I have been reinstated-adsense has let me back in

anybody want to recap protection measures

[suzyvirtual]

As a follow up to this thread;
[webmasterworld.com...]
Adsense has reinstated my account. When it was disabled, I sent an email assuring that I didn't understand why and that I very much valued the integrity of the system (both of which are true). They responded within a couple days with some questions about my website and my traffic. I answered all the questions honestly and today (a couple days since then) I received and email that says my account is reinstated. yay! The email today said that there were invalid clicks on my account, but upon further investigation, they determined that they didn't come from me. So, I will be extra super careful about checking my logs etc now, and alerting adsense if I see anything incongruent.
I have seen lots of great posts about protection measures such as blocking local ips from seeing the ads etc.
I thought maybe people would want to recap their best protection measures here. Also, any specific stats tracking programs that might help me to monitor my logs most effectively for invalid clicks?

[ken_b]

Congratulations! And thanks for letting us know about your good fortune.

[suzyvirtual]

oh, I feel the need to note that the whole process was so very reasonable. after all the stories i have read, i have to give adsense support some props for quickly, nicely and reasonably resolving this issue!

[zulufox]

YAY suzyvirtual!

Congrats!

[driris]

Congrats suzyvirtual!

[asp4bunnies]

Awesome news, Suzy, and props to you for not giving up.

[suzyvirtual]

thanks for all the congrats. it feels really good to be back after being "tossed out of the garden". I logged into my stats a little while ago which felt so nice (I was having withdrawl). lol.

[sailorjwd]

Way to go Suzy.

But the fact that they tossed you out and asked questions later scares me to death.

There's got to be some reasonable safeguards for honest publishers... I guess Y and M will be our safeguards.

[Webwork]

Welcome back to the (making a) living.

Time for a new nic: Lazadsenserus.

Lazarus for short.

P.S. Your bliss is showing. Nice.

[jetteroheller]

Monitoring would stop me creating new content.

What to do on vacation?

Storm into every internet cafe on the road?

Thinking over everybody clicking on 5 ads?

A click monitor has to be combined with referer log files, own cockie database.

Writing software to see unusual click behavior.

But this is the task of the Google AdSense team.
My task is to create good content.

[david_uk]

That's great news! Clearly they are happy to review cases, and let people back in upon appeal. It would have been fairer if their policy was to suspend accounts pending investigation, and ask for information BEFORE booting. I think they are sometimes a little too hasty in booting people.

[tallguy]

How is it possible to check logs if u have a shared server hosting? We are just given very basic stats by hosting company.

[bts111]

Nice work!

Your sites must be of value ;)

[Jean]

Well done!
I am quite relieved to see that you can be reinstated. Your initial post made me very nervous because it made me realize that it is not enough to be honest, offer good content and have been around AdSense since the programme began ....you could still get the boot. On the plus side, your unfortunate adventure gave me a great incentive to start looking for alternatives and stop viewing my monthly cheque from Google as a permanent part of my income.
I am still curious as to what was the cause of your problems. Do you know? Do they know? Are you allowed to tell?

[suzyvirtual]

I don't know what it was. I was offered no insight other that that there were invalid clicks, but they did not come from me.
On the one hand, the whole thing is kinda scary. On the other hand it is a bit liberating--both because there IS recourse, which I had been lead to believe there was not previously and also because when the "worst" happens you (I) are forced to suck it up and do your best to continue on. So, I gained a lot of persepctive in the whole process.

[suzyvirtual]

Oh! I forgot to mention that whilst I was wandering in the desert of the forsaken--I did recieve my February check which was another very reasonable and somewhat reassuring move from adsense.

[jetteroheller]

[ How is it possible to check logs if u have a shared server hosting? We are just given very basic stats by hosting company. ]

I have now over 60 GB log files compressed by ZIP to 4 GB on my harddisk.

Log files, and special the referer log files are the fundaments to improve web sites.

Every good host has log files.
Change Your host, what You have now is not professional, it's anti professional.

[frox]

SV, Yay and yay!
good news for you and for many of us.

[wonderboy]

Is Google going to compensate you for lost earnings seeing as you didn't actually do anything wrong?
W.

[sailorjwd]

It is unbelievable that G expects me to police their program. I have a business to run and don't have the knowledge or time to analyze clicks each day in order to cover my butt.

Most of you folks are in the website business to varying degrees. Google makes it simple for us non-website experts to slap on Adsense and tweak the ads and them some jerk comes along and clicks too many times and poof - Adsense is gone. So now I need to hire one of you guys for $100K per year babysit Adsense?

Here's a new business idea: Adsense cancellation insurance.

[tallguy]

I repeat my question.
How is it possible to check logs for suspicious activity if u have a shared server hosting for small websites?
We are usually just given very basic stats by hosting company.

[crescenta]

tallguy: change hosts.

I switched one of my domains over to a host that offers raw logs (rather than just a simple tracking program) because there's no way I am going to have adsense on a site if I can't get access to detailed log information.

Of course I've never viewed my raw logs, wouldn't know what to do with raw logs--but at least I know that they exist and I can get at them if I have to. My previous host didn't offer them, so no more doing business with that host.

[mcavill]

wow - that's really good news - I'm glad to hear adsense looked into your individual account following your email, that's really positive for honest webmasters/sites.

[ownerrim]

suzyvirtual, sounds fantastic. But...

re:"but upon further investigation, they determined that they didn't come from me"

Are you saying they wouldn't have investigated if you hadn't emailed them?

[mack]

It's quite scary... they agree that the clicks coulden't have came from you, yet the account was still disabled?

Wonder how many are in the same situation , but do not appeal?

Glad to hear your story had a happy ending, well done! :)

Mack.

[suzyvirtual]

yeah, i get the feeling that they would not have investigated further had I not emailed. there's no telling though.
wonderboy, I am pretty sure there will be no compensation. Considering that when it first happened I thought that I wouldn't get my earnings for Feb, March up until the 23rd (when it happened) AND I'd be losing a pretty large monthly income stream--getting all that "back" seems like enough to me--you do have a point, but I personally won't be pushing the issue.

[ownerrim]

well, that definitely says that if you get canned and know you're not at fault, you need to press the issue with google. it also says something very bad: they won't hesitate to dump you even if they don't HAVE ALL THE FACTS.

[cyberair]

Suzy, I am not asking for you to go into detail on this, but given your experience of G taking the time to investigate, work with you and ultimately reinstate your account, I wonder if the amount of income generated by the account holder has something to do with it. An account that generates just a few bucks, I assume, would not be given so much review time as an account generating thousands monthly.

Without saying how much you make, can you tell us if your monthly income is large (2k-10k per month) or not? This might explain if income has anything to do with getting more time from G.

[annaz1]

Congratulation Suzy, this is great news!

[suzyvirtual]

My monthly income from adsense was about $2000, with some variation, of course. I say was, cause I am easing back in very slowly...I want to get used to carefully checking all my logs and do more research on minimizing my risk for invalid clicks before I fully re-implement adsense.

I don't consider myself very big-timey, but my main adsense site happens to be in a niche with almost no publishers and quite a few advertisers, and I have the adjectivekeyword.com domain on the subject. So, perhaps that gave me more consideration cause I don't think there are a thousand other publishers who could just as easily supply the ad space I do.