It seems like some lame automatic anti-fraud (too successful SEO) trigger at google, based entirely on statistics (like high-speed stock trading, etc.)
Those people had their top moment, but google spoiled their bonuses.
Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
61–70 of 164 posts
Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
#62What's crap is that AdSense's TOS say that you can't run someone else's context- or content-sensitive ads. So you can't run both AdSense and whatever Yahoo/Bing/whoever has. If you could, stuff like this would be a great boon, not an automatic circuit breaker that cut you off.
My favorite term from the TOS is the one where they forbid you to talk about your accounts statistics: " Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. "Google Confidential Information" includes without limitation: (a) all Google software, technology, programming, specifications, materials, guidelines and documentation relating to the Program; (b) cl…
You can bet they wanted to write "The first rule of adsense is ..."
Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
My favorite term from the TOS is the one where they forbid you to talk about your accounts statistics: " Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. "Google Confidential Information" includes without limitation: (a) all Google software, technology, programming, specifications, materials, guidelines and documentation relating to the Program; (b) cl…
You can bet they wanted to write "The first rule of adsense is ..."
That's definitely what it feels like. My main issue with this part of the TOS is this: Google is extremely lacking in transparency, the only way to puncture that is to team up with other publishers/advertisers and compare notes.
Right now the feeling is simply that you're being screwed and you can't even talk about that feeling or verify it.
At the risk of getting my adsense account blocked, and because I'm not going to let the big G muzzle me I'm going to post my adsense stats for July.
edit: they're up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=791158
Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
As happy as I am that you're Google's unofficial ombudsman, Matt, you're a big billion dollar company who many of us are intensely reliant on for our businesses. There needs to be a support channel other than "make a PR issue for Google and Matt Cutts will swoop by to save the day". I had a big issue with AdWords earlier this month. Google made it all but impossible for me to reach anyone about it. Earlier this year,…
Though it may not be a complete answer, it is encouraging that people from Google will reply on public forums. You'd never see an Apple employee posting on a thread about someone whose iPhone app had been sitting in the pipeline for months, or a Paypal employee posting on a thread about someone whose account had been summarily frozen.
I'd wager that he's offering to help not because Google is such a friendly and benevolent business entity, but because it's in the spirit of Hacker News (and ultimately, in Google's best interest to do so).
The credibility of Don't Be Evil is taking a lot of hits these days. Some of us were never really convinced.
Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
#65Didn't anyone else notice that Google's "explanation" for disabling the account was the same as in another recent story: While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. This was on HN a while ago: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=781751
That is one of those empty, formulaic phrases that mean the exact opposite of what they say. Like when a company says for your convenience which really means for this company's convenience or more commonly we're about to make things harder for you.
These formulaic phrases are spit out by the form letter generator and have no meaning.
Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
As happy as I am that you're Google's unofficial ombudsman, Matt, you're a big billion dollar company who many of us are intensely reliant on for our businesses. There needs to be a support channel other than "make a PR issue for Google and Matt Cutts will swoop by to save the day". I had a big issue with AdWords earlier this month. Google made it all but impossible for me to reach anyone about it. Earlier this year,…
There is a support channel for appeals, and it sounds like hizook.com submitted an appeal via that channel earlier this week. My guess is that the Google team is already looking into it; I just wanted to let people know that I'd ask the relevant team from my side as well. Given the hundreds of millions of users, tens of millions of webmasters, and many advertisers and publishers that Google interacts with, it would b…
There's a support channel for appeals? Not hardly.
As I mentioned in my anti-Google Checkout article on Slash7 (which you commented on), not only has Google attempted to steal money from me by closing my Checkout account, but my husband lost over $2,000 of Adsense money when his account was arbitrarily closed.
He's the author of Scriptaculous - and the ads were on the Scriptaculous site - a totally innocent open source contributor.
So, support money was effectively stolen from a popular open source project.
Of course he appealed.
And he never heard back.
The commenter above is right: One-off help for those who are able to make a lot of noise, and hurt Google's image, is not enough. It got me my Checkout account back, and it will probably get the OP's Adsense account back.
But my husband never made a public fuss, and so of course all his attempts to reach out to Google were completely ignored.
Until there's a system in place other than "be famous and make noise," nobody should trust Google with their money, in any way.
Anyone who's interested in more back story (and my recommendations for improving the Google experience), these are the two articles I wrote:
http://slash7.com/articles/2009/3/26/google-is-evil-worse-th...
http://slash7.com/articles/2009/3/28/google-checkout-still-u...
Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
#67I'm happy to ask the right team at Google about this and point them to the post on hizook.com.
Hi Matt,
No offense, but if it takes posting your gripes on HN to get customer support then something is very much broken.
The simple fact that a multiple billion dollar company should depend on outside channels for its support cues is very sad imho.
Maybe, instead of passing on messages like these pass the general message that Google tech support as perceived from the outside absolutely sucks.
I'm not exactly a newbie on the adsense/adwords front, have spent lots of money on adwords before giving up because of inactivity on googles part dealing with click fraud, still using adsense because of a lack of alternatives.
Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
As happy as I am that you're Google's unofficial ombudsman, Matt, you're a big billion dollar company who many of us are intensely reliant on for our businesses. There needs to be a support channel other than "make a PR issue for Google and Matt Cutts will swoop by to save the day". I had a big issue with AdWords earlier this month. Google made it all but impossible for me to reach anyone about it. Earlier this year,…
There is a support channel for appeals, and it sounds like hizook.com submitted an appeal via that channel earlier this week. My guess is that the Google team is already looking into it; I just wanted to let people know that I'd ask the relevant team from my side as well. Given the hundreds of millions of users, tens of millions of webmasters, and many advertisers and publishers that Google interacts with, it would b…
Support should scale with the size of your business.
Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a support channel for appeals, and it sounds like hizook.com submitted an appeal via that channel earlier this week. My guess is that the Google team is already looking into it; I just wanted to let people know that I'd ask the relevant team from my side as well. Given the hundreds of millions of users, tens of millions of webmasters, and many advertisers and publishers that Google interacts with, it would b…
There's a support channel for appeals? Not hardly. As I mentioned in my anti-Google Checkout article on Slash7 (which you commented on), not only has Google attempted to steal money from me by closing my Checkout account, but my husband lost over $2,000 of Adsense money when his account was arbitrarily closed. He's the author of Scriptaculous - and the ads were on the Scriptaculous site - a totally innocent open sour…
If you really mean that they closed your husband's account and walked away with money they owed you, then this seems like exactly what the legal system is made for. (Though I'd expect them to settle rather than actually go to court, unless they think you're lying outright.)
Re: Make Frontpage of Slashdot, Reddit, Hacker News == Google Disables AdSense
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
As happy as I am that you're Google's unofficial ombudsman, Matt, you're a big billion dollar company who many of us are intensely reliant on for our businesses. There needs to be a support channel other than "make a PR issue for Google and Matt Cutts will swoop by to save the day". I had a big issue with AdWords earlier this month. Google made it all but impossible for me to reach anyone about it. Earlier this year,…
There is a support channel for appeals, and it sounds like hizook.com submitted an appeal via that channel earlier this week. My guess is that the Google team is already looking into it; I just wanted to let people know that I'd ask the relevant team from my side as well. Given the hundreds of millions of users, tens of millions of webmasters, and many advertisers and publishers that Google interacts with, it would b…
A part of that frustration has to be from that email that gets sent out. I haven't been on the receiving end, but I've read it in a couple of blog posts about this sort of thing, and honestly: that letter is awful.
It contains exactly one piece of "useful" information, the link to the disabled account FAQ. The rest is just simply terrible. It starts with a very serious accusation, intoning "significant risk" and "financial damage", but Google wasn't "compelled" or "forced" to act, it "decided" to, implying not that some mandatory threshold was reached but that someone sat down and worked it out and reluctantly agreed that this was the way to go, or worse, that sometimes similar situations might go the other way.
Immediately after accusing the person of being an evil bastard, it turns on the smarmy fake politeness. "Please understand" that we think you're an evil bastard. "Thank you" for understanding that we think you're an evil bastard. And thanks for "cooperating", even though you actually have no choice in the matter at all. If you have any questions, kindly fuck off and don't use the same method of communication we just used to reach you, here's a link to more standardized dehumanizing copy.
It reads like Google is breaking up with you while checking its phone, acting like you've done something horrible enough to merit no discussion on the matter, trying to act nice enough so you don't think it's a bitch, but making it clear it doesn't give a shit and really never did.