A friend of mine has had his AdSense account banned for click fraud.
He sent a reply to the AdSense Team, explaining that he didn’t do any fraud, or if fraud was the case there, he had no knowledge of it. Part of his reply was :
Considering that I can’t create a new AdSense account, will you allow me to rent the space in my website, to other AdSense publishers ?
Guess what. Google’s answer was (the most interesting part of their reply at least) :
If other AdSense editors wish to display ads on your website, they can do that, as long as they respect the rules of the AdSense Program.
Please do remember that we regularly check the website that use our AdSense program, and we monitor that our policies are respected. If we track an account that disobeys these policies, the account will be banned.
Unlike usual e-mails received from Google, this one wasn’t signed or personalized with a name. Just “The Adsense Team”.
So, let’s go over it again:
- I have a website with AdSense Ads on it.
- I’m accused that I’m doing click fraud, my account is banned, and I’m reassured that I won’t get my account back.
- I’m allowed to put other ads, from other AdSense publishers, on the same website, although I am supposedly doing click fraud
Isn’t life great for advertisers this way ? Figured so ..
That’s just one of the many ways that Google makes their money.
They also confiscate all the funds in the publisher’s account that were made before getting banned… ALL OF THE FUNDS. The excuse they give is that the money is to be returned to the advertiser. As an AdWords advertiser, I have NEVER been credited to my account. Where does that money go? And, even if some click fraud has taken place, surely there are cases where some of the money was earned honestly.
Google are getting far too big and too powerful. Some checks and balances need to be put in place to ensure that all applicable laws are being followed.
Thats truly right Zap.
Google is really going out of hands. Many of there process namely handling of funds, published account surveillance, are not clearly explained to the public.
Anyways, Google many a times gives warning before banning the account and sometimes not… There must be some options that they might be using or something…
I would have expected at least to get the info about the website which caused the ban, since I had more websites with Adsense on it, and also more info about the IP address of the user. This way I could find out if either was someone from my company or someone else. But they didn’t shared anything with me, so I was unable to track the problem all by myself. I had to ask about this rental solution, because the website has huge potential, and it would be a pity to let then potential fly away.
WOW!
I guess big G wants the revenue from thos epages no matter what. Banning the account can/could help them claim they are working to minimize fraud. But they’ll be all too happy to let another account holder jump in there with more Google ads.
Greedy bastards.
What about a domain that is basically a member-run directory or listing service, like Centiare.com? There, the users are free to create articles about different people or companies and place THEIR OWN AdSense ads. As far as I know, Google hasn’t objected to that, because Centiare has been up and running for 4 months that way.
All for the love of money
This is a funny policy Google is setting out with this. It seem that the here and there banned account, claiming click fraud, is just a publicity gag.
That way they keep AdWords advertisers happy. Right now Google is having an easy game with this as they are not many alternatives.
In Europe a lot of online businesses are changing there marketing strategies already. They dont like the Google dominance and dictate.
Hope others will follow suit – in time that will make Google think.
Ciprian I’m sorry to hear the bad news and glad to hear the good news.
It’s good to know.
well if this doesn’t confirm that google needs ad revenue… i’m not sure what would…
Now that is indeed funny. But again, google’s idea of allowing other adsense accounts on the same site cud be reasoned. This is because, god knows how many websites this person owns. Google can block adsense on one website, but wat about the others? Simple solution, let the ads run, let the revenues come and we will take action when we suspect corruption. Not a bad strategy I would say..
thanks for your post
is this really true
because when i applied for such a thing adsense didnt reply me
and one of my friend said he his request was denied as that was against the terms
Do not believe them a single word Cristian!
I had a similar situation last year (or is it two years?) where I had THE SAME question and the german Adsense team CONFIRMED that a site is ok for me to put on my adsense code…
couple weeks later I got banned and they never reinstated me.
Do not, I believe Do NOT believe their confirmation.
You ask : but they confirmed it to you, they are good.
I say : no, they are not
You say : so sue them
I say : are you nuts? sueing google for banning me from adsense because of them breaking their word? LOL
whatever – there are better ways to make money on the web than by putting up adsense…
best,
christoph
Cristoph, I just wrote what they acknoledged.
I don’t think I would do that though.
so whats the verdict?
Your friend can still earn nearly the some amount from AdSense using the closest AdSense alternative ,YPN if he is in US.
Alan – YPN pays nothing compared to adsense. Since I am not allowed to release the details of either, I will say this – earnings on one of my sites with adsense is 3x greater than that with YPN… and the ads are targeted 10x better.
google is really smart and wise. but it is still nice to know that banned websites can still publish google ads from a different google account.
@lady influence: as I wrote, I did exactly what this post suggested – publish adsense on a site that got banned for invalid clicks.
and BOOM – there goes my Adsense account.
I haven’t been re-instated into the program for 2 years now, despite a lot of reinstation requests, chat with google people at the GoogleDance, SES, WMW etc..
Let’s face it – if you are small and unimportant to Google (as most of us bloggers are) then they give a damn about your account making a couple thousand dollars a months…
best,christoph
@Cristian Mezei: yeah – no problem – I just wrote what happened to me and that you can NOT trust this acknowledgement, because Google became just another of those BIG companies where left hand has no clue about what the right hand does… at least when it comes to US HQ vs. the dorks in the german Adsense group.
Christoph, maybe their policy changed recently.
Maybe two years ago, they were more strict :)
Cristian, NO I don’t think their policy was changed.
I got a similar answer asking for putting up the ads on a site I knew had a previous account banned back in September 2005.
Then after a couple weeks up /before the check was sent/ I got banned.
Banned for BEING RELATED TO AN ACCOUNT THAT GOT BANNED.
that’s it.
No accusations of click-fraud. Just the confirmation that I know somebody who got banned for accusation of click-fraud.
So – if you love your adsense earnings, don’t put up adsense on sites you know had problems.
Your case is unfortunate. Anyway, no matter what my post says, I would NOT recommend users to do this.
I hope your account is ok now.
We placed adsense on an established site that was getting a fair amount of traffic daily. It worked great. The ads are targeted well according to the content of the page and it works better than YPN.
We have not found anything in the TOS that says it can’t be done.
@James: “in the TOS that says it can’t be done.”
You mean THAT established site was banned from Adsense before and you did not have troubles with your own adsense account there?
@cristian: “hope your account is ok now.”
No, Adsense never reinstated me and even stopped sending me their auto-replies.
That’s why I’m so emotionalized about this topic… Adsense and Google gives a damn about small publishers…
@C. Cemper – the established site had its account banned 1.5 years ago for alleged click fraud.
So now we have two individual, different results, for the same problem.
I think it’s everyone’s choice to deal with the options.
Same problem here, I was banned 2 years ago from adsense, I use to have a site with more or less 5000 IPs/day and they banned me for click fraud, a friend of mine has a website with at most 5 ip/day and every click He makes 2 say 2 dollars!!! Don’t know what to say…. probably in the future will be possible to apply again….