Poll: Were you banned by AdSense? When in the cycle were you notified? • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by sireat » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

torbit wrote: post #96

pja wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Only recourse that I have seen work is public shaming on a forum that someone high enough in Google notices (like mcutts).

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

#152

Post by dangrossman » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:00 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #150

dangrossman wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have recourse if those things happened, whereas you don't have recourse if Google terminates your account. You enter into a contract where you agreed that they had this right and that payments would be forfeit. If a cell company overcharges you, you have a legal case for recovering that money. If Google terminates you, you have none, and going to court to fight a contract you agreed to is likely going to result…

Why can't you challenge the legitimacy of the contract? Not every contract stands up to court scrutiny.

Google has good lawyers, and their terms are both brief and written in plain English with no "fine print". Printed, the AdSense terms are less than two pages long. The part about termination and forfeiting unpaid commissions is two sentences long. There's not much to argue or for a court to "scrutinize".

The fact that a large number of people have had five-figure payments forfeited under this agreement (sufficient to afford and warrant evaluating options like this), yet none of them have invalidated the contract in a courtroom thus far AFAIK, is pretty good evidence that there's nothing so unconscionable present that a court would void the contract.

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

#153

Post by jasonwilk » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:03 PM UTC

We were running a blog that added AdSense around February 2012. We had received one payout. On the second payout, it was the DAY we were supposed to get paid when they said our account had been flagged. Didn't see a cent. Funny to see this article come out that April 2012 was when they stopped paying out.

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

#154

Post by nanidin » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:45 PM UTC

tenaciousJk wrote: post #58

I was making $1-3k monthly. I logged in at the end of November (*edit: 2012) to see what my Xmas bonus was going to be. Turns out it would be a big, fat zero. Account suspended/canceled. I submitted a claim and they said: sorry, no - you're done. There was zero reason to do it. No ToS violations, no fraudulent clicks. Just $30k less in my bank account for the next year. The second most frustrating part, aside from th…

I lost an entire Google account like this. Email, calendar, etc - poof, no explanation, no recourse.

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

#155

Post by nanidin » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:49 PM UTC

chaz wrote: post #147

baby wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, it's not appropriate to tell a website to check its user generated content in 72 hours because some of it contains spam words. I had a huuuge amount of user generated content posted every day and I def. couldn't check all of that. If they provided all the bad links it might have been possible. I had the same problem with another site and I was scared to get in more troubles since I had another one banne…

If you have lots of UGC, then AdSense is probably not for you. A lot of companies shy away from UGC specifically because it can risk advertising revenue from higher end brands that will pay more. Fortunately, there are many different ad networks for many different publishers. Reddit is using Adzerk ... maybe they will work for you. There's also a bunch of ad networks that specialize in different areas, including porn…

Funny considering one of the original kings of user generated content is Youtube, which is owned by Google, and presumably runs Google ads.

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

#156

Post by kevingadd » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:56 PM UTC

xanderstrike wrote: post #143

josephschmoe wrote: post #140

Honestly, this kind of automated banning with no appeals process is a huge problem. I don't usually opt for the government to step in - but giving Google the power to essentially take away hard-earned money with no recourse is reprehensible. Banning an individual from a service without clear proof that they committed or colluded to do fraud or otherwise malicious behavior -should- be illegal. And when you ban that in…

> Banning an individual from a service without clear proof that they committed or colluded to do fraud or otherwise malicious behavior -should- be illegal. I disagree. It's Google's service, Google has a right to decide who gets to use the service. They are under no obligation to make their banning process transparent. It's not illegal to kick someone out of a store you own (unless you're systematically refusing to s…

Kicking people out of a store is a really poor analogy. AdSense is a business relationship (governed by contract terms) between two professionals, that may operate over the course of months or years or even decades. During this time one party offers services (displaying ads) in exchange for monetary compensation from the other party, under established rules.

Arbitrarily terminating an account immediately before the payout date - after services have already been rendered - without any recourse or information is not 'kicking someone out of a store you own', it's fraud. Plain and simple. Companies like Google and PayPal mistreat and defraud customers like this because they know they can get away with it - they're too huge and well-lawyered to ever get punished for breaking the law.

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

#157

Post by nanidin » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

jkira wrote: post #91

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,…

Someone seems to be systematically downvoting posts like this. Just wanted to let you know that I feel your pain - I had an entire Google account shut down without explanation or warning. Lost all access to email, calendar, contacts, etc with no recourse and only a form to fill out that is never answered.

I believe the account was banned for a ToS violation that occurred 2 years prior. But I'll never know, just like I never got any of my data back.

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

#158

Post by nanidin » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:02 PM UTC

codr wrote: post #83

jader201 wrote: post #81

For those being banned without explanation, can there not be any sort of legal action taken? IANAL, and I've not gone over their ToS with a fine toothed comb, but I can't believe they can essentially eliminate a primary source of income (for some people/businesses) without an explanation, especially when no ToS violation is known. Wouldn't this almost be equivalent to being terminated from a job without reason (and i…

Re: terminating a job, in many states employment can be legally terminated without reason (both by the employer and the employee). See "at will employment".

Even in cases where you are terminated for no reason, you have recourse for things like unemployment benefits if no valid reason can be provided in court.

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

#159

Post by chaz » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:14 PM UTC

nanidin wrote: post #155

chaz wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have lots of UGC, then AdSense is probably not for you. A lot of companies shy away from UGC specifically because it can risk advertising revenue from higher end brands that will pay more. Fortunately, there are many different ad networks for many different publishers. Reddit is using Adzerk ... maybe they will work for you. There's also a bunch of ad networks that specialize in different areas, including porn…

Funny considering one of the original kings of user generated content is Youtube, which is owned by Google, and presumably runs Google ads.

That's the best situation, since they know the content and can segment their content very effectively. YouTube Partners and VEVO can get premium pre-roll ads because it's considered to be premium content. Content that gets flagged or has negative keywords in the title, desc, or comments may get no ads at all.

Any publisher can do this on their own. They can sell their own ad space at a premium, and use an ad network throughout the rest of the site -- it's called "remnant" inventory. If someone writes profanity or uploads something for that page, them switch the ads off, or use a different ad network that will tolerate that. High traffic sites frequently use multiple ad networks to maximize revenue yield.

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

#160

Post by dfabulich » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:33 PM UTC

beambot wrote: post #148

alandarev wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the product, sorry to hear your story. I think situation would be better if there was a competition.

Wow, that's cliche (and wrong). Webhosts are not the product in this situation. This is a supplier-distributor relationship, where Google is the supplier (of ads) and you are the distributor (to end consumers).

No, I think OP has it right. The paying customers are the advertisers. Websites supply "inventory" of impressions. (That's certainly what Google calls it in my Doubleclick dashboard.) Google is a distributor, and they sometimes decide to cut off certain suppliers.