Maybe if the offender writes You,
that he had only very strange ideas about helping,
You could report all to Google and sort it out.
It happened to me some years ago to bid
on a digital camera at Ebay.
This brought me nearly a conviction.
The seller in the US wrote only 10% of the
real value on the customs paper.
I had been for this several hours at a
interrogation at the customs.
I wrote the seller, why he wrote the wrong
value on the customs paper.
He wrote me back, that he thought it's polite
to write a far lower value on the customs papers.
I forwarded this email to the customs,
and this ended the criminal proceeding against me.
So stand up and fight, if You know You are right.
Now it's Your turn to defend Yourself.
I once became black listed in Infoseek.
They wrote me a lot of accusations.
I had to find out what accusations are
useabale to my case.
I found out that a organisation change of
my site with some .htaccess redirects
had been the cause for the trouble.
I wrote them exactly what I found out about
their list of accusations and I was back in Infoseek.
So try everything what I wrote.
1.) Dicuss in the forum the case
2.) If it not helps, file a criminal act against John Doe
Do everything to show Google that You are innoncent.
That's like one of the thriller movies like
"You have 24 hours to proof Your are innocent,
or You go to the electric chair"
The situation will not be solved by wailing around.
<snip>
I haven't get too many clicks just 10-30/day on average, when I checked my acc last time day before yesterday there were only few clicks till that time.
I was member of adsense about 8-10 months and got payments every month on time, Just wonder what happen with my acc, however now it looks like adsense past story for me.
[edited by: Jenstar at 7:07 am (utc) on Feb. 25, 2005]
[edit reason] Sorry, no email quotes please, as per TOS [/edit]
Considering that they refund the clicks to their advertisers, I don't think so.
Welcome to Webmasterworld.
farguy, hope that they will pay for every cent the site earned and I would be nice to have an explanation from G between disabled and terminated account.
Anyway, I just removed all G javascript inserts. That's enougth for me.
Will focus now on the site main business, more profitable.
1. Google's claim of invalid clicks may have nothing to do with invalid clicks per se. This has been discussed here often. When they want to terminate your account for whatever reason they could claim invalid clicks (and probably do). So examine everything. Read the TOS word for word, examine every page of your site. Did you add a Google search box to a page without realising that you already had three ads on the page? That's a violation! Did you forget to remove another contextual ad from the page before posting Adsense? That's a violation! Was there some old text on a 10 year old page that said "Please visit our advertisers"? That's a violation! Is there some javascript or other problem on any page that causes it to automatically refresh? That's a violation! Do you have an SSI serving Google ads to all pages including 404 and search pages? That's a violation! There are many more.
2. It is not the case that they automatically bar you when they detect some malicious clicking. They hold back the clicks for some more checking. Some, like EFV, have passed that checking so it's possible others can too.
3. Forums are trickier than other sites purely because there may be a post encouraging a click .... or users may feel a sense of loyalty that encourages them to click ads to earn you money.
4. When something does go wrong it pays to always be polite. Write to Google, confirm that you have not intentionally violated the TOS, reiterate your commitment to following the TOS and respectfully ask if they can share any information with you. Adding your respect and admiration for the Adsense program is sucking up - but may well work.
5. Never take a confrontational tone. It's a contractual agreement that can be terminated at any time by either party. So, if they want to cease dealing with you they are entitled to and they don't owe you an explanation. However, the retaining of already earned income really does suck. Particularly as nobody knows how much is actually refunded to advertisers - there is no third party audit. Bear in mind that they are hardly likely to terminate your account to improve their bottom line. That's too short termist and not typical behaviour of the canny operator that Google is.
Good luck miguelito . Your numbers don't add up. The 20-30 clicks in 25,000 wouldn't, I suspect, have been the cause. Look deeper.
but i think you are right about forum sites, it is quite possible that some of the members (not guests) have begun to feel a sense of loyalty and clicked on the ads thinking they were helping.
As for treating with google, i can only say i was politeness and formality itself, emphasising i was shocked they had found invalid clicks but did not dispute it for one moment and was willing to do anything necessary to prevent it happening again and if they could only direct me as to what the problem was I would work with them immediately to find a solution including banning any IPs which were guilty of the practice.
I still got the door slammed in my face with a "we canīt discuss how we detect these clicks" standard reply letter.
"we canīt discuss how we detect these clicks"
You are right. So, you got an automated reply. Now, you want to get the attention of someone enough for them to take the trouble to reply manually.
What type of emails are they most likely to get on a termination? Don't give them that, give them something different. Most letters are going to pick up on the "invalid click" terminology and try to address that. Be different. In fact, state in your email what they are likely to state anyway (including the fact you appreciate they cannot disclose methods used). And, one possible approach is the I'd really like to come back, I would be grateful for any advice on how I can make my site compliant.
It could be that they don't really want your kind of forum in the network. If all else fails, move on, forget about them. Live with the alternatives and you may do even better in the long run.
I am not saying it's not true, I am just saying 99% of the threads are the same.
