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Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

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Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#91

Post by jkira »

I'm one of the publishers whose account got nixxed (just a few months ago), and also within a few days of payment. It wasn't a big account; I only made maybe $100-200/month on it, but it was a nice bit of extra change. (I'd also had the account for a long time... since the early days of Adsense.)

I think the biggest frustration is having the account pulled with no explanation as to why. I assume it was click fraud, but it wasn't my doing - I generally just ignored the site. Was I clickbombed? Don't know. But it feels like Google punished me for something beyond my control.

One curious thing - I noticed in my analytics account that the site had gotten about 2x the usual traffic for the day before, so when I emailed my appeal I said maybe that had something to do with it. But a few days later (after the appeal was denied) I looked at analytics again and that traffic spike no longer existed. I wish I'd taken a screen shot the first time. (Or saved some server logs.) Didn't do either though, so oh well.

Still don't know what happened, but the experience definitely makes me bitter towards Google.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#92

Post by [deleted] »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #28

It's been an hour, and a very clear trend is emerging: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=bar+graph+13%2C+5%2C+10... Is there any reason why 4x more people would be banned within four days of a payout than any other part of the cycle? (This presupposes the poll results can be trusted, which seems dubious at best. But if this survey is trustworthy, then I wonder what it implies.)

[deleted]

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#93

Post by Ryan_Jones »

AhtiK wrote: post #17
fara wrote: post #2

I use AdMob for a mobile game I made. After successfully using it for years I got a notice that Google had bought the company and that my account would now be an AdSense account. I started earning money there and when I reached the 100usd amount, with no explanation at all I got banned. I filled up contact forms but not reason was given to me. They just said that I was not going to have my money since it was going to…

> "They just said that I was not going to have my money since it was going to be refunded to advertisers." Has anyone ever seen that their AdWords or any other Google-related ads spending got partially refunded? I wonder how's this feasible given the delay between the ad spending and account asset freeze. This can take years if the freeze validation occurs close to an actual payout. Is Google sending the amount back…

I work in an agency with several fortune 500 clients. Yes, I've seen ad spending refunds on several occurrences because of alleged fraud.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#94

Post by tomkarlo »

poopsintub wrote: post #59
PaulHoule wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely true that accounts above some threshold ($1000?) get extra scrutiny, not just from a adsense perspective but also from an seo perspective. In the long term, Google would be happy to replace the open web with Android or Google+. In the short term if you compete with Google images or other Google properties it is open season.

From what I've read, they do a manual review at certain times right when payout is due. I've seen bank transfers for months on a certain day or within a day or two. But when I had a jump in earnings, it took 3-4 days longer.

That's a fairly common anti-fraud pattern for lots of systems: if a particular account's performance exceeds its long-term trend by a large amount (say 100% or more), it gets flagged for manual review. Once a payment goes out, it's not economic to retrieve it, so you want that extra review to happen before it's issued.

Ideally this would cause a delay in the payout, but if an account doesn't break the threshold until just before the payment date, the review might cause a delay.

This is common on ad platforms, credit card processors and even auction platforms like eBay. I would guess that it's a "standard practice" for risk mitigation.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#95

Post by baby »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #86
baby wrote: post #74

I got banned because someone posted some insults/porn words in a title. There was no pictures/videos... it was just words. They sent me the link where the words were and gave me something like 4 days (or was it more? It was a pretty scary amount of time anyway). I went to that url and didn't find anything, so I sent them a mail asking for more info. Never had a reply. Got banned. I discovered later that it was in the…

Can you really get banned for "insults/porn words in a title" on your website? Could you provide the email they sent you? That sounds so strange.

Violation explanation

​

COMMENT SPAM: As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers may not display Google ads on pages with adult or mature content. We understand that it may be challenging to monitor user-generated content on your site including comments, forum posts or compromised content. Nevertheless, to participate in AdSense you must ensure that pages containing your ad code comply with our program policies. More information about this policy can be found in our Help Center: http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=13556....

How to resolve:

If you received a notification in regard to page content, please either remove the content from your site or remove ads from the violating pages. If you received a notification in regards to the way ads are implemented on your site, please make the necessary changes to your implementation. We will automatically review the site again after 72 hours. You do not need to contact us if you make changes. Please be aware that if changes are not made within the required time frame, ad serving will be disabled to the affected website listed above.

Additionally, please be aware that the URL above is just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites that you own.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#96

Post by torbit »

pja wrote: post #54
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you don't agree with a particular site that's using adsense. You could (for instance) have you and all your friends click over and over again on the ads on that site, which Google will quickly flag as fraudulent. Is it really that easy to put a gun to any random adsense user's head?

Yeah, it's called clickbombing: http://empireflippers.com/clickbombing-and-click-fraud/ (NB, Have no idea whether that's a reputable site, but the analysis in that blogpost is reasonably in depth). If you're lucky , you catch it, report it to Google & they just take the income away (as it should be). If you're unlucky, Google decides that you're trying to defraud them & their ad clients and kills your entire AdSense…

so far nobody has listed how they actually got in contact with google. Is there a certain email? method?

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#97

Post by marymarks »

I was using AdSense for a few years on my websites. My account was banned out of the blue and without warning in 2012. I had over $6000 waiting to be payed. They took that away. It was within the week the payment was supposed to happen.

So I believe it. I know other webmasters that had the exact same thing happen to them too.

This is not some outlandish freak occurrence it happens all the time.

Re: Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified?

#99

Post by pjc50 »

anthony_franco wrote: post #47

Tested out Adsense, saw it performed better. Switched all our ads to Adsense, big mistake. We got banned right before the payout date and ended-up making almost zero for the entire month. Big lesson learned. Edit: To further clarify, we were expecting to receive a payment in the low five figures. Also, during that month I was invited to a special Google event where I spoke one on one with AdSense employees on how to…

So ... what happened when you followed it up?
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